Tom’s parents were packing to evacuate from bushfires in regional Victoria five years ago when they realised they couldn’t find Tom, who was only 2½.

After a frantic search, they found him at the bottom of the driveway. He was wearing just a nappy, his sandals and bike helmet and was poised over his balance bike, backpack at the ready.

He had loaded it up with what a two-year-old thinks of as life’s essentials: His favourite toys, and his nappy cream.

Tom was so frightened that he had got himself ready to escape. Bush kids learn early about the power of Australia’s climate.

And our kids, even our small kids, are noticing that the climate is changing. Bush kids, closer to the environment, are peppering grownups with questions about what hotter summers are doing to the plants around them; about why parents at a local ski centre are losing their jobs due to less snow.

Research tells us that 89 per cent of Australian kids aged 12 and 13 say climate change is probably or definitely something we should worry about; 38 per cent of Aussie teenagers have moderate, increasing or persistent worry about climate change.

We often hear questions about the climate from our own children too.

As parents, we looked around for engaging, up-to-date, age-appropriate climate explainers that would answer children’s questions. But we realised there was a gap.

So we created Climate Kids, a YouTube video series where we answer questions that come directly from primary school-aged children. We have just launched the first season, with five episodes answering kids’ real questions about climate change.

The questions cover the gamut of issues that make up the climate crisis.

Children asked us why snow and ice are melting, why we are still digging up fossil fuels, what technology can do, what’s going to happen to people on islands that sink beneath the sea, and the biggest question of all – what are we doing about it?

Climate Kids is warm and fun, with animated dinosaurs, and even a bit of time travel. The episodes are all fact-checked by University of Melbourne experts too (except the bit about time travel, we definitely made that up).

The time travel is mostly done by climate scientist Dr Linden Ashcroft — wearing a boiler suit for safety — so she can report back from a future where we have solved the worst of the climate crisis.

We used this narrative device to alleviate kids’ climate anxiety by showing just how solvable this crisis is. We also include concrete actions kids can take to do something about the climate crisis.

Research shows that taking action, particularly in nature, is the best way to combat climate anxiety, and that when kids demand climate action, their parents listen to them (much more than climate experts like us).

The kids asking the questions in season one are mainly from the bush, and their questions reflect what they are seeing around them. In episode five, ‘Snow and ice’, for example, kids from the Victorian Alps ask why they are seeing so little snow in the middle of winter.

In the regional area where he still lives, Tom knows many firefighters, including people who have just got back from helping to fight Canadian forest fires.

Tom asked us, “Why can’t we stop fossil fuel companies digging up coal, oil and gas?”. In episode three we answer him, via a detour to the time of Queen Elizabeth I.

We hope these videos will be watched by parents, too, because we know from our own experience that adults will watch kids’ shows (Bluey, we are looking at you).

We also know many adults are feeling ill-equipped to take climate action, and how vital action is.

A positive climate future, like the one these videos imagine, is possible. But achieving it needs governments and businesses to act fast and hard to avert catastrophe.

Don’t our kids deserve this?

Climate Kids videos are hosted on YouTube and are open source, free to be used by media or teachers. Also find updates on YouTube and Instagram

Dr Lily O’Neill is a legal researcher with Melbourne Climate Futures at Melbourne Law School and is co-host of Climate Kids. Dr Linden Ashcroft is a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne and the series’ other co-host