This episode is for anybody whose heart breaks at the thought of bringing kids up on a dying planet. And for every parent who has felt guilty about every decision they made to prioritize convenience over the environment. And for every parent who has felt shame for having kids in the first place, and wondered how to align their chaotic, overwhelmed lives with their ecological values. And for every parent who has wondered, how do I talk to my kids about climate change, much less prepare them for that future?
This week on Climate Magic, Elizabeth Bechard, author of Parenting in a Changing Climate, helps us wrestle with these difficult questions.
Shownotes:
- Bechard’s bio on Mom’s Clean Air Force
- Bechard’s book, Parenting in a Changing Climate
- 2018 IPCC Climate Report
- Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope in the Dark (for quote on activism as a dive into the deep)
- Katharine Hayhoe website
- Yale Center for Climate Communication
- Ashlee Cunsolo’s Climate Magic episode about grief literacy
- Climate Mental Health Network resources for parents
- Christiana Figueres’ The Future We Choose
- Joanna Macy’s work
Transcript:
BECHARD: I think , you know, for me has really brought home we have to sit with each other, with impossible questions and unthinkable grief. When we numb ourselves to grief, we also, also know, numb ourselves to beauty and love.
RAY: Welcome to Climate Magic, where we talk about the relationship between climate change and our hearts and minds. I'm Sarah Jaquette Ray, a professor at Cal Poly Humboldt and fellow climate-despairing human.
BECHARD: One of the things that we know from research is that parents' own emotions about climate change can be something that gets in the way
Today I’m talking with Elizabeth Bechard. Elizabeth has had a winding journey toward what she does now, starting with being a coach, then a fertility coach, then a climate coach as her concerns round the climate emergency mounted. This led her to getting more involved around structural change and And she's now the public health manager for mom’s clean air force an organization that works on improving legislation around environmental harms in this kind of risk. Her book, Parenting in a Changing Climate Tools for Cultivating Resilience: Taking Action and Practicing Hope in the Face of Climate Change.
Elizabeth also holds a Masters of Science in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where her thesis research focused on climate change and parents' mental health.
In our conversation, we trace her journey with fertility and coaching to climate awareness and wanting to support parents with the hefty challenge of raising kids in a climate changed world.
Children are terribly impacted by climate change, and they'll inherit the planet we're leaving them. This makes parenting in this moment of poly crisis particularly challenging.
We talk about the burden on mothers to save the planet while raising children. We talk about what skills kids will need for their futures. We talk about how parents can talk about climate change with their kids, starting with facing their own worries and emotions about climate change.
Elizabeth explains that parenting offers an immense amount of opportunity for climate action, rather than getting in the way of it, as many of us might think. I know I do. And when we think about why our kids need us to develop a daily practice of living into a world we desire.
If you experience feelings of anguish and heartbreak when you think about raising your kids to love a planet that is being systematically destroyed, then this episode is for you, and I'm with you. I think you'll find some solace and tools. Let's dive in.
Welcome to the show, Elizabeth Bechard
Bechard: So nice to be here. Thank you for having me.
Ray: I can't wait to dive in to talk about parenting and the climate crisis. Tell us about your journey.
Bechard: Oh, gosh. Well, you know, I think back to the year 2018 when I think about kind of how this journey began for me, and to paint a picture of you, of that year for me: I had two year old twins, and was just clawing my way out of the fog of early motherhood and having had a pretty difficult journey to pregnancy, and a challenging pregnancy itself.
And there was this stretch of, really a period of a few weeks when, you know, my awareness of climate change just kind of crashed, like crashed open. And it started, actually, with the death of my grandmother. I lived in North Carolina at the time, and she, you know, spent most of her almost 100 years in coastal North Carolina, in a town called Wilmington, and that's, you know, the place on the planet where I feel the most rooted, where it feels like home. You know, it's just like a generational home for me.
And she passed away, and that was very sad. But then several weeks later, Hurricane Florence hit the coast of North Carolina, and it just battered Wilmington. And I remember this moment of seeing pictures on the national news of the cemetery where we had just buried my grandmother, just, you know, damaged by the hurricane. And it really, I think, like, this very personal sense of, like, climate grief hit me in that moment of like, Oh, wow. This is changing the places that we love. And it hit me, I think because of, because I was already sort of broken open with personal grief, like, in a very particular way.
And then a few weeks after that, the 2018 IPCC report was released, and this was this, you know, major climate report that was accompanied by really frightening headlines saying things like, you know, we've got 12 years left to save the planet. And I remember just thinking at the time, but that was less than the length of my kids' childhood, you know, they wouldn't, they would barely be in high school, you know, when those 12 years were up. And there was this sense of just a ticking time bomb. And it really sent me into a deep pit of climate despair to be quite honest.
You know, it was sort of this mix of, you know, personal grief, but also grief for my kids, grief for the world. And I would say it took me around six months or so to find my way out of it, and I really struggled at that time to find people who were talking about the emotional experience of what it was like to have brought young kids into a world that felt like it was falling apart.
And I know, I think many of us are having that feeling now too, right? Like this feeling is not lessened in the years since, I think the skill that I was able to draw on at the time was having been a coach for several years and and knowing a lot about behavior change and and how to ask questions that really get at the the root of who people want to be in the world and what kind of lives they want to live, and what kind of, you know, legacy they want to leave. And feel really lucky that I had that skill set to draw from, and slowly was able to, I think, kind of pull myself out of that pit of climate despair and feel like I was finding ways to actually engage in climate action, and I haven't stopped since. Sometimes I feel like I should take some more breaks and try to but that's the that's the origin story.
Ray: Yeah, you were, you were starting to say, before we started recording here, that you're in a different place right now than when you wrote the book. So I was, I would love to hear what you were about to say when we started, yeah. So why are you in a different place?
Bechard: Yeah. I've been working for an amazing organization called mom's Clean Air Force for almost four years now, and that role started after writing the book, and it has really been transformative in so many ways, in the sense of getting to work every day and get paid to work every day with amazing mothers and other women who are working so hard to change the systems, right, and to push for policy change,and have gotten to do in that role things I would have imagined before, like testify in front of the EPA and, you know, submit, you know, letters to Congress, and really be engaged in government processes in a way that I didn't have, that didn't have that experience before.
But I think, you know, when I wrote the book, initially, I had felt really intimidated by, you know, all the, all the resources I could find on climate change were written by experts and people who seem to know a lot about climate change, or whose, you know, career background was in in climate change and and I had a hard time relating to that initially. And so my hope, I think, with writing the book, you know, back in 2020, 2021, was to I could show people who weren't experts that there are ways to engage, and you don't have to be, yeah, you don't have to make it your whole career to take climate action, like I have done that, but you absolutely don't have to to be meaningful part of climate solutions.
Ray: I'm still, I'm still kind of wanting to be in your origin story to help people listening feel that sense of identification, because you've turned your whole life around to be in this work. And that is the end result of a lot of tiny little steps. And so the first tiny little step from your book really seemed to be about figuring out what right in front of you with two tiny little children could be possible. And the original thought you had was, I can't, I can't do anything, given the definitions of what climate action looks like, and has been told to me, I that feels just so overwhelming, and I can't really do any of that. How did you come to see climate action in a different way, and as something that could be and should be, something that is as intimate as parenting and in the home?
Bechard: Yeah, I really appreciate that question. I mean, I think that there, if you were to Google the word activist, right, you're going to find images of young people at protests, like holding signs and so that was kind of, you know, a stereotype I had about what it meant to be an activist.
And I'm not, was not only a parent of young kids that you know at the time when I was first really learning about climate change, but also an introvert, and still am an highly sensitive introvert, and I hate large crowds and I hate protests, and that's not ever going to be my thing, because I just find it so overwhelming.
And so I realized that I had to find a different way to define, like, what activism meant to me, or there was not going to be any way I could see myself in that identity. The stereotypes that we hold about activism can really be quite limiting for people with young kids, especially like, you know, if there's multiple kids or, you know, very young. I mean, it's just such an overwhelming stage of life, right? And continues to be just in different ways.
And so I think finding ways to fit activism into the small moments that you have. I remember one of the things that was one of my earliest practices was I had programmed the phone numbers of my representatives into my phone on speed dial, so that I didn't have to, like, think about it, and then if my kids were at the playground or taking a nap, I would, you know, spend two minutes, literally only two minutes, like to just call and say, Hey, I care about climate change, and I want you to do something about it.
And that kind of got me into the practice of just being engaged in contacting the government and telling them that this is a priority, and I think Mom's Clean Air Force now would call that nap time activism.
So that's, you know, one small place to start. I also remember writing a lot of postcards to voters, you know, in those first few years, because that was something I could do while pumping breast milk, or, like, you know, watching brainless TV at the end of a very long day of having worked and take care of taking care of twins.
And so, you know, finding things that I could meet the capacity that I had at the time were really important, because that capacity felt quite limited. And, you know, I think from a coaching perspective too. I think I really have always appreciated the idea of practice, and I think as someone who practices meditation, I know you'll probably appreciate this too.
But you know where you start is not where you end up always, and it's sort of this gradual journey of like showing up again and again as a different iteration of yourself each time, and hopefully growing a little bit and in who you are, you know, along along the way, but, but never seeing anything that I was doing as an end point, but always as, okay, this is what I'm practicing right now. And the next stage, you know, when it's when I'm ready for it will help me grow a little more. So that's been a helpful way to think about activism, too.
Ray: I love that because that's not saying I need to get from A to B. And so there's this, like, logical plan and path, and I'm going to map it all, and by the time I'm at the end of that path, I'm going to have, you know, total and complete power over climate change. And then, and then I'll feel good about myself, and I'll feel like the task is accomplished. It's like, no, just surrender all of those pretenses as not how this game works. Yeah? It's like Rebecca Solnit talking about activism being a dive into the deep more than it's like a game of chess, yes?
Bechard: Yeah, just dive. Just do the dive and see what happens. You never know what will happen. If you have if you'd wait till you plan it all out perfectly, you'll be doing that for the rest.
Ray: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So coaching. You haven't talked much about coaching. You're now in Mom's Clean Air Force and really involved at this sort of other level, but coaching is a real central part of your book. Your origin story really comes out of coaching and feeling something missing in coaching and wondering how to bring climate into coaching, it, of course, gives you all this wonderful expertise around inner work for social change and inner work for personal well being.
But how does fertility coaching, which was really your jam– can you speak about fertility coaching in particular, and how that shaped your climate coach move, which then shaped your move into this sort of more structural change thing? And along the way, while you're describing all that, you have this beautiful section in your book where you talk about the personal change story not being good enough, and how you titrate that, or how you see that as a non binary, not as binary as you know, this binary between personal change that's happening at the level of how you listen to your children as a micro example of action, climate action, or have being a feminist parent as a climate action versus the kind of structural change that a lot of activists say is really what we need, and that other stuff is just a distraction.
So you have that beautiful critique of that binary of individual versus structural change, but it really starts with your inner, inner journey, work of being a coach, right?
Bechard: So, yeah, yeah, no, the fertility coaching. I think initially, how I ended up there was because of my own experience. You know, we had a difficult journey to pregnancy with severe infertility and having to go through some challenging processes that you know, probably many people listening to this will have been through themselves and a lot of really difficult ethical questions along the way in terms of thinking about what is the most ethical way to do this right?
And so I think that process really forced me and my husband to think in ways that we might not have otherwise about, like, what does it mean to bring a kid into this world? And I have to make all these decisions that are going to affect them for the rest of their lives without knowing how it's going to impact them or what they'll think of the decisions that you know that we made about how to bring them into the world.
But you know, you know, I'll share that we ended up using donor sperm to conceive my kids. And you know, also had had pregnancy loss as part of my journey and and so because of my own experience, was moved to support other people going through fertility challenges and pregnancy loss, and felt really drawn to that and remember this stretch of time, probably around the same time as this cluster of you know, things that happened in 2018 with hurricane and the you know, major climate report of just hearing clients express doubt about what it meant to bring a child into the world.
And when, you know, when bringing a child into the world is not an easy thing, like for many people who do need donor eggs, and for many queer couples, there's a whole lot more thought that has to go into each try, right? It's, it's a lot of investment of time and money and, you know, and emotional energy to think about, like, what am I really doing here? And if those tries fail, which often they do, because that's just part of the process.
Every failure, every pregnancy loss, can be at least a moment to think, is this really what I want? And I was starting to hear in some of my clients that feeling of the world is falling apart, like climate change is, you know, was really starting to come onto people's radars. And is this really what I want to do to bring a child into the world?
And that broke my heart, you know, I was already a mom at that point, and I think there was this moment for for me when I sort of moved, not away from coaching because I think you know, I don't have the space anymore to do that in my life I would love to get an argument, at some point, but I felt like I really needed to make the world a place where or to participate in making the world a place where people felt like they could have kids if they wanted to.
Right, like, not that climate change reason that people were choosing not to have kids or second guessing it, or going through so much emotional anguish about, should I do this or not? People really deserve to have a world where you know they feel safe having kids if that's what they want. And of course, everyone can make their own decision about that, and but it shouldn't be a decision that you know is made harder because you know of preventable environmental harms.
Ray: So you have this beautiful theme that runs through one of your chapters about people worrying about, what if the baby doesn't want to come? It's very moving.
It could, yeah, I'm just wondering if, if that helps with thinking that through. What was your sort of answer to that? How did you help people with that?
Bechard: You know, there's, there's not really an answer to that. It's, it's just being able to sit with the question, right? Like, what if the baby doesn't want to come? Like, you know, it's just one of, there's no, there's no right or wrong answer to a question like that. It's just, I think, you know, climate change, I think, for me, has really brought home how much we need to learn to sit with each other, with impossible questions and, you know, unthinkable grief. And that was one of those moments of like, well, I don't have an answer, you know, I can't tell this person what the right thing to do or not do is, but I can try to sit with them in their pain and be with them and let them know they're not alone.
And that person did have a child, and, you know, so that's, that's how that story turned out, and, and the child is beautiful and, and a really joyful being on this planet.
Ray: yeah, I think that's such a moving chapter. And I appreciated the poignancy of that question, and it really hit me in the gut and the heart. So, yeah, this question of, is it ethical to bring children in and how to spend so much time with that question right in the middle of the time of your life where you're the most sleep deprived and chaotic and it feels like the last thing on the list of priorities, and also, all of a sudden, you find yourself wanting to make all kinds of decisions for convenience and time and sanity that are really unsustainable decisions, and you have a beautiful section, and I had that feeling too, like, gosh, having a kid makes me want to make lots of ungreen decisions.
I am a terrible parent. And why have I done this? This is a terrible idea, and I have had those experiences too, still am having them, just over and over, and over, this cognitive dissonance of this is not my values.
How do you, what's your sort of in your book, you describe it, but how do you offer people some support in reconciling that dissonance or that painful I've had I have children, this feels terrible for the environment, not just the having had children, but the kind of consumption and decisions that come with it, the lack of support for parents, that means that they feel like they need to cut so many corners around decision making, the individualistic culture we live in, that means that we need to consume a lot of stuff to support us instead of have help.
You know, more collectivist societies might not need 50 million car seats. You know, that kind of thing you talk about in your book, how you went and borrowed a spring form pan. I mean, this is like such a great little, tiny example of what this looks like, imagining it at the macro level, we don't have the systems of collectivity and kinship that are sort of normal, the social norms of that. How do we ease that sort of pain of being in this individualistic structure where consuming our way through convenience of parenting just feels like the only way through for those of us who are in that kind of Western individualistic worldview, which is me and maybe you, maybe some listeners and where is the kind of sense of efficacy and yes as a parent, even with all these things going on, I have a really important role here.
Bechard: Yeah, it's such a great question. I mean, I think the place that I always try to start with that, like overwhelm, about maybe moral injury is, you know how my I might create it this sort of like sense of really being harmed by having to be complicit in systems that we know don't align with our values, and it's really through no choice of our own or fault of our own, just starting with compassion, With how hard it is, and how, you know, I was thinking, you know, the other day, like I was a much better parent in my head before I had kids.
And now, you know, like that, just the reality of, like, how much plastic ends up in your life, and how many things people give you, and how little time you have, and all of those, like single use party favors. But, you know, you had asked earlier, and I think it relates here too, about this sort of false binary that's often set up between like pushing for systems change and working for change at the individual level.
I think both are really important, right? And if I had, you know, really tired parent in front of me, he says, you know, what's the one thing I can do, you know? I would say, you know, take two minutes and call your representative, right? Like, use that five minutes and push for and go register to vote, right? Or push for systems change.
Like, if you have no time at all, like, that's where to put your energy. But if you can have a little bit more capacity, then you know, I think it's important to think about how as parents, we are teaching our children how to be in the world, right? And so that is a really important role, and one that we can like, criticize ourselves, but what we model for our kids is actually hugely influential in the kind of consumers that they will grow up to be someday, and how they will influence their peers, right?
And so I don't think we should say that any of that is insignificant, right? It doesn't have to be perfect, but you know those I do want to believe that the little choices that we make, especially if we make them unintentionally in front of our kids and talk about them like we're gonna go, you know, borrow this thing instead of buying it. Or, you know, we're gonna, you know, one thing my family has been working on is, like reducing the consumption over the holidays and like really making that an intentional thing that we've been talking about in advance, right? Like to sort of prepare them like we're going to do it a little bit differently this year.
Those intentional choices, even if they're not going to move the needle in terms of overthrowing, you know, bad government, climate policy, they are shaping my kids and what they're learning and who they I hope will grow up to be in the world. And I think that's what all all parents are doing. And we have to find ways to hold that with compassion for ourselves, you know, given just how much we're all holding, but also with the belief that the little steps probably matter a lot more than we think they do.
Ray: Yeah, I love that. You do a beautiful job in your book describing that, articulating that kind of critique of, well, what I'm doing with my children really doesn't matter. I think a lot of moms and parents can say it doesn't really matter. And also the easing, the rationalization that we might use. I know I've done it around I'm going to give up on the environmental stuff while I'm raising these kids because I don't have time for that. It's too hard. Whatever the answers are.
I also feel like I have a feminist part of me that says women, women or, you know, CIS, heteronormative mom, nuclear family moms, are the ones that are making something like 75% of the decision making in a household around the biggest things that have to do with the environment, what kind of energy use you use, whether or not you what kind of transportation you use, whether you're dry, drying your laundry or on the line or in the wash, in the dryer machine, or how you are composting.
I mean, I am still the only person in my family who will compost. I cannot seem to make it spread out beyond me. And so the consciousness around green motherhood falls once again, because it's considered private and invisible and not really meaningful by dismissing what happens in the home is kind of just not important. It's individual scale.
It has that effect of also really dismissing the power of moms, while also green motherhood tells us you're the one who has to fix the planet through your children. You've done the naughty thing of having children, and now you have to, you know, you know, repair your sins of this kind and overdo it on the green front.
And I see so many moms, sort of, you know, kind of over burdening themselves and really holding themselves to a crazy standard because they feel like they have so much to make out for. You don't write about this much in your book, but I'm curious if you have thoughts about the kind of myths of green motherhood, the burden on moms to be the ones to save the planet here, because they manage the home. What would you how do you help with that? Because I know I had, I had a reaction against that, and I said, bring on the dryer.
You know, my, you know, I don't want to do that. You know, if I'm not, if we're not going to have feminist feminism, making societies do better at supporting families. I sure as heck I'm not going to shoulder that myself, you know.
Bechard: yeah, I have, I do have thoughts about that. I mean, it's a huge amount of emotional labor for women to carry, you know, being the ones who are, like, holding the moral weight of like, all of these decisions, and also the moral shame of having had a uterus and done something with it, right? You know? Yeah, that's a whole lot to carry. I think about it a lot is like parents get a lot of especially moms get a lot of advice and very little care, right? And none of us need more advice.
None of us need more advice about how to be a better mom, a better parent, a better you know, whatever, like we're all doing the best we can, like, when the pressures of green motherhood are framed as, like, you should be doing this to be a climate conscious parent, right? Like, you know, especially when they come with, like, a checklist, like a 10 step process, which I am guilty of having participated in those too. So I understand that. That's like how media works, and like they love checklist, but really this like sense of like pressure to like conform to another set of ideals on top of all of the other ideals that we're already dealing with.
I fully agree that that is a lot. And I'm thinking, you know, again, as we're talking about the word practice, and how my own, like activism practice has, actually, I don't want to say that it's led me away from things that we do at the home, because we still eat mostly vegetarian, except for, you know, this one kid who likes Happy Meals occasionally, and we compost, and we do try to, you know, do a lot of things to to live, you know, in alignment with our values at home, but I spend much less time worrying about those things now that my job is focused on systems change than I did before.
And sometimes I feel guilty about that, like, that's definitely like some like, an active question in my head of like, Am I really doing as much as I should? And, you know, sometimes I fly for work, for example, and I really wish I didn't have to fly for a climate event next week, and I feel very conflicted about that, but I think where my practice is now is being compassionate with the capacity that I have, and sort of letting go of some of the pressures of green motherhood in order to use the energy I have to push for systems change in my work.
And so everyone's sort of balance of that equation might be a little bit different, right? And I don't think one place you could put your energy is better than another, but this individual a very individual practice of, like, how do we relate to the collective needs with the, you know, the capacity we actually have, which changes over time?
Ray: Yeah, yeah. And holding, I'm hearing and what you're saying, some invitation to not hold ourselves to some standard of perfection. There's this beautiful quote in your book. I can't remember who said it, but you know, it would be greater to have a million people doing climate actions imperfectly than a couple 1000 doing climate actions perfectly, or something like that.
Yeah, like, Let's just all be really imperfect about how we figure out what our climate magic is, you know. And I also love you talk a little bit about your book too, but this as you're describing this sort of shift that you described, from doing figuring out small actions in your home to how would that kind of politicized you even more around structural change.
And now, you're just not just coincidentally, in a job that is about structural change and parenting. You know, there's sort of a nudge psychology journey that happened there about if we do it a little bit, we're likely to do a little bit about in your book too, but this as you're describing this sort of shift that you described, from doing figuring out small actions in your home to how that kind of politicized you even more around structural change, and now you're just not just coincidentally, in a job that is about structural change and parenting.
There's sort of a nudge psychology journey that happened there about if we do it a little bit, we're likely to do a little bit more. And that little action that you take is likely to make you do a little more action. And you cite the Yale Center for Climate communication about this, and Katharine Hayhoe and talking about how important it is to talk to others about climate change, and how you sort of give this beautiful story of how that evolved into this other thing.
And I'm not saying everybody listening has to have this same kind of trajectory of sort of moving from the private to the public sphere on this, as you've stated beautifully, we need it all.
But one of the things I want to kind of focus in on about the private sphere, again, for folks who are really already feeling like I'm not enough, and it makes me feel defeated and I don't even therefore, want to try some of the things that you describe in your book as climate activism and broadening invitation to broaden our definition of climate activism, one of the things included raising children from a feminist perspective. You said this is not really something you can just take off a list or do once or or have it as kind of like a did we do our chores today? Kind of a thing. Can you share a little bit about why would you say that? And why is feminist raising children a kind of a climate action to you?
Bechard: Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of ways to think about it. I mean, one, one thing I think about a lot is how, you know, we know that women and girls are disproportionately impacted by climate change. And to sort of bring in the point about, you know, why it's important to educate women and girls because that they, you know, that empowers them to make decisions about their reproductive lives that they want to make. You know, from, from their own sense of agency and choice.
And, you know, feminist parenting is really a challenge. You know, it's something that has been much harder, I think then, you know, again, back to the point of I was a much better parent in my head, like before having kids, you know, having having, you know, a boy and a girl, like it has been, as you know, who are the same age. You know, they're twins, watching how rapidly the gender norms, like, just take hold from the outside, from who knows, where it just comes and like takes hold.
For example, in my house, my daughter is much more likely to be helpful and to clean things up and to cook. You know, she's nine years old, and she can cook dinner for us, and she loves that. And I'm so happy that she loves cooking. And I'm also, like, really conscious of like that is a gender norm that I, you know, would love for my son to also learn how to cook. And, you know, how do I, like, encourage him to do that in a way that respects her love for this and the fact that he's not drawn to this?
Or, how do I, you know, appreciate that she is more helpful around the house without, like, relying on her, because that's just easier. I'd like to think too, that, you know, if we can raise children to respect women for all of who they are, and respect their ability to be leaders and their desire to have, you know, meaningful careers, if that's what they wanted to have agency in their own lives, will, you know, hopefully, you know, lead one day to more women in power.
Women make better decisions about climate policy when they're in power, women tend to be more oriented towards care. You know, that's good for the earth. But you also talk about not just feminist parenting as this kind of lifelong shift of perspective that is a climate action that is very important at home.
Ray: But you also talk about, oh, gosh, I'm going to need to not just teach my children to be good humans and be fair and equal to everybody and have a feminist consciousness, but they're going to have to learn skills to live in a disrupted climate. And I want to kind of get real from it about that. That scares the heck out of me. I was raised in LA. I don't have any skills other than really good highway driving. I can parallel park like crazy, you know? I mean, not to be facetious about it, but this little bit like I wasn't taught those skills. That wasn't the world I grew up in. Those weren't the existential threats I was taught to be prepared for.
We're asking ourselves to invent a whole new skill set for climate change and then teach it to our kids. What would you say? Is the stuff people who are worried about our kids growing up in a climate change world, what do they need to have and know how to do? What are you talking about?
Bechard: I think there's so many ways to answer that question. I want to start with something maybe a little more abstract, and in that, I think we really need to teach our kids how to grieve, you know, and to have practices, inner practices and outer practices or grieving. I think that is going to be an essential skill, and I think you know for people who, you know maybe don't have a faith community in their life that that like the structure, the container for that can or that, can feel really missing.
I know that, you know, grew up the church, but left it maybe 20 years ago, and have really felt that absence of ritualized grieving and celebration that can be present in faith communities. I have felt that absence acutely as a parent, and I think that those skills, spiritual skills, are incredibly important, and still something that I'm wrestling with too, you know, I think, is someone who is, you know, spiritual, but not religious right. I haven't yet found the right fit spiritual home for me, and it feels very difficult to create that on your own right.
We're not really supposed to create it on our own right. We need community for that is hugely important, you know, in a more tangible level, like, I can sort of name some of the things that we've wrestled with.
One of the skills I have really thought a lot about over the last couple years is teaching my kids how to look at the air quality and to, you know, and to respond to that, you know when. And so this summer, I live in Vermont now, we had several days of poor air quality due to the smoke from Canadian wildfires, as did much of the US, and I would make a point of, like, break, you know, getting out my phone and telling my kids we're going to check the air quality today and see if we need to turn on the air filters and and see if we need to put on a mask outside.
And because at my job, I know way too much how wildfire smoke impacts kids' health. And I really, you know, wish I knew less, but, but I don't. And so I'm pretty careful about asking my kids to wear masks, you know, when the air quality is even in the code orange level, because I really want to protect their lungs. And so I wanted to teach them how to check for that kind of thing, because nobody else is teaching them that right now, right?
I remember having them help me make go bags maybe a year ago, and saying, you know, you know we're gonna do make this fun, like, we're gonna, you know, get some used backpacks and throw some, you know, stuff in there. And here's why we're gonna do this. And hopefully we'll never need it, but just in case, like, here's what we're here's what we're doing, right? And so that they know that I'm thinking ahead for what to do in case something happens, right? And I think there's, there can certainly be a fear of like worrying about making your kids anxious. And I think some kids might be more wired towards that anxiety. And I think everyone has to sort of know their own kid. But I think for my kids, really seem to appreciate, sort of having had a sense that there was a plan right if something were to go wrong, that, you know, mom and dad know what to do right, because we've been thinking about it ahead of time. There have been, I think, less successful efforts like gardening.
You know, in my my method of gardening is, you know, like benign neglect, I guess, you know, kids are probably gonna need to know how to grow food, right? And so I have tried to, like, let my gardening efforts be imperfect, and just to like, keep trying, even if all we get is tomatoes this year, right? A lot of tomatoes and nothing else.
Just to keep, keep showing up and and letting them see the learning process too, and not like pretending that I have a gardening expert and trying to bestow these skills upon them, that is not what's happening. It's like we're gonna we need to know this, and we're gonna learn together.
So even teaching them how to learn and how to be curious, like open minded, I mean, kids are already like even climbed towards learning, but like letting them see adults open to learning new ways of being, I think.
Ray: Are you able to talk a little bit into those beautiful, you know, starting with a grief practice, and knowing how to do that, I can't, well, let me just hang on to that. Why? Why do we need to have a grief practice?
Bechard: Things are dying, you know? I you know
Ray: But surely I can just ignore it. You know what I mean? I mean, what's like? Most people are sticking their heads in the sands, and that's turning out to be a very high functioning way of coping for a lot of people, and there's no punishment for that. There's no consequences for lack of grief literacy, as one of our Ashlee Cunsolo, came on for an interview, and she talked about the need for grief literacy as a skill. And I'm not I'm not arguing with you about it, I just clearly a lot of people are quite happy and thriving and functioning without grief literacy.
Bechard: I hear it? I hear that absolutely, I think, I think there are consequences, but there maybe aren't obvious ones, right? It's when we numb ourselves to grief. We also numb ourselves of beauty and love.
One of the things I did with my kids when our community pool was open is above 70 degrees, which is hot in Vermont, we'd go down to the pool. If we get there early, there would be all these little frogs that had jumped into the chlorinated water every morning. And frogs can't survive in chlorinated water, so we had this sort of like summertime ritual of trying to rescue the frogs, one frog at a time, just like pulling these like tiny frogs out of the chlorinated water.
I don't know if they'd call that a climate action or not, maybe, but not all of them were alive when we found them, right? Like there were some frogs that had just already died. Yeah, I remember, like my daughter sitting quietly with like the bodies of these little frogs that hadn't made it, and just honoring that and sort of like saying a little blessing for these frogs to, you know, get their little souls wherever they are meant to go.
Those are some of the most poignant moments of my whole summer. Of like allowing ourselves to kind of have a moment of a reef for the frogs I didn't make it like keep showing up for the ones that we could save in a season where so much has felt so broken and so discouraging and so much feels like it's falling apart. Just like rescuing frogs and holding little frog ceremonies felt incredibly meaningful, and that's the kind of thing that would be really easy to not do, that you could just ignore the frogs and like, swim through them, like we swam through all the other bugs, and rescue all the bugs the frogs, right?
Like, you know, maybe next summer will be more inclusive in our rescue attempts, but like you know it would be it would have been very easy to look away from that or to just not take that moment to like honor a little life but had moved on, I hope my daughter will remember that and be someone who takes a moment, and I see that she is right, like, she's, you know, the kind of kid who, you know, if a caterpillar will die, she'll, like, bury it under flower petals, right? Like, and I think those, I think that's kind of naturally who she is in life. I can't take credit for that, but I think that skill is something that, that grief, literacy, if you will, is something that I hope will serve her well and make her more open to the beauty too.
Ray: yeah, this is reminding me of this. You know, we, in general, Western capitalist culture tells kids, communicates to them some way or the other that if they're grieving over animals, the loss of animals or their favorite tree in their neighborhood or backyard, or grief over any kind of loss of nature, is a weakness, a softness, that is immature, that's childish, that when they grow up and mature, they won't feel that loss and feel that grief. They'll get over that.
And that's what it means to be an adult and strong in the world. And so I do think that there's a, yeah, children, generally speaking, have kind of a natural inclination towards that deep connection with the more than human world and and oftentimes it's growing older and getting accommodated to the world we live in that there's just, it's too to be that sensitive is just too much of a drag. You can't participate in the functioning of adult life if you've got that going on, right?
So there's, there's a real and of course, many other cultures don't have that problem, but in the sort of dominant society we live in, that's the water we're swimming in, and have that uphill battle to climb and to maintain that sense of affection and recognition for the more than human world into our adult lives, is not a sign of weakness. On the contrary, it's great courage to face that grief and face that other life with honor to me, oftentimes people will say to me, how do I teach climate change to my little kid? Or when I think about the K through 12 climate curriculum teaching climate change, I often say, Oh, hang on there. Don't go to disaster and doom before you've started with love and awe and beauty.
So I was wondering for for parents who are thinking, How do I even talk about this horrible thing with my children? Honestly, I haven't even really, I mean, I this is my entire life's work, and I haven't ever had the conversation with my kids with this is how bad it is. And I'm embarrassed to admit that right here, but I'll think about that. So right?
I have taken to an argument, which is very much that Attenborough argument, of they won't even know to grieve the thing that's lost if they don't even know the frogs are there, if they don't even see the frogs in the pool or care of them, about them as living creatures, you know, especially when adult life tells them to give up on that that's stupid.
So I don't know if you would like to sort of talk about advising parents how to bring climate change into conversations with kids, what that takes, how to do it.
Bechard: Yeah. I mean, I would. I would say one of the things that we know from research is that parents' own emotions about climate change can be something that gets in the way of these conversations like that fear of I don't know how to cope with letting my kids know how bad it is, and parents don't know what to say. They don't want to get emotional in front of their kids or trigger anxiety that in their children that they don't know how to cope with.
So first thing I always encourage parents to do when thinking about climate conversations with their kids, is to process their own emotions first, which is not a one time process, right? Like that's an ongoing thing you know that takes time, but most adults don't have my experience faces with other caring, trusting, you know, adults that they can really talk to about how they actually feel about climate change, and that's, I think one of the first steps is like, find other adults that you can grieve with that you can rage with that you can, you know, think about the kind of world you actually want, you know, there's so many emotions that we're carrying around like around climate change, with most of the time not even acknowledging it, just kind of looking away and on autopilot and doing all the things.
And then expected to somehow have conversations with our kids about existential threats when we've not had any time on our own to process the existential threats and how we feel about that. So I really am a strong believer that parents deserve that kind of support foundationally, right before we have this expectation that parents should be able to, you know, skillfully guide our kids through the apocalypse, right? We need our own support first, to be as resourced as we want to be as resourced as our kids deserve for us to be in those conversations.
And then, I think, once again, there's no perfect process to go through. It's iterative, because there's all kinds of things will keep coming up that will trigger climate emotions for most of us. Every time there's a new terrible disaster, right? Like that comes up for most of us, but once there is some support in place and some processing, I think, to your point, like helping our kids cultivate a love for the world that is courageous, and modeling that love for them, which is also courageous and and I don't want to say more courageous, but I know that in our generation, we we have an acute awareness of what is being lost in a way that our kids might not because they don't remember how summers used to be right, or how, you know, winters used to or what snow used to look like, right?
Like we have an awareness of that that they don't have, so that I know that for me, it takes a lot of courage to let my kids fall in love with things that are like going to disappear within their lifetime and then again, like that's what makes the grief practices important too, right, being able to honor both the beauty and the loss that comes inevitably with loving something in the world, anything right?
And then in a more practical level, there's so many resources now to support parents and having climate conversations with their kids that didn't exist just even a few years ago.
The Climate Mental Health Network has recently released some really amazing resources for parents that I would highly recommend anyone check out. There are all kinds of kids books about climate change emerging, you know, for kids of different ages, and I know that that was one of the ways that I would introduce climate conversations with my kids when they were younger was age appropriate books, right?
And just to begin that conversation, because kids are used to reading books and and using these tools and resources that exist to sort of just introduce these ideas bit by bit, I knew that I didn't with my own kids like I sort of took the theory of not wanting, you know a teacher that I might not know or trust to be the first person to tell them about climate change, because that doesn't always go well, you know, for kids in school. So I wanted them to hear it from me first, and not to ever have that moment of like, Why didn't you tell me?
Ray: yeah, yeah. I've agonized over this question a lot in my own parenting, and I do think a lot of listeners are going to have this question, right, like, what do I do? What do I do? What's the answer? And I think your point about, well, if you're finding yourself really struggling with confronting it, that's probably a sign that you have some work to do on your own emotions and facing it courageously. I love that you would say that your first invitation is think about what is showing up with you, and you find that anxiety producing, like, what's going on with compassion, you know, like maybe you're really afraid, and the genuine fear that we're raising kids and that are going to inherit a planet that is markedly different.
Many of them will have to leave where they are born and go some other places, not out of choice. There will be the increase of heat will make life much more difficult even if you just take the neuroscience of it, there will be more infectious diseases. There will be potentially more conflict and war and various other things, if we continue business as usual, the sort of status quo model of how things will go that is so unbelievably terrifying that I think some people are almost nihilistic about it, and I think that also leads a lot of people to saying, I'm not I'm just not going to have children. It's too high risk. I don't see how I in my life can possibly put us on a different trajectory. This is if this is inevitable, then forget it.
And I'll sort of wrap with this question here. I know your book, you talk about the importance of imagining the possibility of an actually thrivable future. And you talk about Christiana Figueres’ The Future We Choose, and all of these folks who write about if we just made slightly different decisions and use the tools available to us, as outlined by Project Drawdown, for example, we could do this. We could have something very different than that, apocalyptic fear, inevitable story of the great unraveling you described Joanna Macy's beautiful tool there about thinking about the thinking about the future as inevitably apocalyptic makes talking about this stuff makes doing anything about it seem all the more difficult for most people. It's not for everybody, but it is generally the trope.
And so one of the tools you suggest is to actively cultivate an imagination and think about solutions and steps towards building something better, avoiding harm, a universe in which everyone was pulling out frogs from the chlorinated pool, that that actually can have almost an effect for young people, especially, but for us too, of like a self fulfilling prophecy of that's the future we'll have If that's the way, the way we think, and Christiana Figueres talks about in terms of stubborn optimism or greedy optimism, I'm just wondering if what you'd say to sort of parents thinking, I think the world is going to be some kind of hellscape for my children. I can't even face talking to them about it. What alternative future?
Are you inviting them to potentially think about with their children? I love that question, and then I want to normalize and validate the feelings of it being terrifying and overwhelming and feeling hopeless at times. I mean, those are emotions that I have at times too especially being someone deeply engaged in climate work when, you know, there's just a tax on everything we're doing, and will be probably for the foreseeable future, right? It's it can be very hard to feel hopeful.
Bechard: And you know, I think we're always practicing the kind of world we want to live in, right? Like every one of us is doing that all the time, whether we're consciously doing that or unconsciously doing that. And I think it's worth the effort to like give you moments to think about, well, what kind of world do I want to practice?
And those moments can be hard to come by, if you're a parent, right, like, and I fully appreciate that, but we can't live into what we can't practice or we can't imagine, right. And because of you know all the things that have been happening right now, my mind is more oriented towards that longer timescale and what I hope for you know maybe a generation from now, more so than five years from now or 10 years from now.
Like, maybe we have to look at a little bit longer, but I certainly, you know, hope for a world where where care is valued. And I think if we valued care, the world would be very different and in lots of ways, and we'd be much further in addressing climate change and helping people adapt to what's coming if that were at the center.
Ray: yeah, and what I'm hearing, and that is a refusal to accept a totalizing worldview, explanation that humans can't care, that they're selfish and greedy and awful and evil. And anytime we are consuming media and stories and evidence that that is so we are, we are allowing ourselves to be a little bit consumed by that narrative and that worldview and that that has real consequences and damage, and that when we focus our attention on all kinds of stories and evidence and examples of people caring and acting on care, we actually magnify their work and are more likely to do that work ourselves.
You do talk a little bit about that in your book, social norms being the most powerful thing about behavior change, but I think it applies here to also the social norm of practicing the world we want every day. And I'm very touched by that. Thank you so much.
Is there anything else that you'd like to add as we sort of wrap up here, I love that invitation that you offered as one of the main practices of parenting and just humaning in this time.
Bechard: I really appreciated this conversation, and I guess this might be a funny note to end on, but I'm thinking that I don't want the people who are trying to tear down the world to win like I just don't want them to win like I want care to win, and the beauty and the love and the and deep respect for, you know, all living beings, I want that to win. And I think for me, there's, like, a righteous anger. It kind of comes to the surface when I think about, like, all it's worth fighting for. Yeah, there's a lot that's worth fighting for.
Ray: Yeah, I think there's something there about don't preemptively give up on things. It's not gonna do that. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, yeah. I love what you've offered here. Your book is a beautiful invitation to think of lots of different ways to think of yourself as a so called, quote, unquote, climate activist in the most micro level things that involve grief practices, there's a level there of saying my personal behavior and my personal way of living in the world may not change whole systems, and they're certainly shaped by the systems that I have no control over, but I can in the practices of my micro life and daily care and kindness, I can change the world around me, and I can practice out the world that I want to have happen more than the one I'm afraid of. And our children will model that, and they will have that to their friends, modeling that and that is a huge, huge contribution and a way of thinking about parenting in this terrible, terrible time that is really positive and feels good. You know it feels good.
Thank you so much. Elizabeth.
Bechard: it's so nice and totally wonderful to connect.
Ray: That was my conversation with Elizabeth Bechard, author of Parenting in a Changing Climate. You can find show notes for that conversation and listen to more episodes of Climate Magic on KHSU.org. I'm Sarah Jaquette Ray, and thanks for listening to Climate Magic.
