Theres a moment in the evening when I go to check on my children in their beds. I stay and watch them sleep for a while, enjoying their peaceful, steady breathing and the rare stillness in their faces. I feel a wave of love for them but also a jab of fear.

There were many things I expected to experience when I became a parent. Love, a fierce sense of protection, exhaustion, bone-crushing tedium. What I didnt expect was so much fear not so much about grazed knees and high fevers, but an existential fear about what kind of life my children can expect in a world facing down environmental crises too enormous and terrifying to wrap our heads around.

I have covered the environment for many years; I knew climate change was a disaster already unfolding: waste was building up on a planet with nowhere to put it, wildlife and trees were disappearing at an alarming rate. And yet I decided to have one child, and then another.

Five years later and the world feels so much worse. My head is filled with statistics about soaring temperatures , sea level rises and insect deaths , with images of fires ripping through communities and islands being swallowed by the sea .