Once upon a time, people told children stories both to entertain and forewarn. Stories of dragons and villains and wolves at the door carried a serious message: The world is a perilous place. Better pay attention. Better take care.

In her own way, climate activist Naomi Klein is following that tradition. In her new book, How To Change Everything: The Young Human’s Guide To Protecting the Planet and Each Other, written with Rebecca Stefoff for ages 10-17 (Atheneum, Feb. 23), she drives home through facts, figures, and inspiring stories a message that’s all too real: Climate change is upon us, and it’s up to a new generation to turn the boat around and do what it takes to stop its destructive effects.

Klein, author of several books (No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything), is a renowned campaigner for many causes, notably curbing the excesses of capitalism and globalism and restructuring the world’s economy for a better life. How To Change Everything is a more personal book. It starts with her joy at showing her young son the Great Barrier Reef, then her anguish at having to tell him that great swaths of it could die from climate change. It conveys her admiration for the young climate campaigners she has met on her activist journey and presents a step-by-step road map for how to get involved in the movement. Kirkus gave it a starred review, concluding that “if you can only get one climate change book for youth, let this be the one.”

A high-octane speaker and thinker who comes up with a new idea every five minutes, Klein, a Canadian who makes her home in British Columbia, answered questions by phone about why she decided to write a kids’ book and what she hopes to accomplish with it. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve written several books for adults. Why a kids’ book, and why now?

I have been part of the climate movement for a long time, first reporting on it, then being swept up in it myself. I noticed a shift in where the energy was coming from—first it was from college students, then suddenly it was from high school and middle school students. I noticed that when I published On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal and partnered with Sunrise [the Sunrise Movement], that some of these kids were in the seventh grade. The older kids could read adult books, but there was a real need for information for middle school and high school students. Young people are really the heart and the soul of the movement.

How do you hope kids will use the book?

I think of my books as ammo for activists—the facts and the figures to really get you on solid ground. We hear about youth climate strikes, with thousands of people on the streets, but mostly in smaller places it’s just a few kids. A lot of kids talk about being bullied and isolated. I wanted to hold them up as heroes, show them that they are not alone even though sometimes they are.

Some of the material you present in the book’s first chapters makes for a hard-hitting indictment of human heedlessness and greed. How do you convey the concept of something like “disaster capitalism” (developers moving in to exploit a disaster in its aftermath) to a 10-year-old? How do you inform them without making them despair?

I’m a mom, and I get it. My son is 8, and I’m constantly navigating that line. But we have to be honest with them about the world they know. A 10-year-old—the only president they’ve ever known is Donald Trump. The parents of Black kids have to introduce terrible concepts to them at a relatively young age. I’m explaining the systems underlying the climate crisis, so it’s not about vilifying the individual. It’s about systems.

In How To Change Everything you write about the need to strengthen young people’s attachment to nature. How do we do that, especially with groups of kids who live in cities and who have been so isolated because of Covid?

Our No. 1 job is to create opportunities for young people to attach themselves to the natural world. One of the things I am most heartened about in Biden’s first weeks in office is the announcement of a Civilian Climate Corps for young people. One of the most exciting precedents we can draw from is the New Deal, when both the Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Youth Administration created jobs for young people. We need to get young people out in nature and give other people access to trails and parks. We need to recover that ambition.

We know that young people have it really bad right now because they miss each other. I’m a big believer in reconnecting with the natural world, but we’ve neglected that infrastructure. We can design programs that will capture carbon and rewild the world and recover habitat for endangered species.

What is your opinion of the Biden administration’s climate change strategy thus far?

I would like to see specifically more for young people. The pandemic has been hard on them. They really need their friends, and they understand the importance of in-person schooling.

When young people see a decision made to have a Super Bowl with 25,000 people but not to create a safe environment for school, it’s a choice. It’s sending a message. I think there are some good signs, [but] we also need to do more with outdoor education. We could make a huge investment in summer camp. We could safely hire tens of thousands of university-age students to run camps for hundreds of thousands of middle school and younger students.

What do you think the long-term effect of Covid will be on climate change strategy?

The best news from the Biden administration is that he’s not throwing climate under the bus because of Covid, which is what’s happened many times in the past. You have attention and focus and political momentum, and then a financial crisis hits, and it’s Scrap all these policies, we’ve got a more urgent crisis to deal with. I’m heartened that the Biden administration is multitasking. We need a recovery plan that’s also a Covid plan that’s also a racial justice plan. We need a Covid response that’s a transformational response.

Why do you think things could be different this time?

The biggest push back I’ve gotten in the past from the expert class about climate change is We just can’t do it. Sure, we need to do it, but we can’t change that much, we don’t know how. Now, having collectively lived through a period of activist government, the experience of Covid and our response to it is the greatest counterargument: We did it [responded quickly to Covid]. Now, let’s do it in a thoughtful way. That’s what a Green New Deal is.

The only reason a Green New Deal is up there at all is the activism of the Sunrise Movement. Young people have already remapped this debate. They have transformed what is possible.

Mary Ann Gwinn is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist in Seattle who writes about books and authors for several publications.