What Children Know: Children, Climate Change, and Epistemic Injustice

Scholars of childhood studies, including theologies of childhood, often cite prioritizing the well-being of children as a mark of a just society. At the same time, though, little credibility is given to children’s comprehension of their own well-being and the conditions necessary for their flourishing. What children know, especially around solidarity with the nonhuman creation, is seldom deemed legitimate in discussions of children’s well-being. Debates over the existence of climate anxiety in children together with responses that trivialize children’s climate activism provide clear examples of the disregard for their knowledge. I engage the work of Miranda Fricker on epistemic injustice as a resource for theological critique of the delegitimization of children’s embodied knowledge of planetary solidarity as crucial to their well-being.