“The Conceivable Future” examines raising a family amidst the climate crisis

By Max Bowen

With dramatic changes in the environment happening at an increasing rate, having a family takes on a whole new meaning. In “The Conceivable Future,” authors Meghan Elizabeth Kallman and Josephine Ferorelli looks at reproduction in the context of climate change and the issues at hand.

In this interview, Kallman and Ferorelli talk about the importance of a book like this in the here and now, concerns they’ve heard others express about starting a family, and their activism work.

What’s the importance of a book like this during the current climate crisis?
For the past 10 years we’ve directed Conceivable Future, an organization that we founded to help people address their questions of: can I have a baby when the world is on fire? How do I parent the children I have in the face of such a massive crisis?

When we understand how climate change is harming and restricting our reproductive lives, the whole story–and playbook of solutions to the climate crisis–changes. “The Conceivable Future,” which comes out on Feb. 6, 2024, is that story, and that playbook. For us, reproduction isn’t the whole story, but it reveals the heart of the story. We think of it like a core sample: a cylindrical section of something—ice, earth, or a tree, for instance—that cuts through all the layers, revealing its nature and changes through time. A focus on reproduction in the context of climate change exposes the same unjust core that has inspired many other social movements; it shows us what’s at issue, for all of us.

One of the reasons we think this book is so important is because family planning is at the heart of all human understanding of the future. It is the most personal, the most direct and important connection we have to the shape of our future.

Even so, these concerns have been treated, first, as the province of women; and second, as a footnote to the 'real' story, the boardrooms-and-geopolitics-and-ice-shelves story. So we’re here to say that we are each a part of the real story of the climate crisis. When we share our hopes and fears without judgment, it can bring us together, help show us what we need, and how much power we have to change the institutions of our lives. And when we understand, together, what we cherish, and what our rights are, it helps illuminate the path forward. In other words: reproduction is a lens we can see through to understand both what we’re up against, and how we become bigger than the challenges that we face.

What are the concerns about starting a family that you’ve seen?
Generally speaking, people’s concerns fall somewhere along a spectrum, where on one end is “what harm will my baby do to the world?” and on the other is “what harm will a hotter, more dangerous, less just world do to my baby?” It’s through these fears and concerns that the stakes of the problem become clear. And many people also reflected on the kind of loneliness that our nuclear-family focus and social isolation have created: “If I don’t have my own children, how will I have children in my life?”

But beyond that, we’ve found that people’s climate concerns are woven tightly to all the other ways life has gotten less forgiving, more demanding for everyone but the billionaire class. In other words, worries about climate are linked to worries about accessibility of care, exposure to pollution, the limits of gender roles and an economy that is set up to exclude people–just to name a few.

Prospective parents worry about their job and housing insecurity, about the cost and inadequacy of their healthcare (especially prenatal and birthing care, especially for women of color), about access to affordable childcare, decent schools and healthy foods. Many people–seeing how racism, class inequality, and other forms of injustice are built into our culture and institutions–recognize the additional challenges and dangers they will face as parents, and that their children will confront.

People also see the huge tradeoff that parents make with their finite resources of time, money, and energy. In other words, time spent parenting often means there’s no time available for anything else, including organizing and activism, or community work.

We will note though, that none of these contemporary conditions are intrinsic to parenting. It doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible to create a culture that is supportive of parents and families, of young and old people, single people and partnered people, of small and large communities. Figuring out how we do that, and how we get there, are the aims of this book.

I read that this is an expansion of your activism. How so?
While we’ve gotten a lot of press coverage of Conceivable Future’s work over the years, it’s pretty hard to express this topic’s necessary nuance in short articles. Writing this book gave us the time and space to tell the Conceivable Future story on its own terms. For the first several years of our organizing, we were mostly in listening mode. Our organizing started because we felt that there are enough external forces that want to decide for young people what our bodies “should”—and “should not”—do, and all the while we were careening towards the brink with politicians and leaders ignoring the dangers in our path. To us, the generative move was to illuminate that path by making a place for people to think, listen, and talk without fear of judgment, censure, or bossing. The resulting conversations taught us ten times more than we set out to learn. And so the book shares what we learned.

 

As organizers, we’ve been having various versions of the same two-hour/1,200-word conversation for years. But as authors, we’ve been able to delve into the history of gender and reproduction-focused social movements, the data about how fossil fuels are harming pregnancy outcomes and infant/child health right now. This is a huge, and criminally underreported story. We’ve been able to more fully outline community organizing practices, and explore the work that people all over the country are doing to address the climate crisis in real time. So we aimed to write the guide to meaningful climate action that we wish we’d been able to find in bookstores 15 years ago, when we were coming of age and looking for help.

Is there a central message or theme to this book?
There are a few things we hope every reader takes away from this book. They are:

The climate crisis is making family planning harder, scarier, and more stressful, but that doesn’t mean that “no, you shouldn’t have kids, or yes, you should have kids.” There is no ‘correct’ answer to an impossible question–we’re not here to boss anyone around. The real questions that can direct our activism are: why is it easier to tell young people, especially women, what to do with our bodies, than to tell corporations what to do with their pollution? Why is it so fuel-intensive (and expensive) to have a kid at this moment in history? The climate crisis is not your fault (or your baby’s fault), but it is all of our responsibility to heal it. How do we take care of each other, and all the different kinds of families and communities, in which we live? How do we grow justice-based social movements to the scale and impact that we need to right this ship, in the limited time we have?

This book is about how we help each other keep ourselves and our loved ones safe, by making a world that’s fairer and safer for everyone.

For those who wish to become involved in an activist role, what would be your advice?
We know that climate fears in isolation can be a terrible experience, and it makes people feel helpless. The antidote to that isolation is connection.

The first step is to find your people—Social change is social. It has to be undertaken with others. Look around and figure out who is doing (or wants to be doing) climate work in your local community. Lots of climate organizing groups already exist around the country, like the Sunrise Movement, Mothers Out Front, or the Climate Reality Project. If such a group exists in your area, that’s probably the easiest place to start. But if there aren’t pre-existing groups, or you can team up with one or more like-minded friends or acquaintances (through any kind of social connection, or work connection, or religious connection) with the goal of tackling something big.

The second step is to find your project—Once you’ve connected with a group, you can start brainstorming about what affects you. We tend to think of activism as falling into two categories, what we call the Big No (stopping bad stuff that leads to more harm) and the Big Yes (creating/supporting the good stuff that leads to the world we want). Another way to think about the Big Yes is: what are the barriers to the good thing (more renewables, better recycling, etc), and how do we get rid of them?

Both kinds of projects are urgently needed, so follow your gut to find work that moves you. Whether you go for a Big No or a Big Yes, any worthwhile project will be:

· Bigger than you. That is, a project that will also affect other people’s lives, and that you can’t accomplish alone.

· Inspiring to you. Even if it’s not ‘fun’, it feels worth doing.

· Powered by a vision of a life worth living. You can see the connection between your part and the bigger whole.

· Possible. That is: a project, not a general idea. You can see it through in this lifetime. Maybe this decade or year.

This is where drawing from local community issues can help. For instance: does your school, workplace, or labor union have a climate adaptation policy and a disaster preparedness plan? Does it have sustainability commitments, and has it divested its retirement plan and endowments from fossil fuels? Can it participate in a community-based renewables program? These are the kinds of projects that matter so much.

The third step is to find your voice—This is the community-organizing part of the work; we build people power by being loud. Whatever change you are attempting, let everyone know, from your HOA to your classmates (or parents’ group) to your representatives. Every action is doubled in strength when it also builds people-power. Most people are worried about climate change, and looking (or just waiting) for something useful they can actually do. Most people are troubled by the harm, waste, and exploitation that is built into our society. People may offer you out their own invitations, know-how, and resources once they know you care. If you are looking for more training and resources, there are groups that offer formal community organizing workshops, like the Midwest Academy. These can be inspiring and helpful—although not necessary.

Finally, when we’re collaborating with others, an invitational, non-judgmental stance works best. Everyone brings their own story to climate justice work, and we all start from different places. People pitch in when they feel welcomed and valued, and we need to build welcome, justice, and resilience every step of the way.