Parenting in a Climate-Changed World with Elizabeth Rush and Sophia Cheng

Episode Transcript
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>> Nicole Diroff (00:00):
You are listening to Climate Changed, a uh,
podcast about pursuing faith, life
and love in a climate changed world.

>> Ben Yosua-Davis (00:08):
Hosted by me Nicole DiRoff
and me Ben Yoshua Davis. Climate Changed
features guests who deepen the conversation while
also stirring the waters.

The Climate Change Podcast is a project of the
BTS Center. Welcome
listeners. We have reached the final
episode of season three of the Climate Change
Podcast.

And today we will explore a topic near
and dear to our hearts.
Parenthood what does it mean to raise a
child in a climate changed world?

In this episode you will hear my
conversation with writer Elizabeth
Rush. Her book the Quickening is an
account of her extraordinary voyage to one of
the most remote parts of Antarctica.
During more than 50 days at sea, Rush Liz
was without Internet and immersed in a world of
scientists. In addition to

(01:02):
documenting the scientists journey, she
wrestles with a longing to bring a child into this
world despite climate change risks and
uncertainties.

It is an incredibly rich discussion,
so we invited a new parent to dig deeper into what
Liz and Nicole have to say. Sophia Cheng lives
in England and recently gave birth to her first child.
We are curious about how her perspective as a
parent from the United Kingdom differs from our own.

We are also curious about Sophia and
her partner's intellectual and emotional
journey that led to their decision to have a
child. We hope you will find our conversation
insightful, practical and
stimulating.

Now it is time for our grounding, an
opportunity to pause, to take a
breath and remember why each of
us, including all those of you who are
listening, are here. It will be offered by
Sophia Cheng and is a poem that emerged in
response to the UN climate science report in
2021 and vulnerably

(02:06):
expresses the complicated ambivalence that
is becoming a mother in a climate changed
world.

>> Sophia Cheng (02:13):
TikTok TikTok we're on the
brink. The cusp the geriatrics at 35
plus the will we? The Won't we? The
should we? The could we? The do we really want
to? We wrenched our eyes open and let the weight
of the world in the unfairness, the uncertainty,
the absurdity of inertia In a warming world

(02:33):
we opened our minds and it imprinted there before
piercing our hearts and sinking into our bones. It
echoes around our wombs the emboldened
citizens, the future grievers the how can we? The
what best to do now? We are not the spring
chickens we are not striking from school declaring
no future, no life. Formative years formed in a
1 degree world, decades of fertility ahead

(02:56):
and we are not over the hill, not our window fully
closed we are not the mothers of two waking up.
Fired from maternal instinct. We are the ones who
have not yet rolled our dice and we
will not be here forever. Time or a decision will move us
on. For now we occupy this liminal
space. We the ambivalent.

(03:17):
We are grateful for the Liberation of the 60s
absorbed the girl power of the 90s. We are the
habit or generation that wisened. We see the
challenges and expectations that still confine us. We
know either path involves sacrifice and we
know we are the lucky ones. So many never face this
quandary. From unquestioning to culture to
adversity. The technology of contraception has brought

(03:38):
us so much freedom, but it does not come for
free. We carry the burden of choice
from our head to our bellies.
TikTok tick tock.
TikTok TikTok.
With time and courage I explored my
baggage on, um, family and um, bodily
clocks. I stretch time forward fact

(03:59):
based dreaming, exploring a future world we
know is possible in the company of others.
I sow seeds of transformation every day,
banishing shame and self flagellation.
We could pick apart the old world order, uh, while
building windows of the possible. Today, with a joy
in my heart and a fire in my belly, I hold
onto a gritty hope and prepare for what's ahead.

(04:22):
TikTok TikTok
TikTok TikTok.

Thank you, Sophia. Thank you for that
grounding. And I am so
grateful that we get to engage with you
more as our special guest.
But first we turn to my conversation
with Elizabeth Rush. When I
read the Creation
and Community at the Ends of the Earth,

(04:49):
I was riveted. I kept
thinking it would be incredible to
have the opportunity to talk with this author.
So hooray for podcast interviews
and our, uh, producer Peterson's
connections. He had interviewed Elizabeth
for two of his podcasts, Bubble and Squeak and
Citizens Climate Radio. The world works in

(05:11):
wonderful ways sometimes. In addition to the
Quickening, Elizabeth Rush also wrote
Rising Dispatches from the New
American Shore, a, uh, Pulitzer Prize
finalist. Her writing has appeared in
many publications including the New York
Times, Vogue, Orion,
and the Atlantic.

Liz, as uh, she likes to be called, has received
fellowships from the National Science foundation, the
Alfred P. Sloan foundation and the Howard
foundation, among others. She lives in Providence, Rhode
island with her husband, son, and recently born
daughter. She teaches creative nonfiction at
Brown University.

I hope you, our listeners, enjoy
my conversation with Liz as much as I
did. Hello Elizabeth.
It's so nice to be with you today. Do you go
by Elizabeth?

>> Elizabeth Rush (06:04):
You can actually call me Liz. Thanks for having me,
Nicole.

I Wonder if we might just start. I'd love to know a little about
where you are, the geography of where you are,
and I don't know what sort of weather
weirding. Are you, uh, talking about where
you are?

So I'm in Providence, and you guys are in
Portland, Maine. Is that correct?

That's correct. We're not too far, then.

Yeah, totally. I'm like, just. Just down the
coast to this morning. I got out for
a nice bike ride. It is sunny
but brisk here in Providence,
and we live really close to the Narragansett
Bay, so I got to ride along the bay this morning.

Beautiful.

And, yeah, it was gorgeous. It was one of those days where it's
like the water is that deep blue
that it gets when the sky doesn't have a single
cloud in it.

I love it.

Yeah, it was really pretty, I would
say. You know, I grew up north of
Boston, and so I'm
pretty close to where I grew
up. And one thing that I noticed
really profoundly is that we don't
get the winters that we used to get. Like, I
can remember snowstorms where the snow was up to

(07:19):
my thighs. We haven't had any of those
since we moved to Providence, like, eight. Eight years
ago, nine years ago. So
winters, less snow,
warmer, weird, warm spikes in
February, which are really bad
for different kinds of, you know, fruiting
trees. And

(07:42):
the past couple
summers have also had these really
tremendous rain events where you get
inches of rain in a single event.
And that also I
don't really remember from my childhood, and
certainly not the frequency that we've been getting them.
So I got a leaky basement, I got a leaky

(08:04):
ceiling, stuff like that.

You notice the rain events? Yeah,
yeah, we just moved to, uh. We just moved to Portland.
Well, oh, my gosh, it's now almost five years
ago. It still feels new somehow.
But one of the things I delighted in moving
here was that every town had
these amazing outdoor skating rinks. Just
like, you know, a place that

(08:29):
anyone in the community could come pop on some skates
and be outdoors. And just every
winter since we've been here, you know, there's maybe
a couple days that they can even be open.
So it's really clear the way in which the winters
are just not. Not what they were.

Absolutely. I grew up. I remember
skating on ponds. Like, I have
some. These really crystalline, beautiful memories of skating
on ponds. And, like, that just doesn't happen
anymore. Ponds never freeze over enough
down here to get skating on him. M. Where did you move from?

From Philadelphia. And. And um, grew up
in Ohio and Connecticut, but we had been
15 years. 15 years in Philly,
which would get, like, one snowstorm each
winter, and the city didn't even have the infrastructure
for it, so the whole place would shut down. And it was magical to
be living downtown during that.

Totally.

But I like snow. I like snow in winter. So I was
psyched to move. I was psyched to move north.
Now you're just back from a winter, too?

Um, yeah.

Yeah. Good. I mean, if we're living here, we better like
it.

Yeah, like, if it's cold, give me snow. I don't
like any of the, like. Now, basically, winter here is, I
don't know, 37 and rainy, and it's like,
oh, man.

No, see, that's. That's like Philly.
You're just back from maternity leave.

That's right. I had my second baby February
13th. The big snowstorm
of the year was February 13th,
and she was born.
You will get a kick out of this, I hope. She was born
in the backseat of our car on, uh, the
way to the hospital.

(10:16):
She did not make it. And
she came about an hour before the snow arrived.
And, uh, people say that, like, when the barometric pressure drops,
those babies pop out.

Really?

That's totally what happened. Yes.

That's amazing. That's amazing. Actually,
I've never heard that. That's amazing. I hadn't, but I had
heard, like.

When she was born, in the snowstorm, everyone was like, oh, the
barometric pressure must have dropped. I was like, I
guess, yeah.

Oh, yeah. That's what happens. All the babies are born in cars
right before a snowstorm. Amazing.
Amazing.
Well, we are both parents. I have a 10 year
old who's in fourth grade, only child,
and m. Yeah. I mean, being
a parent in these times is so. It just
is defining of

(11:06):
the way. The way we look at things.
I don't know how we. How we introduce our young people
to the topics at hand.
I wonder for you I'll have a
chance to share your formal bio.
But if. If we were to meet in a mom's
group, sitting on mats on the

(11:28):
floor or something, and I were to ask
you what you do, how. How would you
answer that question in a mom's group?

Oh, I usually
say something along the lines of, I'm
a writer and a
professor. And then if people
ask me what I write, I
say I write a
lot of nonfiction about the
environment and climate change in

(11:59):
particular. That's usually something
along the line. Like, I answer it sort of like that. Yeah.

A Friend of the BTS center,
Elizabeth Bachard, who wrote
a book called Parenting and a Changing
Climate, tells this story in her book
of coming into a mom's group
feeling actually really, really heavy from
all the climate knowledge she was taking
in. And so as people were going around the

(12:28):
circle sharing their, their struggles, she kind
of dove into, you know, I'm feeling really, I'm
feeling really overwhelmed and panicked about
the potential future for my child, for our
children. And it was just like dead
silence. Like, that was,
that was kind of not the topics for the mom's group.

(12:48):
You know, like lactation or,
I don't know, like, finding time for yourself.
Like, you know, deep topics that maybe you're not sharing with
anyone else are welcome. But going to that
place of like, actually, I'm in a panic over
the state of the planet is like, not an
okay topic. And I found that

(13:08):
too, with friends. I don't know if you have also.

Yeah, I mean, how would I put it?
I think you could hear my tiered response, as in,
I'm a writer and a professor. I feel like I often
kind of sidestep
it in more social settings, in
part because it doesn't
necessarily feel super welcome. And I

(13:32):
think I'm like a people pleaser and I don't want to bring down the
mood. Like, I do feel like it can bring down the mood
and because sometimes.

I need to leave it at, uh, interesting
outside.

Like, I'm like, I actually just need to talk about
breastfeeding right now because that's right.
Like, I actually think about climate
change all the time and
I need to, like, tune into a different
frequency. I think that I sometimes do that for
myself.

Yeah. Uh, that makes good sense. That makes good sense.
Well, well, tell me a little of your,
your path. You know, what, What's a,
A piece of what led you to become so involved in
writing about climate change?

You, uh, know. Well, before
I do that, tell me how you deal. Like, if you were in a mom's
group, do you bring up climate change
or are you like, how do you answer that question?
I'm really curious.

I mean, so I,
I'm indoor, I'm an ordained minister and
work at this nonprofit that works on
spiritual leadership for a climate changed world. So
I get to kind of, you know, I might start off
with something like, I'm an ordained minister,
which comes with all sorts of its own baggage and

(14:52):
assumptions.

Yeah.

You know, and I work at a nonprofit, you know, so I could just
kind of like, leave it there. And when
I start talking about
climate change,
I think friends,
people are afraid and they
don't know how to respond
other than with, like, defensiveness and kind of like

(15:17):
a way of saying, but I, or my
family, I think is going to be okay,
because usually it's because I'm in circles
of people with quite a bit of privilege.
So, you know, the posture of.

That.

This is not in the future that it's here for so
many people around the world. It's here for us, if
we're paying attention on the
coast of Maine, on the coast of New England,
and the ways in which that
might inspire a need to love one another
better. Um, you know,

(15:55):
that's the place I kind of want to go. But it's,
It's. It's hard to. It's hard to get there
because. Well, because our lives are full
of. Of the things of parenting, of
juggling schedules, of navigating school, of. Of
breastfeeding when, you know, the kids are younger. Like, all those
things are super real and things

(16:16):
that, that we can connect on. So,
yeah, yeah, it feels like a special moment.

You're making me think of something that
someone said to me, like, over the last
two years, I was working on this project that I
really loved working on, and I did it in
partnership with a former student of mine as
she, like, has become
an actual radio producer, and she does, like,

(16:43):
a lot of work for NPR and, um,
all the heavy hitters. She and I did this project
where for literally two years we started,
we were trying to figure out by listening to
people how
climate change was changing their
intimate lives. Like, how was it changing the way

(17:03):
love. And we tried to think of that
in like, a really holistic sense. So we also talked to, like,
breeding bird specialists and
like, a person who studies like,
uh, you know, honeybees
and the timing of pollination.
And so we tried to think of it in like a. An

(17:23):
interspecies kind of way also.
But you're making me think of actually
this thing that this single mom by
choice said to me m.
Where she was talking about how
she had taken so long to choose to have
a child. And she lived in

(17:44):
Portland, Oregon, and the
child was born into,
you know, the summer, the second summer of the
pandemic when things were still quite bad,
right? And it was like the heat dome in
Portland and the wildfires in, like,
around in Oregon. And she was

(18:04):
like, you know, one of the biggest things for me to figure out and
having the kid was like, really trying to think about, did I want to
do that in a climate Changed world. And then the
kid came, she gave birth, and
within months it was like, you
know, assailed, uh, on all
sides. And I asked her,
you know, does that make you feel differently about the choice

(18:27):
you made? And she was like, you know,
the thing it clarified for me is
like, we have to love even
stronger what's here. It's our responsibility
to love more and more powerfully,
you know. No, I don't change my decision
at all. In fact, I just think love is like, you

(18:48):
need more of it. And I was like, that's
a really powerful thing to say.
Um, you made me think of
that.

I loved reading the Quickening, by the way.

Thank you.

I, um, wanted to keep reading this
story, which you don't always feel that.

Way about environmental stories. I'm often like,
I would like to put this story aside.

Totally, totally. No, I was like, really
journeying with you and wanted to keep kind of
plugging in and getting on the boat with you. I love how you
talk about the climate crisis being both
threat and an opportunity multiplier.

Mhm.

There are a lot of people who are saying this
isn't how it's supposed to be. We need to
be connected and in love
with the natural world. There's this
idea of, in times of violence, look for
the peacemakers. So in times of
brokenness, look for places of
connection. There are so many

(19:50):
opportunities to do that with children of any
age. To fall in love with nature with a
child at your side is like such a special
gift.

Totally.

I went through this program to become a main
master naturalist.

Oh, cool. Totally.

And my child accompanied me on all that
homework. And, you know, I got home from my class and I
was like, well, I'm supposed to look for redback salamanders,
so I think they live under decaying logs. Like,
let's see if there are any in our backyard.
And literally the first log we flipped
over, there's a redback salamander right there.

And, um.

It's right there. It's right there. And I never thought to look for
it. Yeah, my kiddo just is. Is into all
of that now and, and we need people who
know, who know the depth of, like, what we
love.

Totally, totally, Totally.
Yeah, it's like the world is ours to be compassionate
towards.

Mm. Beautiful.

And, uh, our kids totally help
us tune into that. I feel like I went into
having kids being like, oh, I gotta be really
specific about the language that I use and try
to use like pronouns that give
agency to the trees. And
I mean, I'm trying to do all that. But also he, like, knows

(21:10):
the trees. Oh, yeah. Like, yeah, you know,
it's like, I think we beat it out of them. I'm
the 100 trained in the pronoun
switching.

Not, not my 3 year old 100.
That has been my experience as well. Yeah.
Young, young people, they, they already know.
It is much more about our un, Our
unlearning than anything. Yes.
An amazing, amazing story you tell
as a journalist accompanying, uh,

(21:39):
several teams of scientists on this
boat as they're studying a particular
glacier in Antarctica. How did
you end up on that boat? What was the
purpose of that trip, of that scientific
endeavor?

Oh, my gosh. I'm like, it is a long story how I ended up on that
boat. So I'm going to try to do the fast version.
I had been writing about sea level rise in
coastal communities for like seven years
and had spent a lot of time with the, uh,
people experiencing firsthand these
changes. And I think over time I grew super

(22:15):
curious as to, like, the source
of those changes. And I'm an experiential
learner. I was like, I think I need to go
to Antarctica. I knew
about this program through the National Science foundation where
they send one artist
and one writer a year usually to
Antarctica. And so I applied for it.

(22:37):
And that was really complicated. That's where I'm sort of like, ha, ha,
ha. I won't tell you the long story, but My application was 60
pages long. I
eventually was admitted to the program and they
gave me the last
remaining berth on the first
icebreaker ever to be sent to

(22:58):
the calving edge of Thwaites Glacier in
Antarctica, which is like,
it's ground zero for the
possibility of really rapid sea level rise this
century. No one before us had
ever been there.

Um, amazing.

Just this really phenomenal
opportunity.

Amazing. The title of
your book, the Quickening, references
the incredible moment in pregnancy
when you first feel the
baby's movements, and putting that
in conversation with
moments of glacial
calving. Am um, I saying that word right?

That's right, yeah.

Oh, my gosh. It. For me, uh, I kept
thinking about time. Like there's this long time and then there's
just like these moments. My
favorite course in college was volcanology
because. Well, a, because it
has a cool title, but I think it is that like,
long, long time is like in a

(24:02):
moment erupting, you know, and
totally, totally, uh, reading about glaciers
from your perspective tapped that. The same thing
in me of long time drawn into a moment.

That's part of it. Okay. We're nothing but
also in the span of a very short time, we're changing
everything.

Yes.

Collectively, we're doing that changing. And that
tension, the way like, our timescale is like
ripping at or, like chewing
away at or dismantling this other timescale
is really extraordinary.
That's what makes me nervous.

Right, right, right, right.

But it is also. Yeah, it's like,
totally extraordinary. And I feel like that was
a tension for me as I wrote was like, how do you
write in a way that's aware of one
timescale changing another timescale?
We used to think of glaciers as being really slow,
and now they're accelerating. So I was trying to

(25:01):
play with that a little bit with the title. Everything is
quickening in Antarctica. It's
accelerating. And in some ways,
that acceleration is what
even allows us to see the glaciers
moving. Right. Because they used to move so slowly that you would, like,
never see them with your eye.

Right.

And it's still hard to see glaciers move, but they are
moving faster than they used to.

Wow.

Um, so I was also trying to kind of like, play with
that. Like, it's like two kinds of quickening because it's
also that sense of acceleration.

Yep. And it's devastating and
motivating at the same time.
One of the themes that we're exploring in
this season of our podcast is
the common good. The common good
in a climate changed world. I
was so moved to read in your book about

(25:54):
the Antarctic Treaty. This is not something that
I really knew or thought about before.
As you say, the continent was set
aside as a place of peace and
science. Military operations and
weapons testing were prohibited, as
was eventually the extraction of
minerals or materials of value.

(26:18):
And that idea, it just opened
my imagination to, like, what is the
commons and what does it mean to
work towards the common good in that sense?
Setting? Those are not necessarily words you
played with in your book, but I saw it woven
throughout. What does the common good look like
in a climate changed world? How do we play with

(26:41):
that concept? Is there anything Antarctica might
teach us?

Oh, goodness, that's such a great question.
And I don't have an immediate answer to that
question, but I will, like, fumble my way
towards something. At one
level, all the data that's available in
Antarctica has to be made freely available to
everyone.

Amazing.

Which I think is awesome. Like, data can be so expensive
to procure, and data from Antarctica is,
like, very expensive. And you
see it in the scientific projects. One of the
scientists said to me, the principal investigator of,
uh, our most ambitious project, to send
a Submarine under the ice.

(27:23):
She said to me, if you're gonna work in Antarctica,
uh, especially on climate change, you kind of
have to cede a sense of ownership to the science,
because you might deploy a mooring
that has a 15 year lifespan.
It's gonna collect data for 15 years, and it's not
necessarily gonna be you who goes back to retrieve

(27:44):
it or to service it. You're like
kind of in a relay race and you hand the baton off to
other people, and you have to be willing to do that.
Which I thought was really beau. Beautiful.

Wow.

A lot of science you don't hear spoken of that
way.

Right.

People are trying to get the discovery so they can get tenure.
And there's, like, something deeply competitive about it.
Antarctica, like, demands a slightly different kind of
interaction because of its remoteness,
the difficulty of getting anything done
there. That's something that I felt throughout the
whole time I was on this boat, was that it

(28:21):
really asked us to work
together and there was no surviving without each
other. That's pretty
awesome.

Your book just played with both the kind of
global notions of
Antarctica and how different
countries relate to that place and
the data gathered there, and then kind of
like zooms in on this world set
apart and this tiny community
that, you know, there's moments where the

(28:53):
relationships are fraught. There are moments where they're
delightful. I mean, there's hilarious moments that
you share in the midst of all of that
community explored in that
intensive way. And then, like, community
really explored in this very,
very global way. And mostly male.
I mean, you explore.

And mostly male.

Right.

Like, explored the gender stuff in really interesting ways
too. So. Yes, totally true.

It's like, yes, and totally a comment. It's a yes.
And yeah.

One place I really wanted to go with you
is the reference you made about the way in which your
journey was so filled with
persistent uncertainty.
Um, how both the scientific
journey was that way and then, of course, your
journey around decisions around
parenthood and raising children

(29:46):
paralleled that. So you wrote
that raising children can,
similarly similar to the scientific
investigation, involve investing a whole
lot of time and energy into a project without having
any idea how things will turn
out. I mean, I was like,
yep, highlight that line.

Oh, my God. Every day is a practice of that.
With little Littles. It's like you gotta
just roll with it all the
time and be really creative
all the time. Usually when my
son is a little prat, it's not because
he's a bad person, it's because he hasn't had a

(30:28):
snack.

Yeah, right. Exactly.
You're not deplorable. You just need
an apple. Yeah.

It's like.

And.

And then it's, um, up to me to be like, oh, my God, he's in one
of his big, like, I'm not going to do anything, you tell
me mode. So how can I get this apple
into him? When he. If I told him to go eat an
apple, he would be like, ah, uh, no. And then he would
get really angry and, like, you know, so then it's
like, then you got to get creative. The person

(30:59):
you got to get creative with looks at you and is like, I don't
even love you.

Yeah, exactly. Well, I.
I've also, you know, one of my mantras is like, do
I have the capacity to. Do I have the capacity
to care? And sometimes the answer is no. And I'm
like, tag, I'm out. Or, you know, I
end up yelling when I didn't mean to, but, like, trying to
just be like, do I have the capacity to care in this

(31:24):
moment? Your book, it just evoked this
sense of, like, how do we keep choosing to
care within a context of the unknown? Uh,
we don't know the future, and we still need to
choose to care. I mean, the stories of what the
scientists were devoting themselves
to, risking so much of

(31:45):
their own, uh, self to care and
to just keep caring, even though,
I mean, that particular experiment, you know, might
end up with data that. That isn't even
discernible, or, I don't know, there's so much
unknown, or you.

Might, like, let it all poop out onto the floor because
you dropped some of it.

There was a funny moment in the book.
Yeah. Yeah. So, like,
I. I don't know, what have you learned about choosing to care
when you don't know the outcome, but you're just going to keep choosing
that.

I feel like a lot of people are at this point where they're like,
I know climate change is a thing. I want
it to get better, but I don't know
how.

Right.

We have an idea that you have to, like, go be a climate
activist, and that's how you, like,
care.

Mm.

The people who wanna be climate activists should go be climate
activists. But, like, don't saddle yourself with
a set of expectations that are gonna make it hard
for you to continue to show up for that thing.

Yeah.

Choose a thing that's something that you
care about. Someone recently
asked, did the adventure draw you to
Antarctica? I was like, I would like to
pretend that the answer to that question is no, but it's
not. I have always been, like, really into
adventure. Like, yes.

I mean, the adventure drew me to read the book.

Right. Like, some. I was into it in part
because I care about, and I've
chosen to, like, tune into and make
space for adventurous things in my life. My
capacity to care about scooping mud
out of a tube for 27
hours repetitively while I'm on this
boat stems from the fact that, like, I'm choosing

(33:32):
to do that in a context that I already am,
like, really passionate about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Part of it is, like, knowing what you
cherish and, like, fueling
that love relationship. And then you can continue
to care inside of it because you love inside of it.
It's hard to ask yourself to do something that you don't care
about and then do it a lot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Your book was so centered on
decisions around becoming a parent.
I'm just wondering
just what courage looks like in that. In that
context. I think a lot of people
are questioning parenthood, even if they're

(34:15):
already parents. What
might you invite courage around?

Hmm.

Hm.

Courage. How would I put it? It's
like, well, when I went on this
journey to the weight, part of
me went on the journey
knowing that I wanted to have a kid. And
I was really terrified that I
would come back
and not want to have a kid. And I felt like

(34:46):
I kind of had to be open to
having this experience change the shape
of that desire. I, like, kind of knew
that I was going to write a book about the journey. And it. I thought I was,
like, jinxing the whole thing by being like, and I'm gonna write a book about
it. Maybe it's gonna be a really sad book in which the person
is like, nevermind, I don't want to

(35:06):
have a child. Not that that's, like, inherently sad,
but I, uh, had no idea what was gonna
happen. And I came back and my desire
to have a child had not gone away at all.
And it was sort of like, oh,
that's curious. Uh,
some part of me didn't think of
that as being the possible, like,

(35:28):
narrative trajectory of
what I had gotten myself into.
Writing the book became about
how to have the courage to keep having my
desire.

Nice.

If this thing is important to me, like,
spiritually, as a human being on this
planet, how do I have the courage to
make space for it? Because it's apparently not
going away. I think about that a lot.
For me, in this instance, having the
courage for something meant starting to
recognize what it means to be in community

(36:03):
and how to depend on other people.
I will tell you, having a second child has been like,
you really gotta depend on other people.
And you don't have to have kids to have to learn how to depend
on other people. But depending on other people is, like,
scary. You have to open yourself up.
I'm an introvert. Like, that's not my inherent

(36:25):
happy place. But there are things that
you can do in community that you
cannot do alone. And you can be an introvert and
still be in community. Was like, how do I have the courage
to keep space for my desire?

I love that. I love that. How to have the courage
to keep space for the desire. I love
it. Thank you.

That's like a deep. Like a deep need. Desire.

Right, Right.

If that thing feels a little bit under threat, what else do I have
to show up for to buffer it or to tend to
it?

I mean, I've used the phrase it takes a
village so many times since having a child.
It just. There is something about that
that breaks open, an
individualistic sense of going
about your way in the world.

My invitation is, go tend to something you love that
is part of the more than human world. Go and tend
to yourself. Go make space for that thing that
you love. Slow down and just be with
it for however much time you can set
aside. That's the place that
action starts from.

Does that mean you're gonna head and hang out with some glacial
erratics or what might that be for
you if you had to spend time with what you love?

I often take a bike ride in the morning and, like, get off my
bike and look at the water for a couple minutes and just try to, like,
slow down and be there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What you're saying
invites me to go spend a moment by the
ocean, which I will admit just does
that time thing that we were talking about. It
just makes me feel small. In a good
way. Yeah.

And I feel like whenever I get down by the water, I'm, like, riding a bike
or walking or I'm, like, doing a thing, and it's like, you know what
the best is? Is when I, like, stop doing the thing and
I just sit there for a minute.

Amazing. Amazing.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for this conversation.

My pleasure. This has been such a pleasure.

Wow. What an authentic
conversation is. As I was listening to the two of you
talk, it reminded me of those moments. I've sat down with
another parent, and we've just kind of swapped stories about
what life is like. And I love
Liz's humor and thoughtfulness
on heavy Topics like parenting and climate
change.

I left my interview with Liz longing for
a chance to walk in the woods with her.
I could have kept talking for quite a while.
Today we're mixing it up and continuing the
conversation with a special guest who has joined us
in the studio. Sophia Chang is five
hours ahead of us in the uk, but

(39:05):
she similarly spends a lot of time
envisioning what climate change solutions will
look like in the future.

Sophia Cheng is the founder of With Many Roots.
Their core purpose is to make a meaningful
impact. Currently, they focus on climate
science and silence by delivering
collaborative interactive educational
workshops based on robust research. They
deliver these sessions and C suites and in the
streets.

Their offerings include the wonderfully
whimsical and inspirational KLI
Phi Imaginarium, a library
of original stories where climate change solutions
have been fully implemented with many
routes sites. Rob Hopkins, a
friend of the BTS center, as one of the

(39:52):
big influences on their work. Hooray
for a small world full of
relationships and hello
Sophia.

Hi Nicole. Hi Ben. Thank you for having me.

It is so great to have you with us, especially
after you shared that grounding with us.
I'm really eager to ask
some questions for us to talk about as
three parents, particularly around this question of
uncertainty. I was thinking back to our first episode
of this season, which is a conversation I had with Brian
McLaren. It dealt with a question of how do you lead

(40:26):
and how do you love in moments of profound
uncertainty when the future genuinely seems
up for grabs in a way that perhaps, certainly for people in my
position of privilege, it never has seemed like it has before?
I'm curious, how do you both experience
this kind of double uncertainty? Because
parenting is an act of profound uncertainty, as
Liz talks about. And then along with that, we also have

(40:48):
this uncertainty about the future of
our planet.

Yeah, Ben. The notion of uncertainty, which was
coming through very vibrantly from
Colin, Liz's conversation when I was listening to it,
is something I have really consciously wrestled
with as, uh, someone kind of conditioned into
the world as it was. I love the notion of
control, predictability, and the idea of

(41:12):
certainty. So to arrive at a place
of being I wouldn't say comfortable, but less
uncomfortable with uncertainty
has taken quite a long time and a lot of
unpicking of where these conditioned thoughts
came from and working with that. And I think it was
the, uh, boldness of tackling uncertainty in

(41:33):
our times allowed me to maybe take on the notion
of uncertainty in parenting and parenthood as well.

I think about all the moments in
parenting when my plans for the
evening are derailed.
And I'll just say that that happened a lot less
before I was a parent. And
sometimes they're like amazingly joyfully
derailed and then other times it's
like, oh, we're going to need to work through something

(42:01):
and let's do it.
That is my experience of
impacts of climate
fear as well. They end up being
surprising and derailing
in many ways. I've been thinking
a lot about whether I

(42:22):
can trust my future self
to respond, uh, to those
things that I'm not anticipating.
And I think it's a skill that parents build
and I think it's a skill that we are going to need more and
more in a climate changed world to trust
ourselves, to trust our people, to trust our
communities to

(42:45):
navigate those things that derail us and
navigate them with love.

I just have to say that I resonate so much with that based on
my experience. I'm recording this podcast in my,
in my home office with a wonderful backdrop
that thankfully you, the listener, cannot see of my washing
machine in my dryer. And when I get done with my workday
and I open the door and go into the rest of my
house, I literally have no idea what I'm
going to find there. Is the household going to be peaceful?

(43:15):
Is there going to be chaos? What I'm going to step
into on a day to day basis seems utterly
unpredictable. And that is exactly
the same sort of experiences I think about what sort of world
are my kids going to grow up to? I certainly inherited a narrative
about what it meant to be a good parent, what it meant to provide a
good future for your children. And there are

(43:35):
just some questions about that that I feel like I actually just don't
know the answers to. And so Nicole, uh, I love that
question of like, how do you trust your, uh, how do you trust your
future self that like your future self's got this, even if
you don't know what that future is going to look like.

I feel very much attached to that idea.
It's interesting being brought in as a third
parent and it took me a while to recognize that
I was the third parent.
Such a new identity to me. My little one is
seven months old. I feel that I am
uncertain who I am has been suddenly thrown

(44:10):
into uncertainty. I feel
porous, I feel more open, more
vulnerable. Uh, but also there's
a sort of curiosity
who my future self within this new paradigm
as a family and as a mother who is going
to emerge? My learning and my work prior
to this date is as a trust that something decent

(44:33):
will Come and being kind of curious about
all of those dynamics and myself along, along the route.

Mhm.

Sophia, I wonder if you would share a little with
us about the decision to become a
mother. I so appreciate
that this is a journey that you're willing
to talk about publicly because I think many
people are navigating this incredibly
privately to the point of actually it being

(45:00):
detrimental because it's really hard
to be held, it's hard to be held, cared
for in the hardest of decisions when
not talking about it. So thank you for being
willing, for being willing to share.
When I chose to have a child, the climate
crisis was about saving the

(45:21):
rainforest. The 10 years since I've
had a child, my understanding of the
climate changed world to call it that, has radically
changed. And so I do not
envy those of you who are making these
decisions right now. I didn't
need to encounter it in the way that I know that you
did.

Thank you for the opportunity to be able to talk about it. Uh, and
I think off the back of yours and Liz's discussion, it's
amazing that there's another piece of literature out in the
world that is voicing these kind of questions in a
public platform. I'm so, so grateful and will
be recommending Liz's book. The seeds of
my courage come from seeing it in pockets in other
places. And like, you know, Liz's book, um,

(46:04):
but prior to that, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez
being able to name it as a valid concern.
Dr. Britt Ray, she's been doing some really great, great
stuff in communicating around climate anxiety
and then realizing that if I was brave enough in those
private circles to raise the topic,
invariably people had something to say about

(46:25):
it. And so it's that kind of recurring
piece of this serves a purpose beyond meeting my
own needs. If I raise this topic, I think
it's a challenge maybe of a particular age
range. So I'm
37. The making of me was in the old, older
way of thinking. And yet I stepping into
my power exactly the same time as

(46:48):
the threats and the scientists saying in the next 10 years,
in the next 15 years, we've got to solve this.
That is exactly on cue with my
fertility window. Um, so this kind of
simultaneous timing was something I really,
really wrestled with and found it quite
overwhelming. It's like there's a big call on
all of us to step up in some way, shape or

(47:10):
form. And my interpretation of it at the
time was I've got to be useful,
I've got to be useful, I've got to do stuff, and it's got to be
useful and it's got to be productive and I've got to get people on my
side. And I couldn't equate motherhood in
that sort of very narrow paradigm
that was around 2018, 2019. And the
gradual unpicking of the

(47:32):
mentality and thoughts that
keep us spinning around this rat race has also
been the space that's opened up.
Realizing that the climate crisis and living the climate
change world, a bit like the themes that you and Liz were talking
about, is not zero sum. This doesn't
always have to be a narrative of sacrifice. There is
opportunity and there is space for our needs. I think Liz

(47:54):
referred to it as our desires and there is space to
create.
In the quietness of those lockdowns,
um, a really impactful
practice was the practice of future
dreaming. And I realize it's a theme that comes up in your
podcast quite a lot is, you know, what do we want
this world to look like? Yeah, there's a lot of
stick, you know, the science is bad, we're going to hell in a

(48:16):
handcart, not a lot of carrot. What do we
want in the world?

That's right.

Pulling on Rob Hopkins kind of what if idea. A
few of us came together in the pandemic and we came back month after month
after month, thinking of different climate solutions
and imagining they were already. So I started.
I could only go kind of five years into the future. And again
pulling on another theme that you and Liz talked about was this notion
of time. But as I practiced, I could go further and, um,

(48:41):
further and, um, further to a point where I could get to
350 years into the future. I could see my
protagonist very visually, the world building
erupted around her. I could sense what she was
smelling on her way to the library. And in that
practice, there also became room for me
to be, to be time and for there to
be space for me to be a mother

(49:03):
in all of this paradigm. And it's that unpicking, um,
that living in a climate emergency is no way to live.
But actually, if I can start building the blocks of the future
I want to live in, then suddenly a much
kind of more fruitful path and hopeful path and
practice emerges.

I love that thought, Sophia, about how do we
unpick these narratives that we bring with us into
becoming parents? I can't be a mother. I
have to be useful and productive. And I thought, oh my goodness, isn't
that industrial capitalism at its worst?
Because our lives are determined by whether we're useful and productive.
And of course parenthood, motherhood in
particular, being family is not a thing that's

(49:43):
actually productive in
our family. My wife made the decision to
step out of her work so she could become a full time homemaker
and homesteader as a real call and positive
vocation. It was a point we had been working to as a
family for a long time. And there are not a lot of
models out there or certainly not a lot

(50:03):
of non patriarchal models that actually value
that. But then, you know, I have these moments
before I came in to record this session. I went out to take a quick break and
my daughter's lying on the couch and I was going to go like check the mail
and walk back into my office, but she like pulls me into
the couch and she wraps me in her arms and she
kisses me and she's like, daddy, I love you.

(50:23):
Then she looks at uh, my uh, wife and goes, aren't
we adorable together?
And that is the sort of
encounter that reminds me that this is not about being
productive. My daughter is
precious because she is beautiful and wonderful and
was from the moment that I met her for the first time.

(50:44):
And I love the ways that when we tend to these
decisions, and there are also ways, I just have to say, to tend to
these decisions that lead us to decide not to have kids as
well. That has always been a choice
historically that people have made that when
we tend to these things, it begins to blow apart the
mechanistic economies that have captured our
imaginations.

Ben, listeners can't see how much I'm nodding my head. It's
almost about to fall off
the realization. And thank you for calling me out because that was a
huge learning for me. The fact that I had equated
motherhood to not being
useful was a huge wrestling I
had to deal with and a really real unpicking of what we

(51:25):
valued in our society. And I have to say, in
my very short experience as a parent so far, uh,
my favorite moments, I tell you, I am not
contributing to gdp.
They are small, they are beautiful.
No one's getting any of my money. Yeah. At those small
moments that you recognize that you pulled out there, Ben, it's

(51:45):
what is filling me up.

Mhm. Yep.

I so appreciate the way that you
shared a real intentional practice
around imagining a beautiful future
that might be radically different
from what we're living in right now,
perhaps must be radically different
from what we're living in right now, but is beautiful
and imagining, uh, yourself into

(52:12):
that. I was reflecting on the way
I told Liz I would introduce
myself at, you know, a mom's group or how I might share
what I do with fellow parents.
I kind of hit this point of wanting to
say the work I'm doing
is around how we

(52:32):
might turn towards one another, how we might
love one another into
a beautiful future.
The challenge when I say that
I've been reflecting on this, I think it might be the difference between
adaptation and mitigation in
some ways. What you were describing in terms of I need to, I

(52:53):
need to do things, I need to get people on board, I need
to change things. You know, like it's this,
like we have 10 years and here's the
list of the tech we got to deploy and the
changes we got to make. Adaptation still
requires a ton of urgency, but it
also, it acknowledges a
way in which the world is super

(53:16):
broken right now. That in my
conversations with other parents, I
think that's the taboo part to
raise. Saying that I do climate work and
I like, I don't know, I work for a, uh,
compost nonprofit or something, which I
totally think composting is awesome. That would be
more palatable than me trying to work on people loving

(53:38):
one another better in a world that's broken.
Because it means I'm kind of saying
our world is broken enough that we need to be talking about love.
Uh, so anyway, I've just been really reflecting on like, what is,
what is the thing with fellow parents or even
just other people in our lives that makes it so hard
to talk about, you know, for you, why

(53:59):
spending so much time imagining a beautiful future
is so compelling
is so worth doing.

I recognize the tension in myself
kind of shifting from mitigation to
or, and um, including or leveling
adaptation on the same
parallel because I think there's that, uh, again, it's
probably that kind of capitalist, must win, must
finish, must complete kind of

(54:27):
notion being like, well, well, you know, hold on a
second. We can't talk about adaptation yet. And you see that
reflected in, you know, right up the scale when it comes to the
big climate change conferences as well, particularly those
of us from countries or the conversation from countries
where they're being less impacted yet are, uh, contributing the
greatest amount to the problem.

Mhm.

I feel like it's a hard pill to swallow. It
almost feels like that matrix moment. Right. But once
you swallowed it, once you've swallowed it,
then like are, uh, the whole, the layers peel back
again. You go, okay, well if, if
I'm going to keep my head above the parapet, you know, if I'm going To stay here.
I'm going to stay conscious to what, to what's really going on,
what, how am I going to sustain myself and what's the

(55:11):
practice? And then we come to these imagination
practices. Centering care, centering love,
coming back to our family, that, you know, and all
of those sorts of practices that. But it took me a while to get there.
Nicole M.

As you say that it reminds me of the reason why on
weekends I love working out on the land. Yes, the
world is falling apart, but my daughter needs hugs, the
chickens need fed, the trees need planted.
And the great thing about, about farming is
actually you are doing a lot of embodied
imagining into a possible future. We planted three

(55:47):
apple trees this spring. They look like
sticks. I mean they're just like sticks stuck in the
ground. There are a few leaves on top. And we
have the audacity to imagine that
someday these will grow into great trees that are
going to feed our family and others. And that is
kind of an act of embodied
imagination that I find kind of helps keep me sane and keeps

(56:09):
my head able to keep my head above the
parapet where oftentimes what I'm looking out of seems very highly
distressing.
Uh, I guess I was really curious, Sophia, as you were
talking about that what you're
imagining that future looks like.

The specifics are hazy, but what
is very clear to me is that we
are living lightly
and I think lightly in terms of the
different types of work and whether that's gdp,
accountable work or otherwise, that takes up a
portion of the day. Like you say, closer to the land. Like there's

(56:45):
a lot of new skills to get ready for that I
hopefully get there at some point and
in, in, in community with other
people. And so that is kind of the
carrot. And um, the practice that I'm doing right
now with my 7 month old is going,
okay, co housing, what does that look like?
It's kind of burgeoning area of alternative

(57:07):
forms of living. So we are now going to visit all these different
places and treating them like mini holidays. But it's a
pract think Jane McGonagall calls pulling the future
in. And once you kind of see the pockets of it, it
makes that uh, that like leap so much closer
and so much more plausible. The other practice we're doing is kind of
questioning the education. I mean he's only seven months old, but

(57:27):
it's like, is the educational
system particular? You know, I can't speak for in the US but in the
uk are we just churning out people ready for late
capitalism, which Gives, oh yes, you
know, the paradigm's already shifted.
So actually what are alternative forms of education?
And all I'm doing now is being curious and open
and I'm finding that really energizing.

(57:50):
So learning about Steiner and all these kind of other alternative
models and that keeps
me, it feels like I'm building those small little
blocks whilst at the same time being open
to kind of the unfolding situation
today.
I'm really curious, actually, just kind of throwing the baton back to
both of you as a

(58:11):
first time parent and like
curiously kind of being a sponge to hearing other people's
experiences. What do you wish you had
known or been exposed to around
your decision around becoming a parent or those
early hazy months
of the parenthood journey?

There's uh, a reason people say, oh my goodness, enjoy
every moment. It's, you know, will be gone before you know
it. I mean, I think there's a truth in that.
But then to feel like, ooh,
damn, I didn't appreciate that last couple hours,
that was like really kind of stressful
to be like, that's okay, that's normal.

(58:53):
I mean, Ben's on number three,
so may have like, I feel like it
starts to get normalized by, by number three
and it's just sort of a different thing. But first
time parenting,
just an acceptance of this is going to
be hard. So let's support one another through it. Which
I think is kind of something we could say about climate change

(59:15):
too.

Yeah, yeah. As you were saying that, I feel like
my experience of having kids is it's always a
willful choice to lose control of your own life for
multiple years. So three
kids, eight and under, we are like the very
bottom of the kid hole. And uh,
there's just parts of our life we don't

(59:36):
control. Will our almost one
year old daughter, will she sleep? I don't know if she's going to sleep
tonight. Will the fact that she sleeps or not sleep have a
large impact on the rest of the household?
Absolutely. What, you know, it's, and
you just, you have no control and you learned that actually
that could actually be okay. We can learn not to be in control.

(59:56):
Which feels to me like uh, uh, a,
uh, climate lesson, especially for those of us who come from privileged
contexts, that is almost too on the nose. Like you can
learn to not be in control and it's okay. And paired
for that with me has been this need to
continue to run towards my sense of joy and
fun. Being a parent of small children is
endlessly entertaining. They're hilarious. They

(01:00:19):
Are adorable. They are responsive. They say the most
amazing things. And I am just constantly
surprised and delighted by what is happening in
my life. I try whenever I
have that moment where it's like I could write an email
or I could play basketball with my son,
I try to just always lean towards basketball or

(01:00:40):
this ridiculous game that we call chicken soccer that
I've talked about that I play with my two older kids or
whatever it might.

>> Nicole Diroff (01:00:46):
Be that does not involve kicking chickens. Right?

>> Ben Yosua-Davis (01:00:49):
It does not involve kicking chickens. It involves me playing
soccer against my son with my daughter on my
shoulders while clucking loudly like a
chicken.

Better. Better than kicking chickens.

They love it. They love it. This is like our annual summer tradition
now, where I get to go and embarrass myself in front of all my
neighbors, running around our front yard
clucking like I'm turning into poultry.
That's actually amazing. How often did I get a chance to do
that when I didn't have kids? The answer is never. No one asked me
to play chicken soccer when I had no children. And now I get

(01:01:20):
to play chicken soccer every summer. And I think it's really important
to lean into those moments of fun and
joy. It's one of the things I learned from parents on this island
where I lived is that, uh, actually parenting, it can be hard, it can be
tough, but it also can just be a lot of fun.

Well, and I think just to reflect for a moment, chicken
soccer is those things you named
Sophia. It's living lightly,
living spontaneously, living joyfully, living
close to the land, being in community
with other humans that you care about.
It's so untechnical, it's almost
ridiculous. Kids do bring out

(01:01:56):
this. This way of actually just being
and not doing.

>> Sophia Cheng (01:02:01):
Thank you for these nuggets of wisdom. I'll take them with
me. And yeah, I feel like I'm learning from Finley
every single day about being versatile is doing.
Thank you so much.

Remind me what a seven month old is
like. What? What is parenting? A seven
month old. And if you can in the
uk, you know, like, what is that?
What is that like in the United Kingdom?

Well, there's no British accent to wrestle with
just yet, but, uh, he's certainly finding his voice
and his range, vocal range, as well as
finding his teeth. So that's like a whole new
exploration. We are journeying through
food and, uh, the weaning journey and baby led
weaning, which is super exciting. And

(01:02:45):
just keeping a constant eye out to check whether it's
gagging or choking, gagging or choking. Gagging's okay.
Choking, not okay. You can hear gagging. You
can't hear choking. So it's this constant kind of high
alert. But he's rolling, he's
starting to cruel. And, um, the piece we're doing now
is kind of that socializing piece. So there's a lot of.

(01:03:06):
We're really lucky in the uk there's lots of really
accessible parent and baby classes.
So kind of bringing him into those spaces and
watching him interact with other small people.
Yeah. Is kind of what is center
of our lives now. And not to mention the sleep. Ben M.
I'm hoping, you know, he went down about an hour ago, so.

(01:03:26):
M. Fingers crossed for a good night.

We'll cross our fingers with you.
Thank you, Sophia, for joining us today. How can
those listening who want to learn more about your creativity
and your inspiring work at uh With Many Roots
find you?

Thank you, Ben and Nicole for having me. It's been such a
pleasure and a real joy to share
these topics, the kind of heavy ones and the light
ones, uh, with you and your listeners. Uh, you can find out more about
me and With Many roots@, uh,
withmanyroots.com those are tree
roots. And our focus is on delivering
education for the Anthropocene and really kind of

(01:04:03):
picking apart the systems. We call it
throwing water on the spider web. You can't change the system
if we can't see them. So helping groups of people
find those and their
levers of influence. And we've got our, uh, Clifi
Imaginarium up there. You'll find some of Peterson's
CLIFI up there as well. So do check it out. It's right at the
top. Once you visit with many roots.um.com

(01:04:26):
in.

Each episode of the Climate Changed Podcast, we provide
suggestions on how you can engage in meaningful
climate work or enhance your current work.

We are committed to sharing significant,
achievable and measurable
actions. Sophia, what
might you suggest?

So I think based on some of the themes that came up for me and helped
me to be bolder, more courageous in the life choices that I've
made is that practice of future dreaming,
particularly if you are prepared to take
in the bad news. Having, uh, a
space and a practice for being open to what could happen,
or defining, giving shape to that carrot,

(01:05:05):
for example, has been a very valuable exercise for
me. And I kind of encourage others to do that as well. And I
know that happens here. I encourage you not to do it on your
own. It seems to be so much more effective when we can do
some group dreaming together in your local community
or an online community. For example.
The call to action, if I could quote Rob

(01:05:25):
Hopkins, is to make the future so
delicious that, uh, we are longing to be
there.

Yeah, that's great. Liz
Rush and I talked about parent
groups where serious conversations
about climate change may not typically be
welcome. But I
invite our listeners to look
for climate cafes where those
conversations are intentional. And

(01:05:52):
I know there are several climate
cafes specifically for parents. So
if you are a parent and listening, I invite
you to find one of those. Or
maybe you even want to create something
yourself. So perhaps you want to find
a way to give parents
and potential future parents or people

(01:06:15):
who are wrestling with decisions around
parenting. I'll toss in there. Give
grandparents an opportunity to
consider what it means to be involved
in children's lives in a climate changed
world. You don't need to be an expert to
host that kind of conversation. And in
fact, those of us here at the BTS

(01:06:36):
center are, uh, really hoping to equip you.
So we have created a study guide that goes
along with this episode. You can invite people
to listen to the podcast in advance or
bring them together and we'll have a suggested
segment for you to listen to together
and use the discussion guide as a resource

(01:06:57):
to structure your conversation.

We've mentioned this before, but a, uh, practical and
meaningful activity for parents to do with their children
is to create a 72 hour emergency emergency
kit. With ever increasing risks arising
from severe weather, children can feel anxious by
storms, wildfires, heat waves and what Dr.
Kathryn Hayhoe calls global weirding.
By creating the kit with your child, you can help relieve some

(01:07:21):
of the stress. The Red Cross has a list of items you
can put into a 72 hour emergency kit.
Visit RedCross.org and do a search
for emergency kit. You will find detailed
lists and even activities for children.

When creating this kit with a child in your
life, encourage them to customize it with
things they would like to have during an
emergency. This could be a, uh, special
stuffy or snack
a favorite game. To make an even bigger
impact, consider taking photos of the
process and sharing it on social media.

(01:07:56):
And once you have your emergency kit, you
and your child can show it to friends
and neighbors and offer to help them
create their own. Have fun with it. Now, as
she has done in each episode this season,
one of our producers, Anna Barron, has some
more suggestions for you to consider.

>> Anna Barron (01:08:16):
Thanks, Nicole.
As, uh, someone who is considering becoming a parent
at some point myself, I found this episode
particularly thought provoking in my
circles of friends. We are all grappling with the notion of
bringing more children into this world while the threat of climate
change is so real and rapidly approaching. Coaching
I was personally inspired by this episode and

(01:08:38):
I'd love to share some more invitations with you, our
listeners. First, if you are a
parent, I invite you to seek out someone who is
not, and vice versa. Set
aside 30 minutes for a conversation about the decision
to have children in this climate changed world.
What are the differences in your perspectives?
How might you come together to help impact

(01:09:01):
the future of children's lives on this planet?
Consider sharing reflections from your conversation on your
social media so that other friends might be
inspired to have the same conversation.
Next, I invite you to visit
climatekids.org this website
has many great resources for engaging children in the
climate crisis. If you click on the resources

(01:09:22):
button under the Learn with Us tab, there are different
activities for children like climate Bingo
and a, uh, climate scavenger hunt. Consider doing
one or two of these activities with your child.
This will help them become more aware and learn to care
about the natural world. You can help them
understand that it takes a community and not any

(01:09:43):
individual to care for the earth. That way, these
activities won't be too overwhelming and they may be inspired
to share them with their friends. In fact, to
take this invitation a step further, I, um,
invite you to share one of the activities that you found useful
with your child's teacher or another parent so
that they might be inspired to do the activity with more

(01:10:03):
children. Once again, the website for these
resources is called
climatekids.org that's
climatekids.org
as always, if you do any of these next
steps, please feel free to share them with this
episode on your social media so that some of your friends
might be inspired to do the same. There is no

(01:10:25):
pressure to do any or all of these next steps.
We just want these to be a resource for you as you figure out ways to
engage in this huge and overwhelming topic.
Thank you to Liz and Sophia for broadening my own
perspective on parenthood in a climate changed world.
And a special thank you to Ben and Nicole for bringing me onto
the team this season. It has been such a joy.

Thank you, Anna. Ah, and um, thank you for being such an
important part of the climate change podcast team.

And I want to give a huge shout out to Sophia for
joining us as a special guest in the studio
today. It was so amazing to
expand the conversation from Ben and I to include
you.

Oh, uh, thank you so much Nicole and um, Ben. It's been a
real pleasure my face is a little bit
sore from all the smiling and the giggling. This conversation will stay
with m me. Thanks very much.

I also want to thank Elizabeth Rush for deepening the conversation
with us. Learn more about Liz's writing and
social media visit
elizabethrush.net thank you
listeners so.

Much for joining us today for this episode of the Climate
Changed Podcast. We have already
begun production of Season four. If you
have an idea for a topic or a guest,
please contact us. You can leave a voice
message at the following
207-200-6986

(01:11:47):
that's
207-200-6986
plus one if you're calling from outside the
USA like Sophia or please
email us. That email address is
podcasthebtscenter.org
podcasthebtscenter.org
we.

Have included links to our guests, our invitation to
next steps, and much more at our website,
climatechangedpodcast.org we
also have show notes, the discussion guide, and a full
transcript of this episode. That website again is
climate changepodcast.org
our uh podcast is produced by Peterson Toscano and
Anna Barron. Climate Changed is a project of the

(01:12:29):
BTS center in beautiful Portland, Maine.

In addition to our podcast, we provide free
resources for spiritual leaders and many
online and in person events and cohorts.
Learn more by visiting the
btscenter.org that's
thebtscenter.org thanks
listeners. Be well.

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