Nature Quest: The Climate-Kid Question
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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.

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. 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.

Thank you.

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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. And to be clear, this decision is not just limited to parents. 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. It's something that a lot of folks...

But especially younger folks are thinking about, right, Hannah? 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. 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 that's a lot of food.

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 the 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 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. 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. 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

To be clear, this is not the argument that Kimberly 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. 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 now.

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. 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? 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, 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. 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. But if you feel like your time on earth is going to be

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 the people who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are most likely to be the ones who

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. 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,

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 Bayshard 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 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. 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, you're

parent climate group, that is a place to start. 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. Yeah. 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. She

They see her pain and they see her taking action on it. 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. 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.

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.

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 NatureQuest 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 Shortwave from NPR.

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