WHEN A 39-YEAR-
OLD SCIENTIST
RELEASED A
STUDY ABOUT
HOW HAVING
CHILDREN
IMPACTS
CLIMATE
CHANGE, SHE
FOUND HERSELF
UNDER THE
MICROSCOPE,
WITH EVERYONE
ASKING: SO, ARE
YOU HAVING
KIDS?IS CLIMATE CHANGE MAKING YOU RETHINK HAVING
CHILDREN? You’re not alone. A study from the Australian
Conservation Foundation (ACF) found 78 per cent of women
aged under 30, or their friends and family, have experienced
worry or anxiety about climate change and the future. When
US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who’s 29,
questioned whether we should still be having children in the
face of it, Australian women felt similarly – 33.4 per cent of
those surveyed by the ACF are having second thoughts about
having children because they will face an “unsafe future from
climate change”.
Kimberly Nicholas, who grew up in Northern California, is
one of these women, too. But her story caused an outcry that
revealed a lot about social expectations of women. She
remembers in the 1990s listening to the conservative talk-show
host Rush Limbaugh (the American Alan Jones) complain about
tax breaks and flag burnings on her mum’s car radio. Since then,
she’s left her parents’ politics far behind, becoming a climate
scientist and decamping to Sweden, where she’s an associate
professor at Lund University. But it still felt surreal when she got a
message from a friend informing her that the conservative talk-
show host had been railing on-air – about Nicholas herself.ON
THIN
WORDS BY
KRISTINA JOHNSONICE
COLLAGE BY
COLOR ME LURID