Hello,
I have two young kids and lately, I am having a lot of anxiety and sadness thinking about how the current climate crisis will affect them.
I also have regrets because I decided to have children while knowing about the climate crisis. At the time, I was optimistic, but no so much anymore.
It has been hitting me hard the last few days. How do you cope/deal with this as a parent?
Thanks
The biggest winnable fight right now is habitat protection and restoration. Visit natural places with them, show them how to protect those spaces, and plant native plants in your area to help the local ecosystem. Learn about the flora and fauna native to your area and teach your children to recognize and care for them.
Habitat destruction could destroy our biosphere well before climate change, but healthy ecosystems will better withstand CC.
It doesnt solve everything, but it helps.
I try to teach them to be curious but careful with nature. They are still young, but my oldest starts to pick up a lot of things, so this is a new subject that I can start to talk about with her.
We live in a city, so nature preservation is harder to teach, but we could definitely do better to help insects and flora with our little space of backyard. And it is a fun activity.
A backyard is the perfect place to start building a connection with your ecosystem. Your kids are lucky to have that access, and lucky to have you to show it to them
Not a parent but perhaps teach them resiliency and sustainability. Teach them how to adapt and survive. Climate control, energy storage, hydroponics, water filtration, etc.
Control what you can. Let go of the rest.
Letting go is the hard part. When I am feeling good, it is a lot easier. But my mental health has been rough lately.
Fair. I’ve always been able to compartmentalize well, but my brain is pudding.
Cope? I don’t really. Kid has already been alive for a long while now and there’s not much I can do about it so I’ll just hope for the best (however far fetched that is). But believe me that existential dread is there.
I still feel optimism, but right now it is drowned by my eco-anxiety and regrets.
It feels exactly the same as when intrusive thoughts about what if one of my child has a serious illness or injury. We can only do so much and hope for the best.
But the feeling is really hard to shake off.
I’ve wrestled with this a lot. I had my first kid before I woke up, and my second after (unplanned).
All I can say is, try to raise the people the future needs. My oldest is already on her way to being a great human with a good compass and a big heart. My youngest, a boy, is gonna wash the goddamn dishes. They both will have a critical mind and my library to help.
Civilization is collapsing but the apocalypse isn’t that imminent. Life will go on, for most of us, one way or another. We should make sure its not full of characters from Idiocracy.
I am trying to make my kids happy to the best of my abilities, and hopefully, in time, they will be as curious as I am.
I should definitely think about teaching self reliance when they get older.
It’s hard. I am enmeshed in modernity fairly thoroughly but I am trying to do better. I have an EV heat pump and all electric house, I try to find others that are also aware of how bad things are likely to get in future, I am doing National Tree Day every year and also growing veges and fruits and herbs at home, and I am trying to limit exposure to and use of plastics (but that is so damn hard unless plastics become illegal…)
Being aware and using that awareness to try and change behaviour is a big focus. But also, don’t be too hard on yourself. We were born into this mess too, we didn’t create it in one generation, and it is likely to be a slower decline from a human perspective rather than instantaneous, though on geological scale it’s basically a blink of an eye. I was super scared of global warming and nuclear war as a kid, and while risks of both have increased I’m still alive and even with a choice to reduce use of certain things, I think I still have a great life, and my daughter has so far too.
Agree with this. It’s hard but just do what you can. If fortunate enough, an EV, and a heat pump. Solar and or a battery. Apart from helping the environment (and I feel better about my excessive power use when it’s mostly from solar), it’s something physical to show the kids and talk about.
For nature, as kudra says, plant some veggies and herbs. Even in a city you can grow a lot in a small space, or balcony. With kids maintaining a veg plot is hard, but go simple and easy. Potatoes require very little maintenance, can be grown in sacks, and the kids get to dig them out the ground. Not a great time of year though, but you have time to plant some herbs or even grow some lettuce and other salad. Gives plenty of opportunities to discuss it all with kids, while hopefully helping your own mind as well.
Just do what things you can, whether that’s growing a lettuce, or installing solar panels or replacing the car. Any action helps, even if it’s just to help your own piece of mind.
I often work on my control influence with my therapist and what you wrote really hit home.
Deep down, the crux is the issue is control: I can’t control everything, so I must focus on things that I can control. Taking local actions is something I can do to make me feel better and make the life of people around me slightly better. I should take solace in that to make me more optimist.
On the regret thing, we don’t know what the future will hold for individuals or collectively. Yes, things aren’t looking good overall. But what if your kids make massive positive changes to the world as they grow up? (And from what you’ve said they are heading in a good direction for this.)
I totally understand how some people feel they are improving the world by not having kids. There’s a lot of merit to this choice, and I respect that decision. But likewise, a next generation is arguably still needed. And when raised with the right guidance and attitude they can be transformative and help reverse or at least negate some if the bad past generations have done to the world.
Thanks for the response, I am in a better mood today and your response gave me some good feelings.
You’ve been reading the news too, huh?
I wish I knew. I spent the first 30ish years of my life opting out of GHG-producing systems, and trying to get the right people elected. I stopped when I had kids because it was too hard. I dunno. I don’t feel like my advocacy or self-denial helped. And my normie lifestyle definitely isn’t helping.
I really don’t know. Climate change is clearly happening, but nobody seems to care. Back to advocacy, I guess?
Yeah lots of news lately and my eco-anxiety is part just-anxiety from the news.
It is hard because the choice I make don’t seem to make a difference when I look at everyone around me not really giving a shit. I am not perfect by aby means, but I really worked hard to reduce my footprint and still put effort daily to reduce it more.
when I look at everyone around me not really giving a shit. … I really worked hard to reduce my footprint
For years I did this. Didn’t drive. Rarely flew. Mostly vegetarian. Bought mostly second hand stuff. It was a lot of work. It had no appreciable effect on climate change, and made my life harder.
I think the place to concentrate effort is on policy change. Acid rain wasn’t solved (in North America) by buying patterns, it was solved through legislation. CFCs were phased out through lobbying.
There’s definitely a time and place for personal action, but there are so many people that appreciable changes will only come through changing regulations.
By not having more kids.
And by making sure you try to set your kids up to survive in our dying world.
I had my vasectomy, so no more kids.
I’m thinking, they will still almost certainly have a better life than 99,999% of humans who ever lived. I worried about it more, but after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and after I lost my job for a while, my brain decided ecology is not really that important anymore.
Compared to great filter events, climate change doesn’t even register. Estimates are of a rise of 2-4 degrees centigrade by 2100. (https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/climatechange/science#%3A~%3Atext=Global+temperature+is+projected+to%2C7.2+degrees+Fahrenheit\\)%20by%202100) This will likely result in an increase of arable land. Global mean sea-level rise is expected to be between 0.30 and 0.65 m by 2100, which might affect some Dutch towns during storms but is negligible. As the number of storms are estimated to decrease, the threat vector is slightly increasing storm intensity. Humans can handle storms. We can rebuild homes, change where we settle and live, build with better materials and practises, and improve storm infrastructure and protections. In fact, as the temperature rises slightly, fewer people will die due to temperature extremes. This is because at present, many more people die due to exposure to low temperatures than high temperatures. Approximately 600,000 people die each year from extreme heat, while 4.5 million die from extreme cold.
The global fertility rate is plummeting. If we didn’t have kids, the human race would end. Surely that would be a far worse outcome than the effect humans have on the environment. After all, isn’t the very reason we seek to minimise our environmental footprint in service to other humans in future generations?
If you look at rising heat and cold deaths every year as acceptable then you shouldn’t be having children.
Could you quote the part where I wrote that death is acceptable? I keep re-reading my comment and for the life of me I cannot find it. I’m sure it’s there though because I trust you wouldn’t lie about what I wrote just to make a point. Right?
