Extreme Weather Brings Fierce Winds, and Gentle Hugs, to Sesame Street

No place is safe from climate change these days. Not even Sesame Street, where sunny days used to sweep the clouds away.

On Monday, a fierce storm tore through the set of the 57-year-old children’s show, knocking over lampposts, blowing out windows and scattering debris around Oscar the Grouch’s trash can.

The fictional cloudburst was part of a special episode, “Storm on Sesame Street,” created to help children make sense of the extreme weather that has become increasingly common across the world as the planet warms.

In the show, viewable on Netflix and PBS Kids, Elmo, Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, Grover and Snuffleupagus prepare for an incoming storm, then assess the damage after the clouds clear.

Left unaddressed in the episode was where all this extreme weather is coming from, and why it’s increasing. There was no mention of climate change, let alone the fossil fuel emissions that are the main driver of global warming.

Rocio Galarza, vice president of U.S. educational programs for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind the show, said the Sesame Street team was well aware of the overwhelming scientific evidence showing that human activity is dangerously warming the planet.

“Definitely, that’s what the science shows,” she said. But the focus of the episode, she said, was on how a child would experience extreme weather.

But the episode also arrives at an uncertain and politically charged moment for PBS, which has been home to Sesame Street since 1969.

Last year, President Trump signed an executive order seeking to eliminate funding for PBS and NPR, which the order cited as “biased media.” Two months later, Congress voted to claw back roughly $500 million in annual funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the organization that distributes federal money to NPR and PBS.

The episode aired as wildfires were raging in the Pacific Northwest, Canada and Europe, and as violent storms and floods have recently battered the Northeast. Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are at a record high, driving up global temperatures.

President Trump has called climate change a hoax and his administration has rolled back a host of environmental regulations, decimated funding for climate science and scrubbed mentions of climate change from government websites, among other moves.

The special has been in the works for more than a year and came in response to the growing number of extreme weather events hitting the United States and other countries around the globe.

The Sesame Street team was struck by the fact that children born in 2020 will experience up to seven times more extreme weather than children born in 1960.

“We know that this topic is something that families are thinking about,” Ms. Galarza said. “What we wanted to do was look at what are the strategies that could actually be used in a variety of situations.”

In the episode, as the storm bears down on Sesame Street, Elmo helps his father distribute food and water to neighbors, Snuffleupagus preaches the virtues of hugs, and Bert and Ernie offer shelter to a menagerie of barnyard animals. After the storm, Elmo and the gang survey the wreckage and plan recovery efforts.

“The idea is that Elmo is helpful, that Elmo is brave and courageous, and that it’s OK to be scared sometimes,” Ms. Galarza said.

At the end of the episode, the recording artist Post Malone appears and sings “we can go through something hard, but I know we’ll make it through ‘cause you will always be there for me and I’ll be there for you.”

The intention, Ms. Galarza said, was to help children understand the values of preparedness and rebuilding, and to explore some of the questions they might have.

“What do we do now? Can I, as a 3, 4, 5-year old, be part of the rebuilding process?” she said. “Children do have those questions.”

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Harriet Shugarman, director of ClimateMama, a nonprofit organization aimed at helping parents communicate with children about climate change, said not addressing climate change directly was an appropriate choice by the episode’s creators.

“We don’t have to name it for children that young,” she said. “There are children all over the U.S. right now who are experiencing flooding and fires and storms, and that show shows them that they can be empowered, and that it’s OK to feel fear and express that, too.”

This isn’t the first time that Sesame Street, which airs in 190 countries, has addressed big storms.

In 2001, the show aired an episode in which Big Bird’s nest gets destroyed by a hurricane and the community comes together to rebuild it. Ms. Galarza said that episode remained in high demand, with local stations asking for it after disasters including Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Sandy in 2012.

Other programs for young viewers have directly taken on climate change. “Octonauts: Above and Beyond,” a spinoff of a BBC program, explicitly dealt with global warming. And some shows aimed at older children, including “Molly of Denali,” also produced by PBS, have focused on issues like the thawing of permafrost.

Still, a 2022 report from the Aspen Institute found that just 1.4 percent of more than 660 episodes of children’s programming the organization reviewed included content about climate change.

Sesame Street has addressed other weighty subjects, including death, addiction, racism and incarceration. And that’s made it an occasional target of conservatives.

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, assailed the show in 2021 for promoting the Covid-19 vaccine. Last year, Representative Mary Miller, Republican of Illinois, was angered that the show celebrated Pride month, prompting her to write on X that “PBS is shamelessly grooming our children while collecting taxpayer dollars. This is evil and should infuriate every parent in America. DEFUND!!”

When the funding cuts were announced last year, Sesame Street posted a statement on X.

“For more than 50 years, Sesame Workshop has been proud to partner with PBS to bring learning and joy to children across America,” it read, alongside an image of Big Bird and Snuffleupagus. “Generations of children have benefited from the public investment that has enabled PBS to do such important work, and the need remains.”

Ms. Galarza said Sesame Workshop had some funding that had been previously allocated, but was facing an “anticipated shortfall.”

Sesame Workshop also lost substantial funding it had been receiving from the United States Agency for International Development, leading it to close its offices in Bangladesh and Iraq.

In addition to this week’s episode, the Sesame Street team developed work sheets for children on what to do in a tornado, blackout or fire, as well as guides for parents.

The organization also secured grants from Ford Motor Company and Amazon to assemble and distribute thousands of kid-friendly “go bags” that include backpacks, blankets, toothbrushes and stuffed animals.

Ms. Galarza said she hoped the episode and the go bags would help children understand that at the end of the day, everyone was dealing with climate change together.

The Sesame Street storm special succeeded in making a frightening topic less daunting, Ms. Shugarman said.

“They’re giving parents ways to help through these really scary moments, and show that there are ways that kids, through hugs and songs, can manage through these disasters,” she said.

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