If there is one certainty, it is that children will fully suffer from climate change and will be in the front line to adapt to it. They are also those who, for several years, have been most aware of it. Sorting waste, waste, pollution: a lot of programs aim to instil the right reflexes in children, sometimes the drivers of significant changes in habits within their homes.
And even if in the context of the current systemic crisis, it is sad to see efforts made to prepare children for this worrying future, while adults lose precious time to put in place the major structural changes necessary to bend the curve of the warming, all educational initiatives are worth taking.
This is the case of the one carried by the Mojang studio, developer of the video game phenomenon Minecraft, and BBC Earth. They jointly imagined Frozen Planet II — from the name of a documentary on the channel —, a universe for the educational version of Minecraft offered in the form of free DLC (downloadable content), in order to approach the concept of climate change in a fun way.
In this version, the player will embody different types of animals in their natural habitat, which climate change is making more and more hostile. “If you have already started a new game of Minecraft and spawned in the middle of an Ice Plains biome, so you know a thing or two about surviving in harsh environments”explains Mojang in its announcement.
Week after week (from today until October 18), five adventures will be offered. Alternately, they will slip players into the shoes of a polar bear, an orca or a Lapland bumblebee. Each of these quests will highlight the particularities of the way of life of these animals, and their difficulties in surviving. For future episodes, Mojang plans to immerse players in the daily life of a walrus, an eagle or a leopard. And as the studio says, this is for “to children, but also to adults and everyone between these two ages”.