{"id":625252,"date":"2026-09-23T20:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T20:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/625252\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T20:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T20:10:12","slug":"at-climate-week-elmo-recalls-a-storm-on-sesame-street-courage-is-when-you-still-help-others-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/625252\/","title":{"rendered":"At Climate Week, Elmo recalls a storm on Sesame Street: \u2018Courage is when you still help others\u2019 | Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"

A generation of political leaders has failed to galvanize sufficient action on the climate crisis<\/a> for so long now that it was perhaps little surprise that an audience in New York City<\/a> turned to a three-and-a-half-year-old red furry monster for inspiration on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Elmo, the Sesame Street<\/a> denizen, made a starry appearance at a Climate Week event that highlighted how the impacts of global<\/a> heating<\/a> affect<\/a> children<\/a>. The red creature, who frequently refers to himself in the third person, recounted to the audience his fear when a storm hit Sesame Street, an event depicted in a recent episode that featured<\/a> the singer Post Malone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all feel scared sometimes, but courage is when you feel scared but you still help others,\u201d Elmo said at the event, which was named \u201cBig Storms, Big Feelings\u201d. \u201cI tried to help others by giving lots of hugs and playing music on Elmo\u2019s xylophone. When the storm passed Sesame Street<\/a> didn\u2019t look like Sesame Street, there was trash and branches all over the place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elmo revealed that, much like a prepper, he had a \u201cgo bag<\/a>\u201d ready for the disaster and that the residents of Sesame Street banded together to help their neighborhood clean up after the storm. \u201cHome is the people who make the place special,\u201d he added. \u201cSo long as you\u2019re with the people you love, you\u2019ll be home. And that\u2019s true in any weather.\u201d<\/p>\n

A young boy watches dark storm clouds from a bedroom window as severe weather affects the midwest in Monroe, Wisconsin, on 14 April. Photograph: Ross Harried\/NurPhoto\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

These sentiments were warmly received by the New York audience, who had clearly moved on from Elmo\u2019s ambiguous support<\/a> of the New York Knicks in last season\u2019s NBA basketball playoff finals.<\/p>\n

While media and political focus on the climate crisis has waned, despite a cavalcade<\/a> of<\/a> recent<\/a> disasters<\/a>, a Sesame Street executive at the event said the show is looking to find avenues for children to talk about the issue.<\/p>\n

Kim Foulds, the vice-president of research and insight at Sesame Workshop, said a study was taken to \u201cunderstand how children make sense of extreme weather and how their parents navigate those events across a global, diverse context\u201d.<\/p>\n

What the show heard back from parents was alarm over extreme weather events and accounts from children of severe heat<\/a>, flooding<\/a> and other<\/a> disasters<\/a>. This is affecting children around the world physically, she said, as well as upending their day-to-day lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest disruption that they\u2019re causing to young children is how they disrupt their routines,\u201d Foulds said. \u201cSo inability to go to school, lost time outside, and play with their friends, with their parents. And while there were some differences in the extreme weather events, we did hear across all geographies, they all experienced extreme heat in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experts at the event, including a climate scientist, a Unicef official and a young climate campaigner, all agreed that while parents often find it difficult to raise the climate crisis with their offspring, children are able to grasp the concept in surprising ways and can get involved in small-scale but direct actions such as planting trees.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important thing to share, science actually shows, is that others care and there are solutions that work,\u201d said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist, on what to tell children.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are the two most important things to share with anybody between the age of five and 95. Others care and there are solutions and kids get that faster than adults.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A generation of political leaders has failed to galvanize sufficient action on the climate crisis for so long…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-625252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}