Children’s Climate Media Must Pair Honest Facts With Agency

Children are already encountering conditions adults may hesitate to explain. Laura Schifter pointed to Chicago children who had been kept indoors because of wildfire smoke two days earlier. Parents often avoid climate conversations because they fear frightening their children, she said, but silence cannot shield children from experiences they are already having.

The practical question is how to explain those experiences without making a child feel helpless. The panel’s answer was not a single formula. It was a progression: begin with what a child can notice and care about; give facts at a level they can use; and connect those facts to something they can do with family, friends, or a trusted adult.

Roker put the adult obligation bluntly. His work in television weather had made clear that something was changing, he said, but having children—and now a granddaughter—made the issue personal. “This is their world,” he said. Adults, in his phrasing, have left young people “this dumpster fire”; the responsibility is not only to change course but to give children skills to participate.

That need for interpretation extends to adults. Schifter asked the audience how many of them had watched Sesame Street as children, and nearly everyone raised a hand. Familiar characters and stories can give parents and children a shared language for difficult conditions that might otherwise go unnamed.

The panelists did not treat “kids” as one audience. A preschooler’s first encounter with environmental care should not resemble a teenager’s encounter with climate risk, activism, or public scrutiny.

For preschoolers, Kay Stallings said Sesame Workshop is not trying to teach climate science. Three-, four-, and five-year-olds are not ready for that level of abstraction. Its starting point is nature: helping children love it, be curious about it, recognize their connection to it, and see that they can care for it.

The tools are joy, humor, relatable stories, and trusted characters. A young child might be encouraged to explore outside or take a small “kid-size” action. The point is not to assign a planetary burden to a preschooler. It is to make care for the natural world feel like a normal part of life.

Sesame’s extreme-weather material is intended for children to watch with a caring adult. Its “circle of care” includes parents, caregivers, educators, coaches, service providers, and others who help children make sense of what they see. The Workshop provides talking points, digital storybooks, and related resources so that adults have material for those conversations.

Stallings’ rule for those conversations is deliberately narrow: answer the question a child actually asks. Do not use a preschooler’s question as an opening to provide more information than the child needs at that moment. That is not evasion, in her account; it is an effort to give an honest answer at the child’s developmental level.

Al Roker described Weather Hunters as aimed broadly at children three to eight, with its core audience closer to five through eight. The series follows television weather presenter Al Hunter, his news-producer wife Dot, and their children Corky, Lily, and Ben. Roker said teachers had repeatedly told him weather was elementary-school children’s favorite topic. That made weather a natural entry point for a show about family and the awe of natural phenomena.

The show is not labeled as a climate program. But Roker said weather programming could not responsibly leave climate out. The task was to fit climate-related information into stories children wanted to watch for their characters and family dynamics, while also giving them practical tools.

For older children, James Johnson argued that simplification should not be confused with respect. Sinking Ship Entertainment’s Jane, made with the Jane Goodall Institute for six- to nine-year-olds, centers on a girl who loves animals and wants to protect them. She imagines global adventures with her best friend and Greybeard, a stuffed chimpanzee who comes alive in her imagination. Those imagined adventures eventually connect to changes in her own community.

The conservation stakes matter because they threaten something the protagonist loves. The story does not begin by instructing viewers to learn conservation.

For teenagers, Lyla Goes Viral uses a more dramatic frame. Lyla is a young musician with a small YouTube channel who visits the Great Barrier Reef with her father, sees what is happening there, and writes a song. When it receives about a million views overnight, she becomes an accidental activist. The series follows the consequences of that visibility: fame, mistakes, relationships, brand deals, and the pressure to turn attention into something useful.

Johnson said teens expect drama and heart alongside any environmental material. They are not looking for an adult lesson disguised as entertainment.

The panelists shared a commitment to accuracy, but they did not take identical positions on fear.

Stallings said Sesame Workshop is trying to instill hope rather than fear or anxiety. The organization has addressed hard subjects throughout its history, she said, but its obligation is to be attentive to who young children are and what they can process. Roker recalled appearing in a post-Hurricane Katrina Sesame Street segment in which damage to Big Bird’s nest acknowledged children’s fears directly. For him, that was an early example of children’s media addressing a fear rather than ignoring it.

For Roker, accuracy becomes useful when it equips a child for a specific situation. PBS Kids requires correct curriculum as well as a viewing experience that is safe for children, he said. Weather Hunters gives children facts, science, and truth, but also shows what preparation looks like. If bad weather may be coming, a child can help create a go-kit or take part in a family plan.

That participation changes the emotional meaning of information. Knowing that severe weather is possible does not mean it will necessarily happen, Roker said. But a child who has helped prepare is no longer only receiving alarming news; they have a role.

Johnson’s position for school-age children and teens was more direct. Some fear, he said, is useful—provided a story gives viewers agency and ideas for what to do. Young audiences can tell when adults are trying to soften or obscure reality. A creator who does not provide actual facts risks losing the audience’s trust.

The difference is age-dependent. Sesame’s approach for preschoolers is to meet the question in front of the child without producing fear or anxiety. Johnson’s work with older children and teens is willing to name a frightening situation more plainly, because those viewers can engage with conflict and consequences—and, in his view, will reject false reassurance.

Johnson described Sinking Ship’s target as the young person who has not already become an organizer or activist. The aim is to make a first step feel possible. In Lyla Goes Viral, he said, viewing and sharing content can generate resources for organizations and causes connected with the show. The model is meant to make participation possible even for a viewer whose first act is simply to watch or share.

Roker’s version of the same balance is truth with “some optimism.” Stallings emphasizes connection to nature and other people. Johnson accepts concern as a motivator when it can be directed into action. None argues for pretending the problem is less serious than it is.

Climate information cannot carry a children’s story on its own. The audience has to want to spend time with the characters before the environmental material can matter.

James Johnson described the production principle as “story first, message second.” A pitch that begins with all the environmental problems a project intends to confront can be difficult to fund, he said. A girl who wants to change the world, or a teenager who unexpectedly becomes famous, offers a more immediate human premise. Climate is then the concern that gives the story stakes alongside friendship, family, romance, achievement, failure, and uncertainty.

Johnson cited Avatar as a model of a story audiences choose for its world and conflict even though its environmental themes are pervasive. The lesson was not that a climate story should conceal its subject, but that the subject has to work through character and narrative rather than arrive as instruction.

For younger audiences, that often means modelling instead of lecturing. Kay Stallings said Sesame’s trusted monster characters should demonstrate the behaviors adults hope children will incorporate into ordinary life. Asked how Oscar the Grouch would feel about composting, she replied that he would love it—“the smellier the better.”

Schifter added that climate solutions can be present without becoming dialogue: solar panels on a building, an electric school bus, or a parent plugging in an electric car. These details make certain choices part of the background of a child’s world.

Al Roker said Weather Hunters works in comparable details. Its van is solar-powered. The family home contains wind-powered features built by the children’s grandfather, who has died but remains part of the family through an avatar. The devices are part of the show’s setting rather than a pause for instruction.

This narrative approach also helps the creators handle politicization. Roker said PBS has faced substantial pressure and climate has become politicized, but his response is to avoid conjecture and sensationalism, stay with facts, and give families usable information about safety and action. Viewers come to Weather Hunters for a family story about weather, not for a political argument.

Stallings said Sesame Workshop is regularly pulled into political conversations it did not seek. Its internal test is simpler: whether the work is in children’s best interests. If children need help understanding the world they live in and how to make it better, she said, that is the work Sesame will do.

Distribution is not merely a way to find an audience. It changes the pace of production, the degree of audience interaction, and whether the material reaches children, caregivers, or families with limited broadband access.

James Johnson said YouTube gives young viewers choice, immediacy, and content that often speaks to them more directly than conventional television. Its aesthetic is more personal: close-ups rather than wide shots, quick delivery rather than slow buildup, and a demand to get to the point.

That environment gave Sinking Ship a different production model for Lyla Goes Viral. Jane, a larger live-action and computer-generated production, takes about eight months from the end of post-production to delivery, Johnson said. With a smaller YouTube-first team, the company can react to events and post content the next day.

The rapid cycle allows the company to see what audiences respond to and shift its work in real time. Johnson said teen viewers also want to interact with performers, so the production was careful to cast people who could engage with the audience.

It also changed the financing. Instead of relying on an international network or major streaming service, Sinking Ship funded Lyla Goes Viral with an investment from Lion Forge and partnerships with brands that shared the project’s aims. Those relationships became part of the story: Lyla learns to make a brand deal, gets it wrong, and spends money before she has it.

Kay Stallings described Sesame Workshop’s approach as targeting the audience to the platform. Sesame Street is distributed on PBS, YouTube, and Netflix. But material aimed first at the circle of care—parents, educators, caregivers, and service providers—can be placed on social media, websites, and partner channels, where adults are more likely to encounter it. Stallings cited PSEG’s support for Sesame’s extreme-weather content and said partnerships can expand distribution through a funder’s own channels.

Al Roker said linear television had become less central than it was when Weather Hunters was first developed. In May, he said, the PBS Kids app alone recorded 15 million views for the show.

But Roker cautioned against treating broadcast as obsolete. In some rural communities without easy internet access, local PBS stations remain a lifeline. The distribution problem is therefore not to select a single winning platform, but to reach families in the channels they can actually use.

Co-viewing is one reason the television and app model still matters. Roker said focus-group feedback often comes from parents, caregivers, and grandparents saying, “I didn’t know that.” Children and adults can learn together, and children enjoy the authority that comes from telling a parent something the parent did not know.

The panelists argued that children’s media matters because it can make environmental work visible and participation concrete.

James Johnson said each episode of Jane ended with a short documentary about a conservationist working in the country connected to that episode’s animal. The series featured 20 conservationists. When the producers asked when they had decided to help, Johnson said 19 told them that seeing Jane Goodall as children had shown them someone was trying to make a difference.

Those segments gave viewers more than an endangered species or a threat. They showed a person doing work in a place. Johnson said that, as a child, knowing someone like Jane Goodall was out in the world made him feel safer. For children and teens, he said, seeing peers or people in their communities learn and act can make the same work feel possible.

Johnson described a related exchange with his son Rex at Chicago’s Field Museum. Johnson had been struck by an interactive display about species extinction and tried to recall the statistic as 82 species a day. Rex corrected him from the audience: four species every hour. The number was upsetting, but Johnson said Rex’s response was that seeing it made him want to help more.

The producer’s obligation, in Johnson’s view, is to build a route from that reaction to an actual next move. Endlings, a series about animals facing extinction, partnered with the International Fund for Animal Welfare; Johnson said support from networks and audience donations helped build an elephant orphanage in Zambia. For Jane, Sinking Ship worked with the Jane Goodall Institute and held activations in countries with the Institute’s 60 Roots & Shoots chapters.

Al Roker said Weather Hunters extends its stories through video games that can take a deeper dive into climate-related material. The games are meant to reinforce what children have seen without feeling, in his phrase, like “take your medicine.”

For Kay Stallings, agency starts long before a child can understand systemic climate solutions. A preschooler can turn off water, avoid waste, recycle, or remind an adult to do those things. Those actions may be small, but they establish that children can influence the household around them.

Roker made the longer-term argument: when environmental care is a normal message rather than an exceptional warning, it becomes part of children’s habits. They become climate ambassadors because care for their surroundings feels ordinary. Stallings’ final formulation was that children are connected to one another and to nature, and have the ability to care for both. Johnson’s was simpler: every small step makes a difference, so take the first one.