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After Greta’s five-minute speech, a large carbon clock was displayed on the projector screen, counting down from eight years — the estimated amount of time it will take to emit enough carbon to warm the world by 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change. The clock can be modified to display 26 years, the estimated amount of time left to avoid 2 C of warming.

Lejla Blazevic says her daughter Joylaea, 8, came home that day confused and scared.

“She’s like, ‘Mommy, they said that we’re going to die in eight years,'” Blazevic said.

“They were terrified with the information.”

Blazevic says her daughter remembers her friend yelling out “I don’t wanna die,” and then the rest of the class joining in. However, TDSB spokesman Ryan Bird said it was one student who made the remark during the presentation, and the teacher immediately told the class that wasn’t true. The teacher later followed up with the child and his parents to make sure everything was OK, Bird said.

“We were assured from the family that indeed he was just joking,” Bird said.

But Blazevic says her daughter took the remark — and the dire warning in the “developmentally inappropriate” presentation — to heart.

People are suffering. People are dying

Elizabeth Allured, a New York psychologist and co-president of Climate Psychology Alliance North America, agreed that the presentation could have been intense for an eight-year-old.

“Are they supposed to feel empowered by Greta or are they supposed to feel that she’s telling them that their lives are going to be terrible?” Allured said. “I think (the ticking clock) just scares children — and understandably.”

Instead, children at that age should be given hope and taught things that they can do in their own lives to make a positive impact on the environment.

“Children need to know that there is a way to resolve this problem, rather than thinking that we’re all doomed. I don’t think that we’re doomed if we take the appropriate actions,” Allured said. Children “need an approach that focuses on the wonderful aspects of our ecosystem, and how it supports us, and how it’s currently very bounteous in most of our lives.”