DeepSummary
The podcast episode features an interview with Dr. Jade Sasser, an associate professor at the University of California, Riverside, discussing her new book 'Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future.' The conversation explores how climate anxiety is impacting people's decisions about having children, particularly among different racial groups and how it exacerbates existing social inequities.
Dr. Sasser discusses her research findings, which indicate that people of color are more likely to experience distressing emotions like trauma related to climate change, while also expressing positive emotions like motivation and optimism about having children. The interview delves into the connections between climate anxiety, reproductive justice, and the dangers of eco-fascist and neo-Malthusian thinking around population control.
The discussion also touches on the generational divide in understanding climate anxiety, with younger generations being more climate-literate and aware of the long-term impacts of the crisis. Dr. Sasser emphasizes the importance of addressing climate anxiety through community organization, activism, and creating resources to support people's mental health and reproductive decisions in the face of the climate crisis.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Climate anxiety is impacting people's decisions about having children, particularly among different racial groups and communities.
- The climate crisis exacerbates existing social inequities, including racial health disparities and reproductive justice issues.
- Dangerous eco-fascist and neo-Malthusian thinking around population control must be addressed and countered.
- There is a generational divide in understanding climate anxiety, with younger generations being more climate-literate and aware of the long-term impacts.
- Community organization, activism, and creating resources to support people's mental health and reproductive decisions are crucial in addressing climate anxiety.
- The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need to address racial health disparities, which are exacerbated by the climate crisis.
- Young people's concerns about the climate crisis should be taken seriously, as they are facing multiple overlapping crises from an early age.
- The climate crisis is unique and different from previous environmental and social crises, with long-term implications that must be understood.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “But Covid, actually, for me, really highlighted the ways that racial health disparities land on different communities. And when I talk about racial health disparities, I'm talking about how the incidence of certain kinds of illnesses or diseases, whether they're chronic and long term or acute and intense, but shorter term, they're distributed really differently in different communities along the lines of race and class.“ by Jade Sasser
- “There have been a number of active shooter or mass death, mass casualty events that have happened within the last five years. And in each of those instances, the shooters who have killed dozens of people have labeled themselves to be eco fascists.“ by Jade Sasser
- “Climate change is different. And I think that it's often harder for me to really get that across to an older crowd. How and why the climate crisis is different from any other environmental crisis that we've experienced before and is also quite different from social crises.“ by Jade Sasser
- “I think that for some people, at least for people who I interviewed for the book, they responded that they really just couldn't think about climate change in isolation because, as you said, it makes all of these other existing impacts and inequalities feel worse.“ by Jade Sasser
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Episode Information
The Climate Pod
The Climate Pod
5/8/24
Over the past five years, there have been several studies showing how the climate crisis is impacting major life decisions. Whether it’s where to live, how to invest, or what to study, young people today are being forced to confront a climate-worsened future and decide what’s best for their personal situation given the very public failures of leaders to limit global warming. One particular decision that has received a lot of public attention is whether or not to have a child in the middle of a climate crisis. These studies are appearing more frequently than ever before as the climate crisis becomes more apparent than ever, but almost all of these studies fail to incorporate how this decision is impacted by the respondent's race.
Dr. Jade Sasser joins the podcast this week to talk about how climate anxiety is affecting some of life's biggest decisions. Dr. Jade Sasser is an Associate Professor at the University of California Riverside and the author of the new book "Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future." Not only does this book explore the anxieties and hesitations that people have about bringing children into a world in the midst of a climate crisis, but it also looks at how the climate crisis exacerbates other social inequities and how climate anxiety affects people of different races differently.
Read "Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question"
Listen to Dr. Sasser's podcast "Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question"
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