Living with the reality of the climate crisis is hard. Doing so while contemplating having kids … can be even harder. So we asked climate experts: what advice do they have to offer? Eriko Koga/Getty Images
Living with the reality of the climate crisis is hard. Doing so while contemplating having kids … can be even harder. So we asked climate experts: what advice do they have to offer?
Eriko Koga/Getty ImagesThis is the first episode of Nature Quest, a monthly Short Wave segment that answers listener questions about your local environment. Every month, we’ll be bringing you a question from a fellow listener who is curious about how nature is changing – how to pay attention to the land around us – and make every day Earth Day.
Alessandra Ram is a journalist. She covers the climate crisis, and its impacts on everyday people. And she just had a kid.
Gen Z and younger millennials are the most climate literate generations the world has ever seen. As an age group who 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 next installment of Nature Quest, Short Wave speaks to Alessandra about the future she sees for her newborn daughter. 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 by Kimberly A. Nicholas
- The Climate Mental Health Network and Climate Emotions Wheel
- The Climate Café® Hub – for finding a local group
Books and Research Papers
- Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future, by Jade S. Sasser
- Parenting in a Changing Climate: Tools for cultivating resilience, taking action, and practicing hope in the face of climate change, by Elizabeth Bechard
- Under the Sky We Make: How to Be Human in a Warming World, by Kimberly A. Nicholas
- The role of high-socioeconomic-status people in locking in or rapidly reducing energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions, Nielsen, K.S., Nicholas, K.A., Creutzig, F. et al.
Got a question about changes in your local environment? Send a voice memo to shortwave@npr.org with your name, where you live and your question. You might make it into our next Nature Quest episode!
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Special thanks to Sam Paulson for writing our Nature Quest theme music.
This episode was produced by Hannah Chinn and Rachel Carlson. It was edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer.