James' World 2

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There are a handful of topics that I almost force myself to not think about because the thoughts lead to a dead end. At the top of that list is climate change. It’s one of those problems that starts to overwhelm me when I consider the scale and the implications and all the barriers to tackling it.

I also know I can’t ignore it because it’s real, and it’s getting more urgent. In fact, the average temperature was as hot as it’s ever been, or at least as hot as we’ve ever recorded it to be, several days already this month. And if you live in the northeast United States, you’ve probably noticed the smoke blanket looming over you in recent weeks thanks to wildfires in Canada.

The question a lot of us have asked ourselves at various points is: What is my responsibility in this situation? What can I, as an individual, do?

There isn’t an easy answer here, in part because the problem is too big for any one of us to solve. But if you’re a parent — as I am — the climate predicament takes on an additional dimension. You have to wonder not just about the ethics of raising children in an unstable world. You also have to decide, in a very concrete way, what you really value and whether or not you’re willing to live in accordance with those values.

I spoke with Elizabeth Cripps for The Gray Area (full episode below). She’s a professor of political theory at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and she’s the author of a new book called Parenting on Earth: A Philosopher’s Guide to Doing Right by Your Kids — and Everyone Else.

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About 30 years ago, something happened to the way kids play.

While American children had once commonly enjoyed the freedom to run around outside with minimal adult interference, they began to spend more time indoors where their parents could watch them. When they did go outside, they were more often accompanied by a grown-up; unstructured roughhousing and roleplaying were replaced by supervised play dates or carefully shepherded trips to the park. Kids began to spend more time in organized activities, like dance or sports, and less time in the kind of disorganized milling-about familiar to generations past.

The reasons for this shift were many: fears of kidnapping, stoked by a series of highly publicized cases; an increase in the length of the school year; parental anxieties about children’s futures in a time of growing income inequality and economic insecurity. The result was a 25 percent drop in children’s unstructured playtime between 1981 and 1997, setting in motion a pattern of less freedom and more adult surveillance that historians and child psychologists believe continues to this day. “All kinds of independent activities that used to be part of normal childhood have gradually been diminishing,” said Peter Gray, a psychology professor at Boston College who studies play.

The decline in kids’ unstructured time is bad for fun as structured activities like classes and sports in which adults are evaluating and judging kids’ performance can be more like work than play, Gray said. It’s bad for learning because children need playtime to develop motor and social skills. And it could be hurting kids’ health — in a commentary earlier this year in the Journal of Pediatrics, Gray and his co-authors argue that the decline in play and independence could be one reason children and teens have reported skyrocketing levels of anxiety, depression, and sadness in recent years.

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Experts say kids’ freedom to play has been declining since the 1980s.Jorm Sangsorn via Getty Images/iStockphoto

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How to “square up” failure. How to use tools properly. How to take care of your home. When we asked a group of dads about the life skill they wish they taught their kids sooner, the answers revealed a simple truth: there’s always more to teach and, looking back, some of the things that are most useful are the ones we might not think to focus on until we see how useful it would’ve been. From the obvious (teaching more financial literacy) to the aspirational (cultivating an appreciation for exercise at an early age) to the oh-damn-I-wish-I-demonstrated-that-better (how to forgive someone), here are the life skills these men wish they taught their kids sooner.

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There’s always more to teach.

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After Jenna Angst gave birth to her second child, she noticed that her midsection didn’t look right. “I was frustrated that my stomach looked so pudgy, even after I got back to my normal weight,” Angst, 37, says. So she asked her OB-GYN in Atlanta to take a look. The doctor brushed her off, telling her it was purely aesthetic.

But Angst wondered if it might be something she’d heard about in a yoga class once that went by the name of “mom pooch,” “mummy tummy,” or “baby belly.” So she went to doctors, specialists, and physical therapists in search of an answer. Finally, one told her that, yes, she had diastasis recti, a condition where the abdominal muscles separate so much that the stomach protrudes.

“I found it appalling that I had to go on such a journey to get answers — talking to friends, to my OB, to a [physical therapist] and four plastic surgeons,” said Angst, who eventually got treated for the condition. “The information is not readily available. It wasn’t until well after my son’s first birthday that I had some answers.”

Angst’s struggle to understand this postpartum condition is not unusual. Though research suggests that at least 60 percent of women have DR six weeks after birth and 30 percent of women have it a year after birth, most women have never heard of the term.

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Together, dark matter and dark energy comprise 95% of the known universe, yet scientists don’t know what they are. The Euclid telescope, set to launch to space from Florida on Saturday, may help decipher them.

Here’s what you need to know about the world’s newest space telescope.

What is Euclid?

Euclid is a space telescope that will observe the universe at infrared wavelengths. Its primary goal is to map the geometry of the dark universe—hence its name, for the Greek astronomer who dreamt up the foundations of modern geometry in the 3rd century BCE.

Euclid’s wavelength range is 1.1 to 2 microns, firmly in the near-infrared realm. As a relevant aside, the Webb Space telescope also images at near-infrared wavelengths, but is looking for very different things.

The spacecraft has two scientific instruments: a visible light camera (or VIS) and its near-infrared camera and spectrometer (NISP). Its image quality will be at least four times sharper than ground-based surveys of the sky, according to a European Space Agency release.

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An artist’s impression of the Euclid spacecraft.  Illustration: ESA/C. Carreau

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In the forests of British Columbia, where recent wildfires have sent smoke across borders and dimmed blue summer skies, a series of studies from the past 30 years contends that large, old trees send resources and messages to the seedlings around them. The “mothering” could, hypothetically, help burned landscapes recover faster, boost the amount of carbon dioxide stores in soil, and improve the resiliency of natural systems overall.

The idea seems to borrow from bedtime tales about ancient trees and the enchanted forests they foster; to validate beliefs about all types of creatures nourish their young; to vouch for the inherent goodness of nature, where collaboration triumphs over competition.

But two papers have recently called into question the evidence supporting the “mother tree” explanation. Do these veterans of the forest act as guardians for newer generations, protecting them from drought, disease, and deforestation? Or is their relationship much more complicated?

What is a ‘mother tree’?

The term “mother tree” was coined in the 2000s by a Canadian scientist named Suzanne Simard, who grew up in a family of loggers in the Monashee Mountains in British Columbia. The old-growth forests on the range sustained a booming timber industry for more than a century.

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A couple tries to wrap their arms around a massive 800-year-old Douglas fir in British Columbia, Canada. Matthew Bailey/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

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