PURDY: One thing that’s struck me so far about the parenting frame is how the appeal to protect one’s own children can play into what you could call ecobarbarism.

On the one hand, there’s a political pressure to share out the burdens and the good things of a finite and stressed world, and find new modes of solidarity and cooperation—the ecosocialist model. On the other hand, there is the raising of walls and militarization of borders as a way of demarcating whom you’re responsible to in a climate-changed world.

Climate denial used to only be about denying the facts; now it’s also about denying that people who are carrying the burdens of it are your problem. That denial is very powerful and is connected, I think, with the new or resurgent nationalism. And it’s somewhat like that in a household. I care about the future, I care about my child’s future, and when I look at his future I know he’s going to enter the economy afraid and encouraged to see other people as his competitors and his problem, and that the world he’s entering isn’t organized as if it cares whether it goes on. I want to protect him from that, and I want to protect everyone from that. But protecting his interests and the interests of people all over the world are not always the same project.