Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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 was 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. 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.
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Chapter 2: How does Alessandra Ram's personal experience shape her views on climate anxiety?
had to do with these long-standing 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 already. 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 die out.
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.
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Chapter 3: What do experts say about the relationship between climate change and family planning?
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.
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.
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.
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