New book looks at how family planning should mitigate climate change

Meghan Elizabeth Kallman and Josephine Ferorrelli started an activist organization dedicated to issue

A new book focuses on how climate change has affected the decision to become a parent. 

The Conceivable Future: Planning Families and Taking Action in the Age of Climate Change, by Meghan Elizabeth Kallman and Josephine Ferorelli, will be released on Feb. 6. The authors call upon a radical change in family planning before 2030, when changes have primarily been designated as irreversible by most leading scientists. 

Kallman and Ferorelli are co-founders and co-directors of Conceivable Future, an organization created in 2014 to start a national conversation about the climate crisis and its effects on all our reproductive lives. In the book, they said they decided to write it because of their activist work. 

The central premise of their arguments is that people should build a sustainable future when deciding whether to have children and how many they should bring into the world. 

Two central events happened when they penned the book. First, the United States withdrew the Paris Accord, a 2015 agreement that called for climate mitigation. Then, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The latter was important because no one can plan family size if they don’t have a choice over reproduction. 

The authors call upon people to share their opinions, both publicly and privately. A political consciousness demanding change from elected officials should emerge through those conversations. 

The book addresses some discriminatory aspects of environmentalism, namely that it often focuses exclusively on individual choice and with the implicit belief that babies are carbon sins. Kallman and Ferorelli argue that ignores class, race, and gender problems. 

The authors say that being child-free is not a moral failing. It’s a choice that some made to preserve the climate. Yet, it is perceived as being outside the norm. People make people feel less like a woman for choosing that life. That doesn’t happen to men, as Kallman and Ferorelli point out. 

They interviewed Dr. Sandie Ha, who makes a series of points about how pollution, global warming, food and water scarcity, and other environmental problems have complicated birthing, with lower birth weight, miscarriages, and pregnancy complications. These issues disproportionately affect women of color, which further strengthens the connection between reproductive justice and environmentalism. 

Something I found fascinating, as a man considering children, was that pollution affects people’s ability to conceive. Experts have correlated pollution to decreased fertility. 

Another interesting aspect was how local authorities could address climate change. While most of us have focused on what the federal government does, there are things that zoning boards and other lower government bodies do that make a difference in how people experience climate change. The ability to have air-conditioning units sometimes is a matter of whether it’s been approved by the zoning board. The authors call for effort from all levels of government to address climate change. 

The authors then discuss populationist rhetoric, which is the belief that a larger population has led to fewer resources and a worse climate. They connect this to the rise of the Zero Population Growth movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I was disappointed that the authors didn’t interview Paul Ehrlich, who wrote The Population Bomb, the book that the ZPG movement grew out of. I spoke to Ehrlich for the publication of my next book. 

The authors argue that we should be more focused on stopping the use of fossil fuels than on controlling reproductive decisions. They also say that there are discriminatory and classist arguments contained in populationist views. Wo

Thankfully, the authors focus on childcare expenses, the biggest concern for most current and aspiring parents. It limits the ability to have lifestyles and the number of children they want. They call for more significant compensation and treatment for caregivers. And for more economic support for the parents who need it. 

Kallman and Ferorelli also briefly describe women-led movements, which, they argue, focus too much on reproduction as the central part of a woman’s destiny and life. They say there needs to be a more expansive and inclusive view of feminism. Framing it based on gender, reproduction, and sex gives feminists enormous power, but it also has limiting effects. 

In later chapters, the book discusses things like climate guilt and the desire of people to separate themselves from the “problematic” group. People have adopted behaviors that put them in an elitist group of those who are aware and are acting against climate change. Kallman and Ferorelli say that we need to think of the bigger picture and that, compared to previous generations, many of us live like emperors. All of us collectively need to change. 

They also extol the virtues of multigenerational homes, which lower depression and combat climate change. Polyamorous families, or those with more than one partner, are also something that Kallman and Ferorelli think have an appeal insofar as climate change is concerned. Some of those arrangements have legal discrimination from people and officials who have traditionalist views on marriage and relationships. With both types of family structures, there is more sharing of resources. 

Toward the end of the book, Kallman and Ferorelli call for a greater sense of community at the local, national, and international levels. We need to see that we are part of something larger, whether it be a problem or a group that can solve it. Kallman and Ferorelli’s work is timely and could make a difference.