Mothers fighting for climate justice

Chelsea always wanted to have children. Then it happened in 2020.

When the virus that causes Covid-19 began to tear societies, Chelsea and millions of others have fallen to try to protect themselves from an invisible and unpredictable threat. People moved to the streets in Black Lives Matter protests to demand changes in our social structures that distinguish against colored people. In Portland, Oregon, where Chelsea is a thick smoke of the worst forest fires in the history of the state throwing the city in a dark red shade, as if it was a kind of underworld.

As a therapist, Chelsea knew directly how these stresses affect mental health. Everything seemed uncertain, and instability seems not in line with her plan to become a mother.

“There was a lot of stress,” said Chelsea, who uses a pseudonym for privacy causes, told Salon in an interview over the phone. “It was not a safe time to bring a child to the world.”

Climate change increases increasing both the physical health of mothers and children and family planning decisions. People also become more aware Environmental impact on childbearing, Some choose to have children completely. But more and more mom activists meet together to fight for climate compensation so that their children can grow in a safe and sustainable environment.

“I think that everyone will agree that our children should have clean drinking water, healthy air to breathe and an opportunity for a stable future,” said Jenny Zimmer, CEO’s CIA executive director. Mothers in the foreground. “We are not asking anything crazy. We ask for a stable and healthy future for our children.”

Climate change has already directly affects the health of mothers and children: one 2019 Ticket I found higher temperatures that increase the premature birth rate. A review It was published last year, and found that things such as pollution are related to low fertility complications and pregnancy such as miscarriage. Sea level level has also been linked to infertility, And pregnant people with them Increased risk of climate related diseases such as malaria.

In 2023, the World Health Organization issued An invitation to work In order for countries to deal with the health of mothers and children in the light of climate change, something that the agency called a “blatant omission” in the current policy.

“Women and children are particularly vulnerable to infection and death in natural disasters,” said Chris Natalier, a sociology professor at the University of Flinders and a chief investigator of the mother’s futures. Ticket. “Since floods, wild forests and the like, women and children, along with other weak groups such as the elderly, will bear the burden of direct consequences and post -disaster challenges.”

Lauren leader, founder and CEO of Lauren, said that many mothers are already suffering from climate change, knocking their door in the form of increasing natural disasters such as forest fires, heat waves or air pollution that keeps their children at home or contribute to conditions such as asthma. All togetherA non -profit institution devoted to empowering women. When she was in the local city council in Harrison, New York, the floods were “just an ongoing issue in our town”, he told a salon leader in an interview via a phone. “When I think about who was the most active people in our society fighting against the worst traces of climate change, all mothers were.”

Zimmer said that many mothers join mothers in the foreground because they suffer from climate anxiety and feel exhausted because of the feeling of responsibility for alleviating the threats of climate change that their children face.

---

Do you want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to the SALON weekly laboratory notes.

---

Others come with specific decisions they want to see in their societies. In some judicial states, for example, mothers called for replacing old school buses, which It produces emissions that can exacerbate asthmaTo that electrical. They pay for improvements in water quality in their children’s school or fight for policies that increase the taxes paid by the fossil fuel industry. Zimmer said that one of the mothers called for the rebuilding of a road that her children had to cross to reach the school bus, which was flooded with deep water due to sea level rise.

In addition to mothers in the foreground, mothers in other active groups such as Clean Air Force mothersand Owful mothersthe Sunrise movementand East Los Angeles mothersOthers are fighting for climate compensation in local and national movements.

“The best antidote to despair is to work,” Zimer said in an interview on a phone. “We really see that when mothers gather and organize them – they are really official speakers for change.”

Although individual options can make a difference in emissions that contribute to climate change, teamwork is necessary to reduce the global warming rate to A necessary degree to prevent irreversible damage.

For Zimmer, which brings her children to the meetings of the city council and shares their activities, proving this feeling of society at an early age and shows its children who have the ability to make change is a way to combat the growing nihilistic feeling about climate change.

“My children can see that their parents stand on them and fight for a better future for them,” Zimer said. “For me, this shares with my children the value of being part of society and collecting collective responsibility for major problems.”

Ryan Fair, a web designer in Memphis, Tennessee, said that his partner was on the fence about the desire to have children – not only because of the amount of what the child could contribute to climate change, but because of the state of the world they were asking their children to grow up.

The protester holds the protection of your mother’s banners during the protest march on November 06, 2021 in Bristol, England. (Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images)“My wife and I decided to have a child, as much as we are afraid to be alone without any brothers,” Filler said in an email. “It is a great concern for not adding any pressure to the planet – its planet, every planet of our children – by the presence of a large family.”

Although the rate of national births is affected by many factors, including discounts in adolescence and women’s pregnancies later giving children, climate change has been distinguished as a A direct factor that made people have fewer children. In 2023 global reconnaissanceMore than 50 % of the participants said that climate change had affected their decision not to have children.

“It is not surprising that we hear people of childbearing age talking about not making sure they want to bring a child to this environment because of what appears to be a very dark possibility,” said Almeeta E. Coper, National Director of Health Justice at Moms Clean Air Force.

In the United States, Republicans are trying to enhance the birth rate for decades, with President Donald Trump currently Evaluating different ways to persuade women to have more childrenIncluding small cash incentives. Some argue that the decrease in the birth rate It hinders innovation and productivity And that the next generation is likely to be the one that comes with solutions to the climate crisis.

Regardless of how more children affect the environment or economy, the responsibility of our collective well -being often falls on the bodies of women. However, the reproductive choice is deteriorating quickly throughout the United States, as the crisis of mother and infants continues to exacerbate. Many incentives to increase the birth rate that does not address basic issues that contribute to a decrease in the birth rate – including climate change.

“These are interconnected and complex problems, and if the person does not have a clean air, clean water and a healthy environment to live in, how will the birth rate increase?” Cooper told a salon in a video call. “You must have a healthy setting in order to be able to do this.”

Against the background of the warming world that contributes to the thermal wave, the forest fires and the rise in the sea level, the Trump administration has expanded the degree in which the Environmental Protection Agency imposes emissions.

If people find the current environment appropriate to bring a child or not, this is their entire decision. Zimer admits that we are in an arduous battle with the climate crisis. But she sees her children as a source of hope.

“When I started as a young climate organizer, I was driven by this feeling of anger and anger that my future was strengthened by politicians and fossil fuel industry.” “After I gave birth to children, it is no longer about anger and my future. It is about my love for my children, and this is a good and more stable withdrawal.”

Veer says he is constantly worried about his daughter, and the two now, who grew up with a changing climate. But he finds comfort in the daily moments he shares with his daughter: I saw her with another child in the library or being nice with an animal that you find in their annihilation.

“I really hope you can withstand this gentle nature in the world as it is likely to be already needed,” said Feller. “You will really grow and be a scientist who invents free and permanent energy, but even if I will not do my best to raise it as a person who always does the right thing, even when it is difficult, and I think this is the type of the person the world needs to face the climate crisis.”

Chelsea, in the state of Oregon, contemplates a decision if children should have children for about a year after she started doubting this during the epidemic. She was thinking about the amount of sadness in the epidemic caused by the loss of ourselves or isolated from our loved ones. Administration of how much the family means to her, she decided to have a child.

She said, “I kept thinking about a good quotation. My mother told me when I was a child about whether I would be sorry to perform something or regret not doing something.” “I just think I may regret not having children.”

The process was not easy. She and her partner struggled for pregnancy and ended in the passage of a few rounds of egg recovery in the fertilization process in the laboratory. Then, one day in December, she became pregnant.

Chelsea is still factors in climate change in its decisions. While we talked on the phone, she sat in front of a pile of fabric diapers that are waiting for her to use her child. She and her partner shares one car instead of having two. They gathered all the substances of paternity and motherhood for the first time, such as the family of children and the self.

With the passage of time, I realized that the only thing she had to control was her ideas, feelings and behaviors. Having a child was not a dependent on what could happen externally. It was about the way her family imagined.

“Maybe I am a little optimistic, but I feel something that will give it climate change,” she said. “I have a little hope.”