Can I lie to my child?

At the age of twelve, Severn Cullis-Suzuki shocked partakers at the Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992. This video just came to my attention recently, even though it’s been online for over a year or so. (You can read the transcript here.)

Bob Marley’s emblematic “No woman, no cry” comes to mind, especially at the end — “everything’s gonna be all right.” Is it? Cullis-Suzuki wonders out loud if those words still carry, if we can still say that to our children — “it’s not the end of the world,” she goes on. And that was 16 years ago…

Can I lie to my child?