Gen Z and younger millennials are the most climate literate generations the world has ever seen. They learned about climate change in school; now, it's part of how they plan for the future, including for jobs, housing ... and kids.So, what do experts say about how to navigate the kid question? In this installment of Nature Quest, Short Wave speaks to climate journalist Alessandra Ram about the future she sees for her newborn daughter. Plus, how do we raise the next generation in a way that's good for the planet? Resources discussed in this episode include:Jade Sasser's book, Climate Anxiety and the Kid QuestionKimberly Nicholas's High Impact Climate Action GuideElizabeth Bechard's book, Parenting in a Changing ClimateThe Climate Mental Health Network's Climate Emotions WheelGot a question about changes in your local environment? Send a voice memo to [email protected] with your name, where you live and your question. You might make it into our next Nature Quest episode!Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the kid question in the context of climate change?
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You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey everyone, Emily Kwong here, and welcome back to Nature Quest, our monthly segment that brings you a question from a fellow short waver who's paying attention to the environment and how our choices shape the world.
I used to travel around the world with Al Jazeera as a documentary producer. Alessandra Rahm is a journalist. 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.
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.
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.
And more recently, Alessandra has had other reasons to be thinking about the future. Because a couple weeks ago, she and her partner had a kid.
It's 8 a.m. We woke up how many times last night? Three. Three. Good. 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.
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Chapter 2: How has Alessandra Ram's perspective changed since becoming a parent?
Zara, wake up.
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-wavers carry this worry too.
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.
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 Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
Chapter 3: What are the emotional challenges of raising kids in a warming world?
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So joining me in the studio for this Nature Quest is producer Hannah Chin, my fellow Nature Quest co-creator.
Hey, Emily. And today we're going to talk about what some people consider the third rail of climate change, the kids question. True. True. True. True. True. I mean, the majority of Gen Zers report that they're worried or anxious about climate change, period.
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Chapter 4: What do experts say about the environmental impact of having children?
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. It's called The Climate Mitigation Gap.
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.
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. 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.
That's because in the long run, having a kid produces a lot of emissions.
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.
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 is had to do with these longstanding debates about population and the environment.
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.
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Chapter 5: How does population growth relate to climate change?
Chapter 6: What actions can individuals take to mitigate climate change?
But science tells us that is not what is driving global climate change.
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.
Science tells us the issue is how we live, not that we live.
The math doesn't pencil out if you say, OK, well, I'm someone who doesn't want to have a child. That means I get 50 flights a year.
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.
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.
Yeah. And Jade understands that, too. She is really sympathetic to the emotions that climate change elicits.
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.
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.
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Chapter 7: Why is the conversation around kids and climate so controversial?
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. Right.
We do know that birth rates in the U.S. 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, etc., etc., etc. 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 or don't have kids.
So if you're struggling with this decision, here's what Kimberly has to say.
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. 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.
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 a year. Those people are part of the top 10% richest people on Earth.
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Chapter 8: What is the role of societal beliefs in the climate-kid discussion?
And we have a lot of power in this situation. 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.
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.
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.
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.
So researchers say, if you're hearing all this and you're upset, join the fight.
I think the first thing that I would want to say to parents is just, I see how hard you are working.
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 and you know i remember thinking my kids they'll be 14 in 12 years that's not even the full length of their childhood so now elizabeth works for a group called mom's 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
You need community. We all need community. None of us were meant to carry this alone. So if you have a tiny baby and all you can do is sign up for the email list of a parent climate group, that is a place to start.
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