PORTLAND, Oregon – When I gave birth to my first child, in 2019, it seemed like everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. He came out white and limp, his head dangling off to the side. People swarmed into the hospital room, trying to suction his lungs so he could breathe.

Hours later, my husband and I stood in the neonatal intensive care unit, looking down at this newborn baby, hooked up to wires and tubes.

We had spent months talking about how to protect him from various harmful influences, and here we were, an hour out of the gate, dealing with a situation we had not even considered. Had his brain been deprived of oxygen for too long? Would there be lifelong damage?

That night in the hospital, I learnt the first lesson of parenting: You are not in control of what is going to happen, nor can you predict it. This applies to your child’s personality, many of his choices and, to some extent, his health. It also applies to the growing threat of climate change.

The climate crisis is bad and getting worse.

Here in Oregon, we have endured several severe heat waves and wildfires in recent years. As the impacts compound, it is clear that a lot of people around the world — many of them children — are going to suffer and die.

Globally, one in three children is exposed to deadly heat waves, and even more to unclean water. A study estimated wildfire smoke to be 10 times as harmful to children’s developing lungs as typical pollution.

Researchers also concluded that nearly every child in the world is at risk from at least one climate-intensified hazard: extreme heat, severe storms and floods, wildfires, food insecurity and insect-borne diseases.

If you are someone like me, who has children and lies awake terrified for their future, you should not let hopelessness about climate change paralyse you. In fact, I would argue that right now the bravest thing to do – even braver than hoping – is to stop hoping.

“When I think deeply about the nature of hope, I see something tragic,” the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and author Thich Nhat Hanh, who died in 2022, wrote in his book Peace Is Every Step. “Since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment.”

What does parenting without hope look like? For me, it is living with the knowledge that my two children will likely face challenges I cannot even imagine. It is grieving that I cannot give them the life I would wish for them. It is c...