How Will Climate Change Affect Fertility Rates
"I hope things will get better and that we'll achieve the aggressive climate change policy we need, but I'm also just prepared to have dogs." - Bailey, Sacramento.
The river in my town overflowed its banks, stopping me on my regular Monday morning walk this week. Water spilled over the road, causing drivers to pause in their cars before continuing slowly on their way, sending morning joggers and walkers like myself to the very perimeter of the raised sidewalk where there was less chance of sinking your feet into the cold water. Caya, my 2-year-old golden retriever, was delighted with the ability to take a swim in December.
When I was little, it was rare to come across flooded roads. It'd happen, of course, Mystic is a relatively low-lying coastal area, but years ago, it only seemed to occur when a big storm came through. These days it seems like it's at least once a month—a warning of things to come if the world fails to cool the planet.
On Thursday, while I attended a Q&A session on climate change and fertility decisions with Dr. Jane van Dis an OB-GYN and the co-founder and CEO of Equity Quotient, and Dr. Jia Hu, the principal investigator at the Hu Lab, and associate professor and associate director at the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Arizona, my thoughts kept drifting back to the flooded road and my growing toddler. Will the road even exist when my daughter is my age?
In November, the NYTimes Styles section published To Breed or Not to Breed?, a story partly about would-be parents and the climate crisis. I heard comments about the piece from friends and family, even from people I was interviewing for stories and one that was interviewing me.
Some were people with grown kids lamenting the potential loss of grandkids; others were struggling with the decision to have a second or a third kid or have any at all. All scared of what the future holds.
The decision to have or not have kids is incredibly personal. It's not one that can or should (hi Supreme Court) be answered by anyone other than the potential parent. Earlier this year, Modern Fertility, which hosted the Q&A session, surveyed nearly 3,000 people to find out if climate change affected their decisions to have kids. The answer? Yes. According to the survey, more than half of respondents were considering having fewer kids or reconsidering kids altogether because of issues related to climate change. So I was curious what the Q&A session would hold.
"It is very much a personal decision,” climate scientist Dr. Jia Hu said. "For many, the joy of having a family outweighs the fear of what the future might look like and the impact on the environment, but there need to be bigger policy changes, so we don't have to feel guilty."
The two experts, who both have kids, talked a bit about the carbon impact of having a baby, which of course, is high; you're bringing another human onto the planet. However, Dr. Hu also mentioned that most carbon footprint calculators are based on current policies, not policy changes that may be coming into place.
"The variability is human behavior," Dr. Hu said. Some of that is individual human behavior, but both Dr. Hu and Dr. van Dis were quick to point out that much of it is behavior that has to happen on the government level.
"About 40% is what we eat, how we get our energy, the vehicles we drive, but about 60% involves the federal government," said Dr. Hu.
The other factor we're just starting to understand is how climate change will affect pregnancy outcomes. Dr. van Dis pointed to an October 2021 study on climate change and women's health which anticipates that some parts of the U.S. could see a 60% increase in children born with heart defects due to heat exposure while in the womb.
"We going to see more miscarriages, more pre-term births, more low weight," said Dr. van Dis, adding that already overburdened healthcare systems are not prepared.
"We need to do a better job talking about environmental exposures," said Dr. van Dis.
But one of the things I thought was largely missing from the discussion was grief. Having a child today requires acknowledging that we will lose some things we wish our children could have.
"Even if we do absolutely everything we're still going to see rising temperatures because of the long lasting effect of CO2," pointed out Dr. Hu.
That has always been, for many people, one of the barriers to climate action. The fact that the efforts made today aren't going to affect them might not even matter for their kids but will count for their grandkids.
The top factor the survey respondents cited for thinking about having fewer (or not having) kids was concern about the world their children will inherit.
"I have two kids and I think what is their climate going to look like when they're my age and what uncertainties politically might climate change bring on what they're going to have to deal with," said Dr. Hu.
I think about this all the time. My daughter is currently obsessed with dinosaurs and has been asking why she can't see or pet them. That hasn't been a tricky question to answer, but how will I respond if we cause the extinction of polar bears or giraffes? Or when she asks why there isn't enough snow during the winter for her sled, or about a road that is no longer a road?
The answer for me right now is to advocate.
"There are so many solutions. It's not that we don't have the solutions, it's advocating for the government to make those solutions part of mainstream living," said Dr. Hu.
American friends, you can contact your senators and urge them to pass the Build Better Act.
Until next time,
~ Bridget
Published: A Farm Grows Atop a Convention Center in NYC, for Civil Eats and Are Those Pretty Blue, Green, and Cream Chicken Eggs You See on Instagram Better for You?, for Martha Stewart Living.
Reading: I just finished Lauren Fox's Send for Me, which I was ambivalent about. The writing is beautiful, and there are parts of the novel, like when the author includes her own great-grandparents' letters, that I loved, but I found myself wanting a more definite ending, not one full of possibilities to imagine. This piece on how Cate Blanchette talks to her kids about climate change is also worth reading. And for my fellow parents of kids under 5, Stephanie Gilman sees you, and yes, you can complain.
Working: On an interview with Dan Saladino, whose book Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them comes out early next year. And holiday shopping. I know there have been a few pieces recently on whether holiday gift-giving is worth it, and yet despite my aversion to most consumerism, I'm firmly in the 'yes it is' camp. I love wandering in and out of shops thinking about what the people I love would love. If you're in need of some ideas for the people you love, I wrote a holiday condiment gift guide for Martha Stewart, and I added basically all of the books on the Civil Eats 2021 Food and Farming Gift Guide to my library list.