Rolling Stone USA - 04.2020

ROLLING STONE 45

L

AST SUMMER, JASPER MCTAGGART came to the

abrupt realization that life as he knew it may

be coming to an end. He was nine years old.

It was lunchtime, and he was eating a sand-

wich in the dining hall of a New Hampshire

summer camp. Sitting near him, a fellow

camper had just opened a letter from home,

and in the envelope was a news clipping with a pic-

ture from Paris, where temperatures were reach-

ing record, fatal highs. Jasper looked up from the

picture and at the faces of his friends. “We’re not

in climate change now, are we?” he asked the table.

“Yes, we are,” his counselor confirmed.

Jasper couldn’t believe it. He sat there stunned.

A New York City kid, he had spent his time at camp

that summer basking in the promise and excitement

of the great outdoors, a playground big enough to

hold a boy’s dreams of adventure. There was danger

there, yes, but he would be kept safe. Adults knew

how to keep children safe — or so he’d thought.

Now, sipping hot cider in a coffee shop near his

Queens home, he shakes his head at the memory

of this moment when he realized that maybe they

didn’t. “I was shocked,” he says. “I didn’t know cli-

mate change was already in effect. I knew it was

CHILDREN

OF THE

CRISIS

A generation of kids faces a more

dangerous world as they come of

age in the era of eco-anxiety

BY ALEX MORRIS