Climate change and reproductive justice aren’t often linked – but they should be. To close out Earth Month, Errin sits down with Jessica Kutz, the 19th’s gender, climate and sustainability reporter, to talk about her latest reporting on climate and reproductive justice, the missing perspectives in climate journalism, and the future of the climate movement.
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On today’s episode
Our host
Errin Haines is The 19th’s editor-at-large and writer of The Amendment newsletter. An award-winning journalist with nearly two decades of experience, Errin was previously a national writer on race for the Associated Press. She’s also worked at the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.
Follow Errin on Instagram @emarvelous and X @errinhaines.
Today’s guest
Jessica Kutz is our gender, climate and sustainability reporter. Prior to joining The 19th, she was an editor and reporter at High Country News, a regional nonprofit that covers the Western United States. Her work has been republished in many outlets including The Guardian, Slate, Mother Jones and The Atlantic. She is based in Tucson, Arizona.
Follow Jessica Kutz on X @jkutzie and Instagram @Kutzreports.
Episode transcript
The Amendment podcast transcripts are automatically generated by a third-party website and may contain typos or other errors. Please consider the official record for The Amendment podcast to be the audio publicly available wherever you listen to podcasts.
Jessica Kutz:
Planning for pregnant people in a disaster scenario. Like we just don’t do it. We don’t do it very well. There’s more guidance over how to take in pets than people with infants.
Errin Haines:
Hey y’all, welcome to The Amendment, a weekly conversation about gender, politics and power from the 19th News and Wonder Media Network. I’m your host, Errin Haines. Man, time really flies. We are already near the end of Earth Month. There are plenty of stories about climate in the news, as there should be. Look, it’s an important topic that impacts all of us, but most of those stories don’t center the folks on the margins — those who are usually most impacted by the climate crisis. So that’s why this week I’m very excited to be talking to Jessica Kutz, The 19th’s gender, climate and sustainability reporter. Jessica writes at the intersection of gender and climate, which means that unlike a lot of the other climate coverage you might be consuming, a lot of Jessica’s reporting focuses on themes like reproductive justice. She’s telling the stories of people who are grappling with the ways that the climate crisis is preventing them from having and raising children in safe and healthy environments. And now she’s gonna be sharing some of those stories with us. Welcome, Jessica. I’m so excited to have you on The Amendment.
Jessica:
Thank you so much, Errin. It’s so great to be here and to see you.
Errin:
So, when people think about climate change, they might not make the connection between environmental justice and reproductive justice. So I wanna start by having you make that connection clear for us. How are the impacts of climate change linked to questions around reproductive justice?
Jessica:
Yeah, um, I love this question. I think, uh, as I’ve been reporting out on this beat, it’s become just more apparent that this is kind of one of the central themes. Um, I think the main ways that we’re seeing climate change or the climate crisis intersect with reproductive justice is an increase in wildfires, an increase in extreme heat, an increase in natural disasters. All of those things are impacting, uh, birth outcomes. Wildfire smoke and extreme heat are leading to — are being correlated with — higher rates of preterm birth and low birth weight. And those are also really important because those aren’t just, you know, indicators of a healthy baby once it’s born, but it’s also an indicator of how that child will develop and grow. And, you know, if someone is born preterm, they could be at higher risk for developing asthma and other lifelong conditions.
Jessica:
So it’s not just about the pregnancy, but about these, like, future children that we’re bringing into the world and how that relates to reproductive justice. Like I think these connections have been made long before the climate crisis. So if we kind of rewind a little bit, back in the 1990s a collective of women of color started a reproductive justice organization called Sister Song. And they’re kind of the first organization to think of reproductive justice as also about, like, the ability to raise your child in a safe and healthy environment. But so they were, like, making this link long before, I think, we were thinking about climate change and the impacts that it was going to have on our ability to reproduce and to raise healthy children. So I think the other, you know, things that we should be thinking about beyond climate change is also, you know, exposure to toxic air pollution, to chemicals in our water…
Jessica:
…PFAS has been in the news a lot. Sociologists, they actually have this whole crusade against the term “natural disasters” because there’s nothing natural about who is, like, most impacted. If we had the proper social structures and we had people receiving equitable resources to adapt to climate change, then a lot of the things that we see happen in a disaster could be avoided. For example: A hurricane. We have the tools, theoretically, to help people evacuate and provide them with the resources that they need to recover. And we could create policies that make that a lot easier for people to adapt to the climate crisis. But we haven’t enacted a lot of those. And so that means that women in particular are kind of most at risk to these more, like, immediate things that happen because of the climate crisis.
Errin:
I mean, that’s honestly one of the things that I love so much about your reporting, Jessica, is because you are also somebody who is covering not just the natural disaster, but you’re putting into context that the manmade disasters that are exacerbating those events. And I think that that is important context that people need to understand because, you know, the impact does not necessarily have to be what it is. Given that, to your point, we do have the tools to, to be able to make different choices, to be able to have different outcomes. So you have been centering the stories of pregnant people in your reporting. I’m wondering how that has changed your perspective on the climate crisis in the two years that you’ve been on this beat.
Jessica:
You know, before I was at The 19th, I was covering these issues more from like a social and environmental justice perspective. So I wasn’t really thinking about people who could become pregnant and kind of the unique needs that they have. And now that I’m at The 19th, it’s this thing that constantly comes up, which is that, like, planning for pregnant people in, like, a disaster scenario. Like we just don’t do it. We don’t do it very well. There’s more guidance over how to, like, take in pets than people with infants. Like we just don’t think about that. And they have very unique needs in a disaster setting. Like, you have someone who is breastfeeding or formula-feeding their child and we have shelters that don’t have like privacy spaces. They don’t have clean sterile water. Sometimes people are washing baby bottles in like the same sinks that are near the bathrooms.
Jessica:
And we need, like, you need sterile bottles that you don’t, you know, inadvertently get your baby sick. And we just don’t do that. And then we also distribute, um, infant formula kind of ad-hoc at these centers. And so the interesting thing has been to see actually women fill in this gap. And I’ve written about that before. I’ve written about doulas in Louisiana who were showing up at these shelters and doing the work themselves for free, like trying to understand who needed, you know, a way to sterilize bottles or needed bottled water. The disaster response apparatus, and FEMA in general, is pretty, like, male-dominated as well. So I think, just, when you don’t have representation in emergency response and you don’t have people thinking about those needs ’cause they’ve never had to think about it.
Errin:
Sorry, Jessica. I’m still on the part where there’s more guidance for pets than for infants. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that. Uh, that’s a lot. Well, I know another big question that often comes up in this space is, you know, women trying to decide whether or not they should have kids because of the climate crisis. And I know you’ve read a lot of those stories. What do you think those stories leave out though?
Jessica:
Yeah, I’m so glad you asked. I mean, I think, uh, so I actually just had a story that really gets at this question, and it’s something that’s bothered me for two years on this beat because I’ve wanted to write about this very gendered decision, in a way, of like, “Do you want to have children? And how does the climate change or our anxiety about the future of the climate impact that decision?” And there is, like, a certain type of person writing these stories that I was reading, which typically tend to be white women, often other journalists who, you know, I think do sometimes come from more privileged backgrounds. And not that that’s bad, but it was like a very kind of narrow viewpoint on who’s thinking about this question. And then someone was like, “Oh, there is like a scholar doing a whole project on this.” So I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna wait. ‘Cause they know a lot more than I do,” which is often the case.
Errin:
There’s always a scholar.
Jessica:
So the scholar, her name is Jade Sasser, she’s an academic at UC Riverside in California. And she wrote one book already, in 2019, that was about how population control has kind of become intertwined with the environmental movement. And this book is more — it just came out in April — and it’s her looking at now this as an individual choice. So not these, like, institutions making this decision, but how do everyday women think about this decision? And more importantly, how do women of color … how are they grappling with this decision?
Errin:
Yeah, I wanna ask you about that. I mean, what are the considerations kind of beyond environmental concerns that, that women of color even have when we’re talking about giving birth?
Jessica:
Yeah, I mean I think the main one is, you know, women of color have already been worried about some of these disproportionate environmental harms that they are facing. And so there’s always — or for a long time — been this concern over, like, “Can I raise my child?” It goes back to that reproductive justice question. Like, “If I have a child, can I raise them in a healthy environment?” But I also think, um, for some of the women she interviewed in this book, climate change, sort of, it was one of the concerns, but actually, like, racism and police violence were like another aspect of that question of a safe and healthy environment.
Errin:
A different type of environment.
Jessica:
Exactly. And so I think it’s more like this compounding factor for a lot of women. And another interesting thing, I think, that came across in the book too is that, um, you know, she’s a professor, she talked about this with her students, and I think also the economic realities of, like, the housing crisis and all these things that also protect you from the climate crisis. Like, if you don’t have adequate housing, that’s one of the main ways that you can protect yourself from heat or from a hurricane, you know. All these different things that we’re now facing.
Errin:
Access to healthy food is also coming to mind for me too, yeah.
Jessica:
Exactly. And so there’s, you know, it’s just like a multifaceted kind of thing that people are thinking about now that maybe at one time was a simpler question. I think we need more narratives in the media. I’m thinking about how to, like, build off of that book in my own reporting because it’s just this crazy gap between we have all this reporting on how climate change is disproportionately impacting certain communities. And that’s, like, we all know that we report on that all the time, but then no one has, like, then tried to close that loop and be like, “Well, how is that impacting how people think about the future and their families?”
Errin:
Yeah. Well, are there other perspectives that we still need to work to center?
Jessica:
Well, I think another one is just this idea that for a lot of people this question is not new, and it’s like urgent now because everyone is facing this existential crisis. But, for example, for Indigenous people, like they faced a genocide, like the environment has been hostile in terms of, you know, the people they have been having to interact with for the last, like, you know, since the late 1400s. And there is a saying, you know, that, like, “climate change started back then,” like the world as they knew it changed when colonization happened. So I think there’s also, like, there could be more reflection on that in the journalism and in in media in general. When we talk about this, like, big existential crisis, are we, like, erasing these other things that have happened to other communities in the United States?
Errin:
So I wanna keep unpacking kind of some of these climate change narratives. A lot of climate coverage has this kind of, like, apocalyptic bent, right? Like it’s all about how the world is about to end. I wanna ask you about that. I mean, what do you think that that kind of coverage leaves out of the narrative? And do you think it’s even helpful or the most helpful way to think about this issue?
Jessica:
It’s so hard. I think, okay, journalists wanna write, like, attention-grabbing headlines. And the way that played out, especially like a few years ago, there was a report that said, like, “If we don’t take any action in 12 years, the world is doomed”. And there was also a bunch of other scenarios laid out that were a lot less apocalyptic, but journalists all grabbed onto that one. And that was, like, what we all saw in the headlines. And there was some backlash after that because researchers who were part of that report were like, “You just ignored like the second half of this report, which also showed like the work that’s being done and, you know, ways out of the crisis or at least like minimize some of these impacts we could face.” Um, I mean, we’re not gonna totally get ourselves out of it at this point, but there’s still a lot of things that we can do to, you know, address the climate crisis. So I think some of the backlash to that was that, especially for young people — and going back to people who are now thinking about whether they wanna have children or not — I think it really impacted their mental health. Like, seeing these headlines, it almost acts as a demotivator. Like why do anything if…
Errin:
If it’s already foregone conclusion, right? Yeah.
Jessica:
Right. And so I think the narrative has begun to shift. I think there’s a much larger focus now on climate solutions on what people are doing to address the climate crisis. I mean, I think we still have to be clear-eyed about the fact that it is a crisis and there’s no kind of getting around that. But there are a lot of people doing work to address it. And we have made some gains. I mean, even here in the U.S. we passed the largest piece of climate legislation in history. So there are things to, like, feel good about. And I think as journalists we also have a responsibility to report out those stories and — not just because I think it gives people an idea there you can have some hope and like you can, like, do work and it does mean something — but I also think when we go back to talking about how we cover communities of color, it’s an incomplete story if we just focus on the ways in which they are, you know, disproportionately going to be or disproportionately are vulnerable to the crisis. They are also…
Errin:
Yeah.
Jessica:
…people coming up with some of these solutions…
Errin:
Correct.
Jessica:
…And have agency and are often experts in their own communities.
Errin:
Yeah. That’s such an important point. I mean, they’re not just on the receiving end of this crisis. They’re people that are resisting and attempting to fight back and to do something about it. And folks need to know that part of the story, too. But you’re also making me think, I mean, I’m wondering if you can give us some examples of, like, language or talking points in the climate space that really center the White perspective. Like how would you reframe that language so that it does center marginalized groups?
Jessica:
I think for so long the environment and the environmental movement and how we thought about climate change was being talked about solely through the science and through like melting ice caps, polar ice caps and impacts to the environment, impacts to biodiversity, which are all incredibly important in our tragedies as well. But I think, you know, going back to the 1970s when the environmental justice movement started, it was, again, kind of showing us the way to think about the climate crisis, which is not as something that will only impact the environment we live in, but also impacts us as humans. Like we’re not separate from the environment. And people in the environmental justice movement have always been very aware of that fact in a way that, I think, the predominantly White conservation movement has not, and has, in fact, tried to separate people from the environment. You know, going back to like the foundation of national parks and these, like, pristine wilderness areas, the goal was to keep people out even though Indigenous people, for example, have like lived in concert with the environment.
Jessica:
And it’s not a separate thing. But going back to the environmental justice movement, I think today we’re now seeing that, being a part of a lot of initiatives at the government level, I think it’s like another way that we can see that work has worked. All these years and decades of grassroots organizing has led to a lot of changes in how we address environmental issues on a federal level, and a lot of that is because of women of color that were leading these organizations back in the 70s.
Errin:
Yeah, I mean, you’re even making me think, you know, about somebody like Greta Thunberg who’s, you know, known internationally. I’m wondering, you know, who is the Black or Brown or Indigenous woman who is the equivalent of Greta Thunberg? Where is she? Who is she?
Jessica:
Yeah, she’s so many people is really the answer. I mean, here in the U.S. we had… I mean Hazel Johnson is considered one of the mothers of the environmental justice movement. Sherry Flowers and Sharon Levine, currently, they’re doing incredible work in the South. Sherry Flowers works on — I believe she’s based out of Mississippi — but she works on, like, sewage and sanitation issues that disproportionately impact communities of color. And Sharon Levine is in Cancer Alley, and she’s done a lot of advocacy around the toxic air pollution that’s impacting her community and petrochemical plants. I mean, yeah, I think that’s a really good point. I think, um, it is something else that has come up in my journalism is this focus on White women, again, in a crisis that, like, everyone should be able to, like, be an activist about. This is gonna impact all of us, but there tends to be like outsized attention on certain people that actually don’t represent the majority of people that are gonna be impacted by climate change. And there was this really famous, kind of, gaffe in the media. It was a photo from I forget which global climate event, but Greta Thunburg
Errin:
I remember this
Jessica:
Yeah, it was in that photo, and then a few other White activists. And then there was a Black activist, I think her name is Vanessa. She was cut out of the photo. Like, it was like four of them. And then the photos shared on the wire were missing her. I don’t know. Like there is something to that.
Errin:
There was a metaphor there. Yeah, absolutely.
Jessica:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Errin:
I wanna also get into the 2024 of it all: Climate activism and the election. We know that this is gonna be a major issue — a priority — for a significant number of voters in this country, particularly young people. Can you describe the people who are really kind of at the forefront of the climate movement, who they tend to be? What’s motivating them?
Jessica:
Yeah. Young voters are going to be really important in this election because they do care about climate change much more than any other generation. And also women in particular tend to list it as a higher priority, or something that they’re more concerned about than the men. And there’s been some interesting reporting that I am jealous I did not do — but I’m gonna point out ’cause I think it’s fascinating — which is that, you know, the abortion issue could actually get out more women to vote, which can also be good for climate change because they also tend to care about climate change. So there’s kind of an interaction between those two issues and how it might galvanize voters. But it still doesn’t quite like, you know, replace people’s fears over, like, the economy, abortion. Those are still, like, the top election priorities, but it’s becoming more of an election issue each time a presidential election comes up.
Errin:
Yeah. And I mean, I think, you know, like a lot of what we do here at The 19th, climate can be everybody’s issue if we ask everybody about climate, right? And so really just kind of expanding who maybe is or is not a climate voter. I am curious, just kind of outside electoral politics, do you have an example of a story that you’ve done since you’ve been at The 19th that stuck out to you as an example of folks really taking that power into their own hands to try to provide solutions — like you talked about — to the problems that climate change is creating?
Jessica:
I mean, one that just is now speaking out in my mind because we were talking about young people is I did a profile of a girl named Sage Lenier, she was a student at Berkeley. She’s also a woman of color, at Berkeley you can create, like, student-led classes. And she was in high school, she was feeling the doom of, you know, the climate crisis. She was hearing all these things in the news and feeling, like, very disillusioned and, like, sad about the state of the world. And so she kind of, like, took it into her own hands. And she’s so smart. I mean, in the interview she just, like, knows so much about climate change and the solutions that we do have that could be implemented. And so she created her own course focused essentially on climate solutions and also like empowering people to make everyday, you know, actions in their life to be a part of the solution.
Jessica:
And her class is like the most popular student-led course at Berkeley. Like she has had hundreds of students take it. She started a nonprofit and is, like, trying to bring the curriculum to other universities across the country. And I think she’s, like, this younger person that I think provides a window into how the next generation is mobilizing and she saw the problem with the media narratives and with what she was learning and came up with a solution to it herself. And it’s been wildly successful and she’s received a lot of recognition for that course.
Errin:
Well, folks who are listening, you should go back and read that story in all of Jessica’s reporting on climate. Jessica, you are literally changing the climate on how we cover climate change. Now that people know all about your incredible reporting, if people want to follow you — they want to stay on top of how you are covering this climate crisis — how can they do that?
Jessica:
Yes, they can definitely read my stories on 19thnews.org. I also have a Twitter, or an X account, which I still use. And, uh, that’s at J Kutzie, which is K-U-T-Z-I-E, and then my Instagram handle is kutzreports.
Errin:
Thank you so much for stopping by The Amendment to talk about your work and I look forward to reading more.
Jessica:
Thank you so much, Errin. Thanks for having me on. It’s great to see you.
Errin:
And now, for this week’s asterisk.
So a recent NBC News poll had an interesting little tidbit my editor and I were discussing, where 1000 registered voters were asked if there was any one issue so important that they would base their vote for a candidate on that issue alone, what would it be? And nearly a third of voters — 28 percent — responded that issue for them was protecting democracy or constitutional rights. And nearly one in five voters — 16 percent said the threat to democracy is the most important issue facing the country.
No doubt many of you who have either been listening to me on the pod or reading my thoughts in The Amendment newsletter know that I think both of these issues are hugely important. My favorite song is basically “Democracy is on the ballot,” and I truly believe that this is the most consequential election of our lifetimes. No seriously, like, its true this time. So my initial reaction to this was, “Wow, these numbers are making me really sad!” But my editor was actually encouraged by the nearly 30 percent of voters saying that protecting democracy matters to them.
I thought about it a little bit, and I feel like her optimism is shifting perspective (but don’t tell her I said this). Thirty percent is a start. It’s still April, and we’ve got about six months to go until Election Day, and a good chunk of the country is already paying attention. And I’ll make another confession while I’m at it: I didn’t believe in single-issue voters — until this year. Because democracy is absolutely the single issue people should care about if they want to fight for any other issues, regardless of their stance on those issues.
So shoutout to the 30 percent. If you’re going to be a single-issue voter, I hope that issue is democracy — for the sake of all of us.
And lastly, I’m excited to tell you about a live event that The 19th is hosting next month. I’ll be in Washington, D.C., on May 15th for an afternoon all about the crucial role that women and LGBTQ+ play in our democracy — and what is stopping them from becoming equal participants. If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll join me, my 19th colleagues, and a fantastic lineup of leaders. I’ll be talking to former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. It’s gonna be an invigorating and informative few hours of conversations, solutions, and, by the way, even really good food. For more information and to sign up, head to 19th news dot org slash DC event.
That is this week’s episode of The Amendment – for the 19th and Wonder Media Network. I’m Errin Haines. Talk to you again next week.
The Amendment is a co-production of The 19th News and Wonder Media Network. It is executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, Terri Rupar and Faith Smith. Our head of development is Emily Rudder. Julia B. Chan is The 19th’s editor-in-chief. The Amendment is edited by Jenny Kaplan, Grace Lynch and Emily Rudder, and was produced by Adesuwa Agbonile, Grace Lynch, Brittany Martinez and Taylor Williamson with production assistance from Luci Jones. Our theme music was composed by Jlin. I love my theme music.
