This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
There’s a moment in the evening when I go to check on my children in their beds. I stay and watch them sleep for a while, enjoying their peaceful, steady breathing and the rare stillness in their faces. I feel a wave of love for them but also a jab of fear.
There were many things I expected to experience when I became a parent. Love, a fierce sense of protection, exhaustion, bone-crushing tedium. What I didn’t expect was so much fear — not so much about grazed knees and high fevers, but an existential fear about what kind of life my children can expect in a world facing down environmental crises too enormous and terrifying to wrap our heads around.
I have covered the environment for many years; I knew climate change was a disaster already unfolding: waste was building up on a planet with nowhere to put it, wildlife and trees were disappearing at an alarming rate. And yet I decided to have one child, and then another.
Five years later and the world feels so much worse. My head is filled with statistics about soaring temperatures, sea level ... Read more
