Climate Anxiety Is Altering Family Planning

Gen Z and younger millennials are generally the most climate literate generations. As an age cohort that started learning about climate change in school, they're worried about how to plan for their future jobs, houses and, yes, kids. With climate-related disasters and global warming likely to worsen, climate anxiety is giving way to reproductive anxiety. So, what do experts say about how to navigate the kid question? On this encore episode of Nature Quest, Short Wave speaks to Alessandra Ram https://www.alessandraram.com/, a journalist covering climate https://www.goodluckmedia.co/change, who just had a kid. We get into the future she sees for her newborn daughter and ask, how do we raise the next generation in a way that's good for the planet? Here are the resources recommended by the experts we interviewed for this story: Action Tools and Community Resources The High-Impact Climate Action Guide https://jointheshift.earth/guide/ by Kimberly A. NicholasThe Climate Mental Health Network https://www.climatementalhealth.net/ and Climate Emotions Wheel https://www.climatementalhealth.net/wheelThe Climate Café® Hub https://www.climate.cafe/- for finding a local groupBooks and Research Papers Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future https://www.ucpress.edu/books/climate-anxiety-and-the-kid-question/paper, by Jade S. SasserParenting in a Changing Climate: Tools for cultivating resilience, taking action, and practicing hope in the face of climate change https://bookshop.org/p/books/parenting-in-a-changing-climate-tools-for-cultivating-resilience-taking-action-and-practicing-hope-in-the-face-of-climate-change-elizabeth-bechard/17505251, by Elizabeth BechardUnder the Sky We Make: How to Be Human in a Warming World https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/665274/under-the-sky-we-make-by-kimberly-nicholas-phd/, by Kimberly A. NicholasThe role of high-socioeconomic-status people in locking in or rapidly reducing energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-021-00900-y, Nielsen, K. S., Nicholas, K. A., Creutzig, F. et al. Got a question about changes in your local environment? Send a voice memo to [email protected] mailto:[email protected] with your name, where you live and your question. You might make it into our next Nature Quest episode! Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/podcast.

• 0:15Emily Kwong?

  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 0:27Emily Kwong?

  Hey, everyone. Emily Kwong here, and welcome back to Nature Quest, our monthly segment that brings you a question from a fellow shortwaver who's paying attention to the environment and how our choices shape the world.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  I used to travel around the world with Al Jazeera as a documentary producer.

• 0:44Emily Kwong?

  Alessandra Rom is a journalist.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  And a lot of those stories, even if they didn't start out focusing on climate, there were climate narratives there because so many stories are climate stories.

• 0:56Emily Kwong?

  The stories Alessandra covered at the time were unfolding in other countries, in Thailand and in Canada. But over time, she watched these climate narratives get closer to where she's from: Puerto Rico, Flint, Michigan, and eventually to her home state of California.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  A house I was living in, we had to evacuate because of a wildfire threat. But now that's kind of a threat that everyone around here lives with.

• 1:22Emily Kwong?

  And more recently, Alessandra has had other reasons to be thinking about the future. Because a couple of weeks ago, she and her partner had a kid.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  It's 8:00 a.m. We woke up, how many times last night?

• 1:40Speaker 00

  Three.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Three. You know, everything has changed in the last two weeks for me. I can only think in like, two and a half to three hour increments for when I'm feeding her or when I'm trying to get sleep, which is not often. So life becomes very moment by moment. Sorry, wake up.

• 2:02Emily Kwong?

  Alessandra has always wanted to be a parent. But as a climate journalist, she worries about the future her daughter will have on a warming planet. And we know a lot of you short waivers carry this worry, too.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  I mean, the world doesn't feel like it's in a great place, I'll admit, in addition to the climate crisis. So you're just aware that you might have more work to do to set your kid up to be in a place where they can thrive.

• 2:28Emily Kwong?

  So today's quest, kids. Having and raising a kid can feel like such a fraught decision these days. So what do experts have to say about it? And for people who do have and care for kids, how do you raise them in a way that's good for them and for the planet? You're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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• 4:13Emily Kwong?

  So joining me in the studio for this nature quest is producer Hannah Chin, my fellow nature quest co-creator.

• 4:18Speaker 05

  Hey Emily. And today, we're going to talk about what some people consider the third rail of climate change, the kid's question. And to be clear, this decision is not just limited to parents.

• 4:29Emily Kwong?

  True.

• 4:29Speaker 05

  It can include aunties and uncles and grandparents and other caregivers. So if you're thinking about making a kid a part of your community, this is for you.

• 4:38Emily Kwong?

  It's something that a lot of folks, but especially younger folks are thinking about. Right Hannah?

• 4:43Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, the majority of Gen Zers report that they're worried or anxious about climate change, period. And more broadly, a Pew Research survey last year found that of folks under 50 who don't plan to have kids, more than a quarter of them say concerns about the environment and climate change are a major factor in that. And I really wanted to figure out, where is this concern coming from? Like, who or what told us that having kids was a major contributor to climate change? So I started reporting on this back when I was working on the Gimlet podcast, How to Save a Planet. And I found a bunch of recent articles, like in the past five or so years, that all cited the exact same paper. It was published in 2017 in the academic journal Environmental Research Letters.

• 5:28Speaker 05

  It's called "The Climate Mitigation Gap."

• 5:31Emily Kwong?

  I have read this paper and the actions, the climate actions are pretty clear. They're things like, go car free, eat a plant-based diet, and reduce flying as much as possible. So if you are a high emitter, about half of your carbon footprint comes from transportation.

• 5:48Speaker 06

  One round trip flight emits 1.6 tons, and that's equivalent to two years of eating meat. So for a high flyer, someone who frequently flies, by far, the biggest action you can do is reduce your flying. You'd have to be a vegetarian for 25 years to equal out the flying of one year. So it really adds up.

• 6:07Speaker 05

  This is Kimberly Nicholas. She was a co-author of this paper. She's a professor of sustainability science at Lund University in Sweden. And she told me that when she and her colleagues published this paper, the press coverage really focused on the fourth individual action, have one less child.

• 6:24Speaker 06

  That's because in the long run, having a kid produces a lot of emissions.

• 6:30Speaker 05

  Specifically, an average of 58.6 metric tons of CO2 a year if you're in an industrialized country. That's an equivalent of 7.9 homes' energy use for one year. And this kicked up a lot of debate because people already have very strong feelings about children and reproductive choice.

• 6:48Emily Kwong?

  Yes. And while this paper was focused on the individual decision of whether or not to have a child, I think that part of the public's reaction to this work had to do with these longstanding debates about population and the environment.

• 7:01Speaker 07

  The consensus among environmentalists for a long time has been that population growth is bad for the environment because it means that more human beings on the planet will consume more resources and there will be less available for all of us and that we will all suffer as a result. And it has been proven wrong by scientists over and over again.

• 7:23Emily Kwong?

  This is Jade Sasser, an associate professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies and Society, Environment and Health Equity at UC Riverside. And she traced this idea all the way back to the 1800s and a British economist named Thomas Robert Malthus, who was writing against British laws that offered food aid to the poor.

• 7:42Speaker 07

  He said the poor had too many children. And if the government supported them with food, they would never stop having too many children. So his argument was to let them starve and die out.

• 7:54Emily Kwong?

  To be clear, this is not the argument that Kimberley and her colleague were making, but it is important to think about how this broader dialogue about population and the environment has a checkered past. And in reality, population growth, particularly when it comes to consumption, definitely has local impacts on local resources. But science tells us that is not what is driving global climate change.

• 8:19Speaker 05

  Right. What is driving global climate change is fossil fuel use. Human development overall is definitely part of that, but it has more to do with energy companies and governments and how we set up our infrastructure.

• 8:31Emily Kwong?

  Science tells us the issue is how we live, not that we live.

• 8:35Speaker 06

  The math doesn't pencil out if you say, "Okay, well, I'm someone who doesn't want to have a child. That means I get 50 flights a year."

• 8:42Emily Kwong?

  So Kimberly Nicholas, the scientist in Sweden, talks really differently about the kid question now. Now she focuses on the actions we should take to eliminate emissions today.

• 8:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, as someone who does want to co-parent a kid someday, that's the journey I'm interested in. Like, I think reproductive autonomy is really important. And I'm still worried about the climate impacts of my individual actions, including things like flying and driving and maybe having a kid.

• 9:10Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, and Jade understands that, too. She is really sympathetic to the emotions that climate change elicits.

• 9:18Speaker 07

  It is, in fact, according to environmental psychologists, quite normal to feel deeply anxious about these changes in our environment. There's nothing wrong with the feeling of climate anxiety or being reproductively anxious in response.

• 9:34Emily Kwong?

  This is a whole field of research now. Climate anxiety, sometimes called climate distress, it's defined as the psychological distress that individuals experience due to climate change and its impacts. And this growing body of research is showing that, yes, climate change is harming people's mental health and affecting their life choices. These are not flimsy feelings.

• 9:54Speaker 05

  I think it helps to hear that because I don't even know what my future is going to look like, right? So how could I bring another new human being into that?

• 10:02Emily Kwong?

  Absolutely. It's a concern especially among our generation, among Gen Z and younger millennials. Jade took this topic so seriously, she wrote an entire book about it called Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question. And she told me that we don't know yet if people's climate reproductive concerns or hesitancy is driving large-scale demographic changes.

• 10:20Speaker 05

  Right. We do know that birth rates in the US are down, but it kind of seems like that's due to a variety of factors, right? The cost of living crisis, job and housing insecurity, a lack of social safety nets, et cetera, et cetera. So we can't attribute it solely to climate change. Maybe we'll know in 10 years, once more Gen Z and young millennials have kids.

• 10:39Emily Kwong?

  Or don't have kids. So if you're struggling with this decision, here's what Kimberly has to say.

• 10:45Speaker 06

  For people who don't want a child, who don't see themselves as a parent, I think that's a really valid choice and something that needs to be accepted and supported. But if you feel like your time on Earth is going to be... Missing something essential and have a big hole in your heart if you don't have a child, then I think you should absolutely go for it. And that gives you more energy and incentive to fight for and work for a better future and do these high-impact climate actions that will help us get there.

• 11:14Speaker 05

  In fact, Kimberly says the people best positioned to do those high-impact climate actions aren't just politicians and energy CEOs. They're also anyone who makes a little over $42,000 US dollars a year. Those people are part of the top 10% richest people on earth. And we have a lot of power in this situation.

• 11:33Speaker 06

  If you are lucky enough to live in a democracy, then you have citizen actions available to you, which most of the world does not.

• 11:38Speaker 05

  To figure out what actions you can take, Kimberly has created a High Impact Climate Action Guide, based on a study that she and researcher Christian Nielsen published in the journal Nature in 2021. It's kind of a choose-your-own-adventure that you can fill out online.

• 11:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, we'll link to this guide in the episode notes. And when I was working through this guide, I was struck by how many of these actions were things that we do collectively, like encouraging your loved ones to take their money out of banks that use fossil fuels, or working with your union to change industry standards. Here's Jade again.

• 12:12Speaker 07

  I think it's really important to reframe that narrative and understand this is a large-scale, social, political, and structural problem. And when we take these on as personal problems or individual problems that we suffer with in silence, it actually lets our leaders off the hook, and they should be on the hook.

• 12:36Speaker 05

  So researchers say, if you're hearing all this and you're upset, join the fight.

• 12:40Speaker 08

  I think the first thing that I would want to say to parents is just, I see how hard you are working.

• 12:49Speaker 05

  Elizabeth Bechard got involved back in 2018. That was the year Hurricane Florence devastated coastal North Carolina, where she grew up. And the IPCC came out with a report saying, "We have 12 years left to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius and limit climate catastrophe."

• 13:06Speaker 08

  And I remember thinking, my kids... They'll be 14 in 12 years. That's not even the full length of their childhood.

• 13:13Emily Kwong?

  So now, Elizabeth works for a group called Moms Clean Air Force that mobilizes parents and caregivers. She's also written a book called Parenting in a Changing Climate, in which she tells parents to find support around this issue.

• 13:28Speaker 08

  You need community. We all need community. None of us were meant to carry this alone. So if you, you know, have a tiny baby and all you can do is sign up for the email list of Parent Climate Group, that is a place to start.

• 13:40Emily Kwong?

  Another place to start is with feelings. Jade recommended this tool called the Climate Emotions Wheel to help kids process how they feel, but more importantly, help parents talk about how they're feeling.

• 13:52Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 13:53Emily Kwong?

  Research shows that one of the barriers for parents even talking about climate change with their kids is their own unprocessed emotions. So Elizabeth shares those emotions with her twins. They see her pain and they see her taking action on it.

• 14:08Speaker 08

  They're also aware that there are a lot of adults, including their mom, who are working on it and who are not giving up and who are fighting every day for their future.

• 14:16Emily Kwong?

  And Emily, that's the last thing that really stuck with me, that caring for a child can also be a hopeful thing to do. It can connect us to each other. It can help us act because the future isn't set in stone. And that's true whether we have kids in our lives or not.

• 14:36Emily Kwong?

  We've linked all the resources we mentioned in our episode notes, along with books written by our guests for whatever role kids and climate might play in your life. And just as a reminder, Nature Quest is our new monthly series. It is built around you and on the changes you're noticing in the world around you. So send us a voice memo with your name, where you live, and your question, and we might make it into a whole episode.

• 15:00Emily Kwong?

  This episode was produced by Hannah Chin and Rachel Carlson. It was edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez, and fact-checked by Tyler Jones. Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer. Special thanks to Sam Paulson for writing the Nature Quest theme music. Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Emily Kwong. And I'm Hannah Chin. Thank you for listening to Short Wave from NPR.