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The Conceivable Future

Planning Families and Taking Action in the Age of Climate Change

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

"This reassuring consideration of a deeply personal matter teams seamlessly with a reasoned, emphatic call to action." - Booklist, Starred Review

  • ABooklist Top 10 Book on the Environment & Sustainability 2024 Winner, Nellie Bly Book Award for journalistic non-fiction, Chanticleer International Book Awards 2024

    Explore the ways in which the climate crisis is affecting our personal decisions about family planning, parenting, and political action.

    In The Conceivable Future, authors Meghan Elizabeth Kallman and Josephine Ferorelli explore the ways in which the climate crisis is affecting our personal decisions about family planning, parenting, and political action. This book offers fresh, timely answers to questions such as: How do I decide to have a baby when there's the threat of environmental collapse? How do I parent a child in the middle of the climate crisis? What can I actually do to help stop global warming?

    Drawing from their decade of work with the organization Conceivable Future, Kallman, a sociologist and Rhode Island State Senator, and Ferorelli, an activist and former Climate Bureau editor, offers both informed perspective and practical steps for taking meaningful action in combating the climate crisis, while also making smart, balanced decisions when it comes to starting and maintaining a family.

    First, The Conceivable Future explores what the real threats are to reproductive, gestational, and infant health (spoiler: it's inequality, heat, and fossil fueled pollution), and debunks the myths of personal carbon footprint, and the harmful legacy of population control. The authors examine the successes and impediments of women-led movements around the world and share what they've learned through ten years of organizing to bring attention to the reproductive crisis that is climate change.

    Finally, the book looks at what can be done about the climate crisis today. By taking these steps, we can both understand the crisis on its own terms, and stay rooted in the human scale, where our lives retain their full meaning.

    The Conceivable Future is a must-read for all who want to make a difference in the world—and secure a sustainable future for all our families.

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      • Publisher's Weekly

        January 15, 2024
        In this disjointed probe, Kallman (The Death of Idealism), a University of Massachusetts Boston sociologist and Rhode Island state senator, and Grandgather blogger Ferorelli explore strategies for fighting climate change and how global warming is affecting decisions about whether or not to have children. According to the authors, calls to lower one’s carbon footprint by having fewer children are misguided because they place the onus to stop global warming on the average person while distracting from the fact that meaningfully reducing carbon emissions will require tackling the biggest industrial polluters. Though Kallman and Ferorelli encourage parents to talk with children about climate change “in an age-appropriate way” (without specifying how to do so), they otherwise struggle to connect their material on global warming and families. For instance, a chapter on family planning explores how polyamorous partnerships, queer couples, and close ties between aunts/uncles and nieces/nephews offer alternatives to the heteronormative nuclear family, but barely touches on climate change. Conversely, profiles of organizations tackling climate change at the local, state, and national levels (the authors highlight the Capital Good Fund’s work offering small, low-interest loans aimed at helping people with low incomes convert their homes to clean energy) have little to do with family. This suffers from a lack of focus.

      • Booklist

        Starred review from February 1, 2024
        Questions about the challenges and ethical implications associated with bringing new life into a world torn by dissension and climate change have haunted prospective parents for decades. So have entreaties to practice responsible family planning, especially in the face of dwindling resources and population growth. This balanced and empathetic offering comes from Kallman and Ferorelli, cofounders of the Conceivable Future organization, a grassroots movement devoted to giving people, especially women, a platform to share their stories. Their thoughtful and engaging narrative addresses multiple facets of emotional, social, economic, and political concerns (cultural expectations, adoption, reproductive activism), with helpful navigational features (self-checklists, flowcharts, step-by-step action guides) and numerous quotes and anecdotes from specialists, commentators, and individuals seeking answers. Distinctive threads run throughout: there are no such things as right or wrong answers; everyone has the right to make judgment-free choices, and everyone has the capability to change the future. The concluding chapters (""The Big No""; ""The Big Yes"") pull everything together, and multiple resources cited throughout the book combine with detailed chapter notes and a lengthy bibliography to offer readers considerable assistance. This reassuring consideration of a deeply personal matter teams seamlessly with a reasoned, emphatic call to action.

        COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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    • English

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