When I was growing up in Ottawa, Canada, climate change was not exactly something my friends and I thought much about. When I was in high school, my neighbourhood’s environmental literacy only stretched as far as the “no ‘butts’ about it” litter campaign.
But in my University days in the early ‘90s, everything changed for me. I was studying physical geography and environmental science, learning about pattern and process in Earth systems. I was one in a small minority of people who were studying the threat of climate change and other environmental constraints that threatened to substantially alter the world as we knew it.
At that time, we didn’t have terribly sophisticated predictive modelling tools or the wealth of data that today help us get a picture of what impacts we can likely expect, but it was enough to generate a substantial sense of doom on my part. It was hard to hold this knowledge when most people dismissed it as the hysterical babblings of granola-eating environmentalists. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” I was told on more than one occasion. Doom morphed into hopelessness. “How could I ever bring a child into this world?” I often asked myself.
Over time, I managed to build the support and connection I needed to more constructively engage, in particular meeting my playful and brilliant husband, Adam, and landing in the lovely community in rural Northern California.
Together with 20 adults and six children, we live in 80 acres of redwood, bay and oak forests and diverse organic gardens. We explore sustainable living on a personal and community scale.
Sure, there’s the odd composting toilet experiment-gone-wrong, but there are also acres of organic gardens where we daily harvest our food, rambunctious goats and chickens who help supply the lacto-ovo component of our diet, an impressive solar array and micro-hydro power generator, and a delicious pond that provides for many fine afternoons of summer fun — in addition to supplying irrigation water for the gardens. And through many hours of meetings, we have worked out the structural and decision-making models that are necessary to make it all work in the long-term.
From a canvas yurt next to our tiny, beautiful home, I also work as a consultant to non-profit organizations building resilient food and farming systems.
Three years ago, I gave birth to my daughter, Sabine. There is no denying the fundamental and instantaneous transformation that takes place when we step through that elemental doorway of childbirth. There was a moment about 30 hours into my labour, when my contractions were stalling out, I was growing exhausted, and everyone started to get that anxious look, when all my doubts about being a mother to a child growing up in this time, came flooding into my consciousness. “I don’t know if I’m ready to be a mother,” I confided, wild-eyed, to my husband as we crouched together in the corner of the bathroom. A few bags of IV fluid and some inspired coaching later, I managed to connect with my strength (and with the long parade of mothers who came before me), and I got back to the business of bringing that baby safely into the world.
In those precious moments after Sabine’s birth, as I held my newborn girl to my breast for the first time and felt that life-giving connection, I thought of the world outside and felt, viscerally, the responsibility I had to do whatever I could to make things good for her. I feel a much more profound obligation to deal with the climate problem – no longer can I even pretend that it doesn’t exist.
The reality is that today, the basic elements of life – food, water, shelter – can no longer be taken for granted, even for the relatively affluent in our society. Since Sabine’s birth, I haven’t again felt that intensity of fear, but when those doubts come to me, as they do, I try to tap into that same place of power and shift into a more connected, productive, and constructive gear.
I am grateful to be able to live a relatively low-carbon lifestyle. Living in such a well-knit and sustainable community helped give me the grounding to become a parent.
But we are not immune from the effects of climate change and living close to the land makes it hard to deny. The recent multi-year drought in California had us trucking in potable water from miles away during the fall months. We wouldn’t be able to grow food securely here at all without the pond. Once-reliable weather patterns have been replaced by eerie periods of mid-winter blooms.
I am hopeful to see that a substantial shift has occurred since the days when talking about climate change was a faux pas. Our children will at least be raised with much better access to ideas, knowledge, and solutions. Many of the right strategies are out there now, but there remains a huge gulf between the current reality, and making these solutions widespread-enough to make the necessary impact.
As mothers, we have the ability to act to make sure that our kids, as well as we, build the emotional and practical resources, and the tools, to organize and take action to build the world that we want and need. There is much work to be done.
Let us begin.