I’ve written that, yes, we should teach children about living sustainably, but teaching children doesn’t solve the problems we’re teaching them about. On the contrary, if we teach them to do what we aren’t doing ourselves, they learn from our behavior, not our words. We will lead them to see polluting and depleting like cursing or drinking, something kids have to wait until they grow up to do but that is okay for adults to do as long as they mostly hide it from kids.

I put it in the frame of smoking in my post Don’t “teach children sustainability”. Here’s why and what to do instead. I also wrote How environmentalists are like smokers who tell others not to smoke … while smoking.

Today I’m putting it the frame of slavery.

By all means, abolitionists should have taught children about the problems with slavery, but no way should anyone imagine that teaching children would free slaves in bondage at the moment. In no way when I say don’t only teach children am I saying don’t teach children at all, but if you prioritize it over actually freeing slaves, you’re distracting and likely perpetuating the problem, maybe accelerating it. Yes, teach children, but free slaves first!

Can you imagine if Lincoln, Douglass, and their peers prioritized teaching children over freeing slaves? We’d still live in a slave culture today, unless someone else had to common sense to start freeing slaves then and there. Likewise, only by stopping polluting and depleting here and now will we avoid the destruction of liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy. Those values require the consent of the governed and the protection of life, liberty, and property, among other bare minima, which pollution and depletion destroy.

You here now

Knock yourself out teaching children about sustainability, the environment, leadership, whatever you want, but don’t kid yourself that you’re solving problems with environment, democracy, etc as long as you keep violating what you’re teaching.

First and foremost, stop polluting and depleting yourself first, or at least do the best you can, then teach children. Don’t confuse teaching others with action.

• ← Everyone says that raising kids means you can’t avoid polluting and depleting. That’s colonialism.
• This week’s selected media, October 19, 2025: The Radicalism of the American Revolution, The Wave (1981), Die Welle (2008), Lithium Extraction and “Green Capitalism,” Anything You Want, Hell Yeah or No →