Almost all of the mothers I know spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about global warming. Actually, that's probably not true. We think we worry, we think we worry for hours and hours about the changing weather and how this may affect our children's lives, but in reality, we are spending an incalculable amount of energy fortifying our denial about climate change. How could we not? We have other things to do besides saving the world, like laundry and cooking and work and entertaining the children.

Here in northern California, on a hot February day, you call a friend, slather up the kids with chemical-free sunblock, and head out to the coast. The friend is essential in this scenario, because if you're alone, you don't have anyone to gossip with. Without the friend, you are left alone with your thoughts while the deliciously warm rays soak into your snowbank-colored thighs. Without the friend, you watch the kids build a sandcastle while an endless loop of anxiety plays in your head: "It's February. February. Middle of winter. February is supposed to be COLD." Or at least the northern California version of cold, which is by any eastern sensibility not that cold. Still, the beach?

Our meticulously maintained maternal denial works two ways. First, we deny that it's really happening, that climate change is progressive and irreversible and that our children will inhabit a physical world we may not be able to imagine. Secondly, we deny that we have any power to make a difference, that our actions and choices either contribute to or detract from the process. From any perspective, it all feels too big: the fear is too great, the demands to change too daunting. We can't face the issue head on without anxiety overtaking us, shutting us down, and sending us straight for the comfort food. The world can't possibly be self-destructing if I'm eating organic ice cream from a local sustainable-agriculture dairy which uses the methane from the cowshit to generate electricity, can it?

In my own search for a way to integrate the reality of climate change into my conception of parenting, I sometimes eavesdrop on other mothers trying to discuss the issue, and what amazes me is how easily and frequently we veer off course. We begin what might be a meaningful conversation about what we could be doing differently, and then suddenly we're on the subject of which supermarket is having a sale on free-range chicken. It's as if our anxiety won't allow us to stay with the subject much past the obligatory shaking of heads.

Case in point: I recently read a Katha Pollitt essay in which she started to talk about climate change in relationship to mothering her daughter ("Finally!" I cheered), and all of a sudden she's saying she can't face it, she'd rather disappear into the alternate reality of the internet. This from The Nation's feminist columnist, whose essays I respectfully read for years until I had kids and could no longer watch the piles of unread weekly magazines gathering dust. This from someone who has been willing to look closely at and subject to analysis the dirty underbelly of American popular culture. This from someone who is self-admittedly smart and is paid to think. I sighed, "This is way worse than I thought."

Maybe in the long run we can't hide from the reality of our changing planet, but for now there sure are a lot of places where it feels like we're hiding, where for a minute we feel safe. We can click on a petition to stop oil drilling in the Arctic and shop for a new iPod in simultaneous windows, not to mention checking our email just one more time before we log off. We can fill our minds to overflow with the hyperstimulation of streaming media, which keeps up a frenetic enough pace that even if the subject of climate change is addressed, we know that if we do nothing, absolutely nothing, just sit and keep watching, the issue will fade before our eyes and be replaced with something else. But even after the screen fades, the fear, the angst will keep seeking us out, no matter where we hide.

It's a subtle dance, finding balance between absorbing the enormity of what is happening and keeping a family life intact. Unless you have the rare independence of character to step outside of mainstream culture and live a completely sustainable lifestyle of not driving and raising your own food while homeschooling your kids, you probably have to get the kids to school, get the groceries home, and go to work in service to your host of bills. Personally, I cannot manage to do these things from a fetal position, which is how I end up if I think too much about the whole ice-caps-melting thing. But if I keep pushing it out of my mind and going about my daily (consume, consume) errands, I end up feeling like I left my soul at home with the canvas shopping bag that I forgot to put back in the car, again.

I can't think about it too much; I can't stop thinking about it. Either I'm uniquely obsessive-neurotic and am the only one who takes this stuff to heart, or there are a whole lot more people out there similarly tortured and seeking a way to talk about how it feels to take your kids to the park and wonder which of the plants will be able to survive the change in weather patterns. As I teach my children the names of the trees and wildflowers, I try to figure out which will be lost, which will thrive. I hope for the possibility of at least some things thriving, but I am afraid that the survivors might be the poison ivy, the kudzu, the rats, the cockroaches. As isolating as this fear feels, I doubt that I am alone in having it.

For me, avoiding despair starts with having the conversation, creating meaningful dialogue about how we prepare ourselves and our children to navigate the yet-to-be-seen world they will inherit from us. To that end, this new column will address these issues: environmental degradation, parenting, the anxiety created by the confluence of the two, and what we do with that anxiety. I will not be writing about the bad news: which species are disappearing, how many new coal-fired power plants are built in China every year, how many days we hit new record high temperatures. That information bombards me daily, with the general effect of making me turn off the radio. Nor do I want to talk (much) about the good news: eco-projects, technological developments, and the greening of Wal-Mart. Rather, I hope to examine the ways in which the whole spectrum of news affects our parenting and lifestyle choices. I invite you to join me. Winter will be here before long, so you can look for me out at the beach.