While they lack the experiences and depth of knowledge to understand complex issues fully, teens and even preteens can see problems with a clarity that escapes adults.

If you’re 18 or older you can’t help viewing the world through a political lens, distorting the reality of problems and solutions alike.

That’s why kids have taken the lead in recent weeks in the climate change discussion. Worldwide, young people rallied in September to demand action from government leaders across the globe. These child activists see clearly that global warming is creating a host of problems for humans and making the world increasingly inhospitable to most living things. The arctic ice caps are melting, temperatures are rising and catastrophic storms are striking more often.

But many government leaders, particularly in the United States, deny the world is getting warmer or claim that rising temperatures are not caused by emissions from carbon-based energy sources and other destructive human activity.

These leaders are motivated by the interests of big oil and lobbies for other industries that rake in billions of dollars in profits from polluting energy sources.

Independent scientific inquiry tells us these subjective deniers of global warming are flat-out wrong.

We have the tools at our disposal to slow and ultimately stop climate change. Energy generated by clean technology is a reality of today, not a futuristic projection.

Children, of course, have a special stake in the issue. The future of Earth is their future.

The United States should re-take the lead in assuring that the future of our children and the planet they’re inheriting is bright, not bleak.