A population-control group has written Prince William and Princess Kate a letter, urging them to stop having children. William, who is second in line to the British throne, and Kate currently have two children, Prince George, 4, and Princess Charlotte, 2. When visiting Poland in late July someone gave the family a gift for a child younger than Charlotte or George, which prompted Kate to say that she and Will should just keep having kids in order to get some use out of the gift.
This incredibly benign comment was apparently too much for one population control group, Having Kids, which sent the royal family a letter begging them to please stop having children in order to save the glaciers from melting and the animals from dying, among other things.
Apparently, any more than two kids is considered to be a "large family" and therefore is "unsustainable" for the planet. Having Kids is worried that if Princess Kate and Prince William have more than two children, they will inspire other people in the U.K. to have big families as well.
Seriously.
An excerpt from the letter states that "we must keep moving in the right direction" of having fewer and fewer children, in order to mitigate climate change.
Large families are not sustainable. As degraded as the world’s environment is today, none of us can imagine what the world would be like if fertility rates had not been halved in the 20th Century, below 3 children per woman. We must keep moving in the right direction, especially given the many studies that show family planning has the most potential for mitigating climate change and its impacts. The future of your country will be defined by the impacts of climate change. Some of these impacts include:
-More severe flooding – both from heavier rains and coastal flooding.
-Deadlier heatwaves.
-Increase in diseases such as malaria.
-Wildlife extinctions.
Melting glaciers could affect the North Atlantic circulation, completely changing the United Kingdom’s weather. All of us – especially public figures – should plan our families with the future environment in mind, producing a smaller and more resilient populace capable of thriving in that environment.
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According to data from the World Bank, the U.K. and the rest of Europe is currently reproducing at below replacement-level fertility, which means that there's no chance that the continent is going to be overpopulated at any point in the near or distant future. If anything, it'd be a positive thing for Will and Kate to give birth to a station wagon full of tiny royal babies--the nation needs more people in order to stay financially solvent. (Looking at you, Japan.)
If William and Kate want to have 16 more kids, they should do it because the want to. If they want to stop at two, they should do it because they want to. The amount of kids they have is up to them, and nobody else. Having more than two children will not cause the world to end and will not result in the end of the the climate as we know it. To suggest otherwise is absolutely absurd. Europe doesn't need fewer children. It needs more of them.
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