The Conceivable Future: Planning Families and Taking Action in the Age of Climate Change

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

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.