For those thinking about having children, a common consideration these days is the state of the world these children would be born into. Phil Narodick tells us how he holds on to hope.
I’m sitting on my front porch, contemplating how my life is about to change. After 3 years of trying, three miscarriages, six IVF procedures, and countless nights drowning in grief as our friends had babies, our first child is at last due this week.
As the day approaches, I have found my grief about our infertility journey give way to preemptive grief about the infertility of the planet that awaits his arrival. I remind myself that I found ways to hold optimism that my wife and I would find a way to build some flavor of family – and there is so much to be optimistic about in the climate world.
I work in the solar industry, so I know that renewable energy has grown faster than even the most aggressive forecasts. The progress is unbelievable. I can now see four solar systems from my home office in Berkeley, and this momentum is reflected around the country: for every addition of fossil fuels to the grid in 2023, we added more than 3x as many renewables. As a result our carbon emissions dropped last year and we’re finally turning a corner. It feels wrong to feel hope in an area so often framed by grief, but each day I feel an ability to hold more optimism.