The Policy Farm Team

Nick Santos
University of California, Davis

A few years ago, I found out that I have a child. Given my relationships with women, this was quite a surprise to me. Nevertheless, I have a kid – one with real problems, real needs, a real future, and a real need for good parenting. One I need to make serious sacrifices for.

As a 20 year old male, the presence of a child makes my future mildly distressing. In part due to this fear, it is sometimes easier to ignore a kid when you first find out you have one. Since this child does not yet live with me, it was even easier to talk about her but not truly help. Finally, I decided to start making my actions coincide with my words and I began the path toward being a good father. Surprisingly, I have not started a college fund, I still don’t see my kid, nor do I pay any child support.

In fact, I don’t even know her name. But I’m not a bad father.

My child hasn’t been born yet – but this is an unimportant factor. The time for me to begin being a good parent is right now, or maybe even years ago. When my daughter (or son) is born, it will be far too late for me to make the world the place it needs to be for her to succeed and have a safe, comfortable future in a world with food and water and without disease, famine, and war.

In our society, when one thinks of a parent doing everything to ensure their child succeeds, it typically deals with the standard issues of education, living space, social activities, sports, food, transportation, and other (usually financial or emotional) topics. While these are all certainly important, it is time to break this paradigm.

What it means to be a good parent today means dealing with the tough issues our society faces as quickly as possible. My child cannot have a hope of growing up safely in a world that is being changed by global warming. What about my grandkids, growing up when California – the most populous state in the Union and where I currently live – is predicted by most models to have about 20% of the snowpack that it currently has, making water in short supply? As much as we like to think of ourselves as a civilized society, and we may well be, I have a hard time believing that when water is not flowing freely out of taps because it is in short supply that people will not die at the hands of others looking for water security. Right now, climate change is a matter of forward-thinking and morality. In 100 years, it will be a matter of life or death for many, and not just those in undeveloped countries.

There are definitely other issues to deal with before my kid arrives in my home – a breaking educational system, health care, and the societal values of war and destruction over peace and helping other humans around the world – but they are not what this story is about, though I recommend keeping them in mind. Instead, I want everyone to understand that global warming is the issue of our generation and every generation that does and will exist until we have solved it. If we succeed at transforming everything else, we will still have failed our children if we don’t address global warming because it has the potential to cripple other systems unless we start planning now. It is that serious.

There are detractors who will attempt to convince anyone who will listen that global warming is either a myth or is not caused by humans. I will not attempt to disprove them – there are other resources for that. Instead, I will say that human-caused or not, we still owe it to our children to do what we can to save for them what is left of the future. Even if we did not know that humans are having a large effect on the environment, we still do know that change is coming and we have the ability to fight back.

So, we must undertake the biggest challenge I can conceive of, and we must do it as parents because we will not live long enough to see the effects – only long enough to stop them. What do we do? Call your representatives and tell them that you will NOT vote for them unless they make climate change a priority (or for the less radical, simply tell them you want them to make climate change a priority). Tell them to invest money in climate change research and to put money into programs for clean power, both here and abroad (our role as a climate change contributer is lessening, but only because other nations are growing). Find alternative modes of transportation (this won’t necessarily be easy, but have courage). Invest in socially responsible mutual funds and companies and avoid the others – they don’t need your money. Buy products that are energy efficient and which were made on energy efficient equipment (find some here). Buy less (do you really need that seventh pair of shoes or that double latte?). Make sacrifices. Most parents say they will make sacrifices for their children. Well, the sacrifices need to start now because they cannot start later and still be effective.

When my child arrives in my home, I, for one, will not look her in the eye and tell her that I did not do everything I could to make her life safe. I will not tell her that the human race was too weak-willed to stop ourselves from destroying her future. I hope you won’t need to either.