Some people who accept the widespread alarmist climate change narrative are allowing their climate change-related fears to influence their thinking about procreative decisions.
A recent New York Times story included information about individuals whose angst affects their thinking about procreation, like Allison Guy who explained, “I don’t want to give birth to a kid wondering if it’s going to live in some kind of ‘Mad Max’ dystopia.”
Guy continues to take birth control because of climate change. “If it weren’t for climate change, Allison Guy said, she would go off birth control tomorrow,” the article explains. “But scientists’ projections, if rapid action isn’t taken, are not ‘congruent with a stable society,’ said Ms. Guy, 32, who works at a marine conservation nonprofit in Washington.”
Another woman, Cate Mumford, plans to adopt in lieu of bearing biological children. The Times says that, “A few years ago, she traveled to China, where air pollution is a national crisis. And all she could think was, ‘I’m so glad I’m not going to bring a brand-new baby into this world to suffer like these kids suffer.’”
College Freshman Elizabeth Bogard said that she would like to be a parent, however, she said, “it’s hard for me to justify my wants over what matters and what’s important for everyone.”
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A man who resides in California and came from India “said it felt wrong to have a child when he did not believe the world would be better for him or her.”
A woman living in Cairo said that she’s leaning toward not having any children. “‘I know that humans are hard-wired to procreate,’” she said, “‘but my instinct now is to shield my children from the horrors of the future by not bringing them to the world.’”
The Times also noted that the woman “said she had been deeply affected by reports that parts of the Middle East may be too hot for human habitation by 2100.” The story quoted her: “‘I’ve seen how Syrian refugees, who are running from a devastating war, are being treated,’” Ms. Kaff, 33, said in an email. ‘Imagine how my children will be treated if they have to flee their country due to extreme weather, drought, lack of resources, flooding.’”
An Ohio woman with two children offered a grim analysis of what she sees as a dire situation: “‘Animals are disappearing. The oceans are full of plastic. The human population is so numerous, the planet may not be able to support it indefinitely,’” said Ms. PerryMiller, 29. ‘This doesn’t paint a very pretty picture for people bringing home a brand-new baby from the hospital.’”
The article says that “Once she had her first child, climate change made a second feel more urgent.”
She explained that her second child will provide her firstborn with companionship in the event the world ends. “If my daughter has to face the end of the world as we know it, I want her to have her brother there,” PerryMiller remarked.
Another mother said she would relocate to another residence if she had an additional child, but “She is not sure she can justify the environmental impact of a larger home and a longer commute.”
According to the Times, “Ms. Kallman and Josephine Ferorelli, the founders of Conceivable Future, said that the predominant emotion at their gatherings was grief — and that the very existence of these conversations should spur political action.”
The organization’s website states that it “is a women-led network of Americans bringing awareness to the threat climate change poses to reproductive justice, and demanding an end to US fossil fuel subsidies.”
Earlier this week at Georgetown University Hillary Clinton answered a question that included the statement that, “Women are disproportionately vulnerable to these risks,” referring to a previous statement regarding climate change.
During her response Clinton said that the U.S. should join the Paris Agreement and that, regarding the remainder of the globe, “I would say that particularly for women, you’re absolutely right, they will bear the brunt of looking for the food, looking for the firewood, looking for the place to migrate to when all of the grass is finally gone as the desertification moves south and you have to keep moving your livestock, or your crops are no longer growing, they’re burning up in the intense heat that we’re now seeing reported across North Africa into the Middle East and into India. So yes, women once again will be the primary, primarily burdened with the problems of climate change.”
She later mentioned children as well, saying that “women and children” face an outsized amount of “the burden.”
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