ggled with the ethics of bringing a child into the world.

Today's guest documents that question now as families struggle with the reality of climate change.

She's Dr. Jade Sasser this week on Story in the Public Square.

(light music) (light music) (light music fades) Hello and welcome to Story in the Public Square where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- And our guest this week is Jade Sasser.

An academic and scholar of climate and reproductive politics, her new book is "Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question".

It dives deep into the issues confronting families navigating the ethical dilemmas associated with having a child now.

Jade, thank you so much for being with us.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- You know, there's a lot that we wanna talk to you about here, but I think I wanna start maybe with just a brief overview, if you would, of the book itself.

- So this book is a research-based account of how young people are feeling about climate change today.

When I say young people, I mean Generation Z and younger millennials, people in their reproductive years.

There is a really growing, rapidly growing base of evidence that shows that young people are feeling very anxious, depressed, worried, scared, concerned, a lot of different emotions, and that those emotions are beginning to impact how they feel about having children.

And so that's what this book does.

It's a deep dive into some of the research on that, both through surveys, through lots of interviews, and through reviewing three activist movements that are looking at that set of concerns.

- So we're gonna get into a lot of that in the next half hour.

Question for you though, as I was reading the book, and as I was thinking about this, I'm old enough to remember people in the Cold War saying, not gonna bring children into a world where there are so many nuclear weapons.

I can remember after 9/11 people questioning whether or not it was a good idea to bring kids into the world in the aftermath of those terrorist attacks.

Has that always been an anxiety part of the modern thing?

And if it is, how is this particular anxiety and this questioning different than those previous examples?

- So people throughout history have questioned whether it was a good idea to bring children into the world given rough social conditions and those social conditions have changed over time.

But it's never been actually a perfect time to have kids and that has always been a concern for different groups.

But to your question of why this moment is different, climate change is radically different from other environmental problems that we've experienced in the past.

Climate change is something that happens over a long time scale.

And so what young people today who are the most climate literate generation we've ever had, they are looking at the climate science, they're looking at the forecasts, they're looking at reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC, and they're looking at the long-term trends and they're saying it's not just about what's happening in this present moment, but it's about certain impacts that are baked into the atmosphere for a long time, for decades.

So we know that we're going to continue to have heat waves, storms, increased floods, hurricanes, wildfires, these are not temporary effects.

And that all of these things really kind of disrupt our ability to live life on Earth in a stable way.

That's different from some of the more sort of temporary challenges of 9/11 or even the Cold War, which was an extended period of time.

But it wasn't something that was baked into what we knew the Earth was going to experience for decades to come.

That's a big difference.

- So one of the surprising findings, and I think it was a surprise to you as well, is that in some circles among some people, there is pressure not to have children.

which is I think a new development, at least from my experience, that was not the case, you know, back when I was having my family.

But talk about that.

And that did surprise you, did it not?

- It did very much so.

I consider myself to be a young Gen X'er.

I was born in the late 70s.

And what I found with people who I spoke to from Generation Z who are in their late teens through mid twenties, was that there's actually quite a bit of peer pressure to not have children.

What some people who I interviewed said was that when they told their friends that they want families, that friends said, "Ew, why would you want to do that?"

And I was not expecting that when I began the research for this book.

What I was expecting was that young people would say I want a family, but I'm worried about climate change.

I'm worried about the state of the planet and what's to come.

And I'm looking for ways to feel good about having the family that I want.

I was not expecting young people to say that there is growing and rather intense pressure from friends to not have children, but that is not universal.

That kind of peer pressure is strongest I found among the most environmentally aware young people, those who are taking environmental studies classes, those who are reading the climate science, and also those who are just generally more concerned about the state of our society here in the United States and asking questions about where all of it is going.

And so it was a big surprise.

I didn't see that coming.

- So what is the counterargument or the counterpoint to that?

What would you say or what would someone say to people who are feeling, you know, this peer pressure not to have children?

I mean, it's not hopeless and we're gonna get into hope a little bit later 'cause we do have some optimism here in the book, but talk about that.

What is the counterargument?

- I think the counterargument is that it should never be the goal to tell someone else what to do with their bodies, with their reproductive lives.

I think we know from the news lately, especially a ruling that came down yesterday in Arizona, that there are always people who are trying to intervene on whether people should or should not have children and make it harder for people to make those decisions autonomously.

So I think it's never a good idea to pressure anyone into or out of having children.

I do want to say however, that Generation Z and young millennials, these are the first two generations that are most likely to enthusiastically embrace being child-free.

And the evidence bears that out over the decades, people have actively chosen to have fewer and fewer children based on what they want.

So I do wanna keep that in mind as well.

But peer pressure, it's just never a good idea.

People should have the families that they want.

- You know, Jade, you're not the first author to write about climate anxiety and whether or not you should have children.

But you have a, I think, a distinctive voice in part because you approach this from a perspective of social justice and climate justice.

And I wonder if you could unpack that a little bit for our audience?

Because essentially you're arguing that the negative impacts of climate change are gonna be disproportionately felt in communities of color and people at the lower end of the socioeconomic stratus.

Can you walk us through that?

What is that argument and how does it manifest itself around climate anxiety?

- Yes, so and foremost, I do wanna say climate anxiety is a widespread experience that really anyone can feel, and a lot of people do feel it regardless of their background or social position.

However, for several decades we have known that low income communities and communities of color are impacted worst by climate impacts in part because low-income communities and communities of color tend to live in places like urban heat islands where you experience heat waves the strongest, or are living in places where it's really difficult to be resilient in the midst of an intense storm.

Communities of color have less access to the resources that they need financially to recover after a major climate-related disaster and there have been studies that have shown that those communities disproportionately do not receive financial assistance to recover.

On the emotions and mental health side, there's evidence to demonstrate that communities of color are most worried and express the most concern about climate change and its potential future impacts that people who identify as black or Latino are more likely to express being anxious, depressed, or to want to seek mental health support services to respond to their emotions about climate change.

That research is small but growing and there is a very clear racial distinction.

And so when you see that in the evidence, in the research evidence, for me it's a no-brainer.

You've gotta pursue that story and find out a little bit more about what's going on.

And what I found through a national survey and through a series of dozens of interviews, is that young people of color feel traumatized.

They feel traumatized about the state of the climate.

They feel traumatized about their concerns about where climate change is going.

And they feel very vulnerable because they worry that, with climate impacts, climate disaster impacts, they wouldn't be protected in the same ways as others because of social inequality.

And those concerns really do play into these questions over whether it's a good idea to bring children into that.

- So Jade, you talk about the emotional and mental health toll and it's disproportionate in many communities.

Why are there not more resources available to help these people?

I realize that's a much larger question that transcends climate anxiety and reproduction.

But why?

We live in this country with all of its wealth.

Other parts of the world, just look north to Canada, look across the ocean to the United Kingdom, Denmark and other- Why?

Big question, but why can't we do better here in this country?

- Well, I think we definitely can do better.

As to the question of why we're not, I think first and foremost, we are just at the beginning of building a research base, a base of evidence to demonstrate that there is actually something going on.

That there are patterns, very clearly discernible patterns in terms of how climate change and its impacts are landing very differently on different groups of people.

There's not a lot of evidence to show that, but that evidence base is growing right now.

And to be honest with you, that is something that I see as a major contribution of my book.

One of the things that I wanted to show is that social inequality is in fact one of the things that shapes how people experience climate anxieties and reproductive decision making differently.

We need more evidence, but we also need more of our elected officials to care and to really understand that young people today are in a state of mental health crisis for a variety of reasons in the United States, but climate change is very much one of those reasons.

- So health outcomes are also affected by climate change.

You write that pregnant black women are at greater risk for a number of problems and then their children from, actually from before birth, during birth, and then when they're young children also are at greater risk.

Get into that a little bit more for us, will you, please?

- Absolutely.

So what we do know is that climate effects like air pollution, increased air pollution and increased heat waves have a direct measurable impact on things like miscarriage, preterm birth and low infant birth weight and preterm birth and low infant birth weight, they have long-term health impacts for infants.

And the research shows that there is a clearly racially, racial disparity in who is most likely to experience preterm birth and low infant birth weight and those are black women.

And black women are most likely to experience those things after heat waves.

I also wanna say it's not just on the back end of climate change-related impacts, but on the front end too, people who live in closest proximity to oil and gas development, oil wells and gas wracking also have those kinds of complications and disparities during pregnancy.

And the racial and class disparity is there too.

- Yeah, Jade, there are other scholars, I wanna call them advocates out there who say that, you know, just we should stop having kids, right?

You go out of your way to say that's not the solution.

Why not?

- First and foremost, not having children will not change the way that we distribute resources.

So need a different system of distributing resources to address climate change, to recover from climate change.

We need different ways of actively working to prevent climate change.

Those things won't just happen on their own if there are fewer babies being born.

I also wanna say children are a really important source of happiness and joy in a family, in a community, their way of transmitting culture and creating a legacy that is really important for a lot of people.

I think simply saying don't have children is not a solution to the problem and in fact would make a lot of people a lot less happy.

- So you also write about how a fossil-based, fossil fuel-based economy is a villain here, is in large part responsible for climate change.

How can individuals change that?

How can we get into a different economy?

Is it politicians that have to be involved here?

Is it the corporations, is it both of them?

Is it somebody else?

I guess I'm saying what action should be taken and what would you urge people to do?

- Well, we definitely cannot change the basis of our economy without the very active involvement of our elected officials because that is who determines what our laws and policies are.

They determine whether new gas and oil drilling leases are granted or not.

They make the policies that regulate what private industry can do and what these fossil fuel companies can do or not.

I think that we as individuals and as collective communities can really hold our politicians' feet to the fire.

We can understand, and I think this is really important and a lot of young people already do understand it, that every election is a climate election from your city council election all the way to the presidential election.

And climate change has to be one of the primary issues of concern on every ballot.

And I think that a lot of people sort of think about that at the presidential scale, but they're not necessarily thinking that way when it comes to city council or even mayoral elections.

But climate policies are being decided in local context and they have a direct impact in local context too.

And one of the first things that all of us can do is just become more aware and better educated on the platforms of our local officials who are running for office and to hold them accountable as we go to the polls.

- So on the larger stage, you mentioned presidential election, we have a presidential election this year.

What do you foresee the role of climate change playing in that?

And again, we could do- We could do a long show on that one issue.

How do you see that playing out?

How is it gonna be presented to voters from the candidates, from the Republican and Democratic parties?

- Well, I think the way that it has been presented over the years has been clear.

Democratic presidential candidates have always been more progressive on climate change.

Joe Biden has advocated for progressive legislation on climate change.

On the other hand, Donald Trump, for example, spent a good number of years referring to climate change as false or a hoax, and then pulled the United States out of a major international agreement, the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015.

So I think that it's quite clear that there will be a significant disparity in how climate change appears on their platforms and I think Joe Biden will be more progressive on climate change for sure.

However, I do want to note that Joe Biden is not perfect on climate change either and he has supported very important progressive climate legislation and has also supported continued oil and gas drilling leases.

So we need even more direct and better legislation to prevent new drilling.

- Jade, I know you're a university professor in addition to being an author.

What have your students taught you about this issue?

How are they processing these sorts of questions?

- My students are very concerned about these issues and in fact, they have been a source of inspiration to me to continue this research.

So one of the things that I write in the book in my acknowledgements is I actually thank a group of students who took a class of mine.

I refer to them as Class 191C, and they were a research methods class.

In that class, I brought in some of the data from this book well before it was published and asked them to analyze it.

And after doing that, I just opened up a discussion and asked them have any of you ever experienced these kinds of issues that I'm writing about in the book?

I thought that maybe one or two of them would speak up, but actually the entire class sort of had a collective meltdown.

And when I say a meltdown, I mean they got loud, they were very emotional, they were, some were crying.

And what they expressed to me was that they feel a tremendous amount of pressure to succeed, to succeed in school, to graduate and get good jobs, to purchase homes, have families, to have a stable, successful future.

But they feel that the conditions required to make those things happen are not available to them in the ways that they have been available to prior generations.

And so the amount of pressure versus the conditions that they're living in and expect to come along in the future, they're at a mismatch.

And for a lot of students, they feel that it's deeply, deeply unfair.

And they had a lot of very strong feelings about that.

- [Jim] That's fascinating.

- So far we've been talking about younger people, but you also write about the older population, people past their child-rearing years.

What is their responsibility in all this?

I mean, they have children obviously, and many have grandchildren and even great-grandchildren, but what is their responsibility?

What do you say to them?

What should young people say to them?

- Well, I think that a lot of older people are very well meaning when they say that they are deeply inspired by the youngest members of our society.

I've heard a lot of older people say that young people are going to save us from our environmental challenges and they're going to sort of pave the way toward making the future a secure place to live.

The challenge with that though is when we say those things that we expect young people to save us, we're sort of abdicating our own responsibility.

I think the better thing for older people, and I count myself in that group of older people, to do, is to partner with young people to understand that climate change and its impacts, these are intergenerational effects.

They may not impact me and those older than me for as long a period of time.

However, I'm living with heat waves.

I'm living with increased wildfires.

I'm living in a situation in which we actually had a hurricane come through southern California last year, which is not supposed to happen in this part of the world, right?

So I cannot expect young people to come along and advocate and vote and do all the things that I hope for to change the situation.

I need to work with them.

And older people need to work with them to secure a future that we can all be excited about, including a future that more young people would be okay with having children in and not just okay, but happy.

- So isn't that really a message aimed at a larger community, the largest community, and that is all of us who are living in the United States and indeed the world?

Is that not an overriding theme here as well?

If not explicitly stated and I think you probably do.

Well, it would.

- Absolutely.

I don't think there's any one group who is more responsible age-wise for advocating for progressive climate change legislation or who is more responsible for advocating around awareness of how climate impacts mental health, physical health, reproductive health.

I think it's really important for everyone to get on board and understand this is all of our issue, even if it hits some people harder.

- You know, so, Jade, I know that you've also got a podcast by the same name, "Climate Anxiety and The Kid Question".

Tell us about the podcast.

- Well, the podcast, it's in its second season now.

It is biweekly.

And I interview people across ages, across racial groups, across whether they have children or not, whether they want children or not.

And I really just asked them these basic questions.

How do you feel about the environmental changes and climate changes that we have been experiencing and how is that impacting how you feel about family, children, and the future?

The people who I've interviewed for the podcast, their responses have ranged.

I've talked to some people who are very clear they never want children and they're quite happy about that.

More people, especially young climate activists, have been very ambivalent about that question.

And right now, in season two, I'm interviewing more people who are already parents and who are very, very open about the fact that they're navigating deep climate anxiety themselves while also trying to raise their children with age-appropriate information about what's happening to the planet and how we can effectively together work to find solutions.

And I have to say the podcast is a lot of fun.

I'm really enjoying having those conversations.

- I bet you're a natural at it.

We'll look forward to listening to some of that.

Do you ever get surprised though by what people tell you when they come out of the podcast?

Are you ever, someone just say something like, whoa, like didn't expect that from these people?

- Well, I have to say my most interesting episode from my own perspective was one where I interviewed a 9-year-old and then interviewed her mother.

And the 9-year-old was full of information.

She had lots of facts, lots of energy.

She knew exactly what she was talking about and had many opinions about what adults should be doing differently.

I think what really surprised me was when I spoke to her mother separately and her mother talked about how over the years she has watched her 9-year-old develop climate anxiety and she has watched the intensity of that anxiety grow.

And it's through things like witnessing a hurricane coming through southern California where it doesn't belong, and increased heat waves and things like that.

And so to see a parent talking about witnessing in real time how her own child has become more and more climate anxious, I wasn't expecting that.

- It's a remarkable body of work.

Jade Sasser, the book is "Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question".

Thank you so much for spending some time with us this week.

That is all the time we have though.

If you wanna know more about Story in the Public Square, you can find us on social media or visit pellcenter.org where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

He's G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes asking you to join us again next time for more Story in the Public Square.

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