You'll do anything for your kids? How about saving the planet?!

I became a parent six months ago. It’s the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to me, and the hardest, because I have brought my daughter into a world rife with uncertainty about what the future holds.

The funny thing is, a constant refrain from the other parents I’ve joined up with as part of motherhood is, ‘I love my children more than life, I’d do ANYTHING for them’. Then I see those same people using thousands of disposable nappies and buying huge vehicles they don’t need.

I see them bury their heads in the sand about climate change and I think no, you won’t do ANYTHING for your kids because you’re not trying to save the world for them.

New Zealand, and the planet, is in deep trouble environmentally. We can no longer claim blissful ignorance about the warming climate, the shocking state of our rivers, deforestation for palm oil, and the plastic pollution choking our seas, because we all know about these things.

READ MORE:
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* We need to act on climate change for the sake of our children
* Forget the climate doom and gloom - it's time to be positive
* New Zealanders have a 'thin fear' of climate change
* Climate change 101: The most important things to understand about this urgent problem

As parents, leaving our children clean water and a secure planet should be a given, so why are so many of us doing things that we know are harming our children’s future? Why are we prepared to risk their happiness, maybe even their lives, for a bit of money and convenience?

With how things are trending I’m terrified for my daughter. She’ll be aging when the crunch really hits. She’ll be at a time in her life when she really needs society to help her but I wonder how much help will be available when the country is dealing with the dislocation of rising seas and climate refugees. I wonder whether she’ll choose to have her own children; it was a hard enough choice for me and she’ll have even more uncertainty to deal with.

I’m not claiming you don’t love your kids if you’re not working for a better environment. I’m sure you really do. However, we fundamentally need to change the thinking around what counts as good parenting and social responsibility. It’s simply not enough to feed and clothe them and give them emotional security anymore, we have to fix the damage our wasteful and economically-centric lifestyles have caused to this beautiful planet.

There’s room for hypocrisy within climate action but there needs to be for society to still function. I realise that to put food on the table you might need to work for a company who pollutes, that’s fine, but do everything else you can and put pressure on other companies to change while other people put pressure on your company.

Drive a car, because it’s virtually impossible not to, but offset your carbon or buy an EV if you can afford it. There’s also room for imperfection. If you forget to take your reusable cutlery somewhere every so often, that’s not the worst that could happen because it’s the many, many times you do use them that really make a difference. If we all did the things we can do, we’d get there.

If you’re a business leader, don’t tell me you’d do ANYTHING for your kids if you haven’t investigated adding solar to your energy mix. If you're in government, don’t tell me you’d do ANYTHING for them if climate and environmental responsibility aren’t integral to everything you do. If you’re just an average Joe trying to get by, don’t tell me you’d do ANYTHING for your children if you’re still getting a disposable coffee cup every day at your local coffee stop.

Change is rarely as hard as we imagine. Look at the ban on plastic bags in supermarkets, there was so much grumbling beforehand but now we’re doing it and it’s fine. It’s human nature to complain about change, that’s why we have to just do it and make it our new normal. When we’re forced into it, we adapt incredibly well.

Is it fair that we are the ones who have to make the sacrifices needed to save the world? Probably not, but history has a long pattern of unfairness. There is simply no other choice.

We are the only ones who have a chance. All the decisions we agonise over such as when to start solids or which school to send them to, will all pale in comparison to the impact climate change will have on their lives if we don’t stop it. The question your kids will have for you in the future won’t be, ‘Why didn’t you make me eat more vegetables?,’ it’ll be ‘Why didn’t you fight for the planet to still be decent to live on?’

Every night I cuddle my daughter and I wish more than anything that I could stop time so that I could protect her from the horrors of a climate-changed world. But I can’t, and there’s nowhere I can take her that will be safe from what’s to come. So all I can do is fight, take responsibility, and do what I can.

I would do ANYTHING for my daughter. Don’t claim the same unless you’re prepared to do what it takes to fix this environmental crisis.