Climate Change Is Affecting The Decision To Have Kids, Too

By Lauren McCue


As if the choice to have kids weren’t complex and personalized enough, right now we have to think about the possible, and very literal, end of the world, too.


Climate change is a world distribute inextricable from every single aspect of our everyday lives. Its current and predicted impacts — ranging from although not limited to drought, wildfires, rising sea levels, and insect infestations — will stretch resources thin for a global population growing faster than it ever has before. These effects contract our planet’s carrying capacity — or how large a population can grow before its environment can no longer maintain it — and, as a result, many published reports have projected wide-scale food shortages and far less tidy water for future generations along with an increase in global temperatures by an estimated 2.7 degrees by 2040 — the year at which a child place on Earth right now will be coming of age. Considering size of the crisis, several Millennials and members of Gen Z are wondering if it’s even ethical to have children — that is, if they have them at all. (According to the CDC, the collection of babies place on Earth in the U.S. In 2017 was the lowest it had been in 30 years, and continued a downward trend of fertility rates being below replacement level since 1971.)


Having a child is one of the most environmentally impactful things several people will ever do in their lifetime. Lifestyle changes like giving up driving or changing our diets matter much less in comparison to beginning a family; one study published in 2017 noticed that having one fewer child is the ideal thing that a person in a developed nation can do to decrease personalized carbon emissions. Giving birth to a child In the United States only adds to an in general population that accounts for five percent of the world’s people however creates half its solid waste, according to Scientific American. Our generation’s children and grandchildren will absolutely have to face the same question — if they even live that long; reports posit that we have to make substantial changes by 2030 before the point of no return for climate change. That puts more responsibility on me and people around my age to cautiously imagine not only if we want kids, although if we should have them at all.


Environmental factors are only another weight put on people’s decision — and especially women’s decision — whether to have children. As a woman, I shouldn’t be shocked at however another obstacle any time it comes to reproductive choices: There’s the more familiar problems — finances, the uneven burden of housework and childcare, and cultural pressure to settle down and have kids — which is only compounded on some females of color. Ours is also a nation with a labyrinthine system of abortion and birth control restrictions, where the cost of having a child has shot up 40 percent in the previous decade, and which has no guaranteed parental leave. The U.S. Is clearly not invested in helping its citizens with the most generic issues any time it comes to having children, less considering how environmental impacts will change these questions in the future.


It’s worth pointing out that this meeting about choice often centers on people mostly from industrialized countries who usually have the power to determine if and once they have children. Those lucky few — the ones simultaneously more accountable for unsustainable lifestyles that have a higher negative impact on the environment — are actually the minority in the global population. Though scientific research are not giving them the same attention, the people who can often left out of the conversation will also have children affected by global warming, and in a more devastating way.


“There’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mentioned in a Instagram livestream posted February. “Even in case you don’t have kids, there really are still children here in the world, and we have a moral obligation to them. To leave a higher end world for them... We require a universal sense of urgency. And folks are attempting to, like, introduce watered-down proposals that are frankly going to kill us. A lack of urgency is going to kill us.”


The categorize Birthstrike, which advocates for people who have chosen to not have children because of climate change, states that their position on not having kids is “out of despair” rather than being a solution to problem. Their mission statement notes that they “[stand] in solidarity with the environmental justice movement, [and] the academic and scientific community who are encouraging acts of rebellion and widespread system change sort in attempt to urgently save our future.” One 24-year-old, named Alice, told them: “I’m gutted not have the ability to begin my family member, and I resent that our self-destruction and planetary destruction all for greed and ‘economic growth’ has stopped me from doing this… My decision not to have a child I truly feel is a necessity not a choice.”


Many would argue that it’s unfair to put the burden of fighting climate change on the individual choice to have children. The pollution and carbon generated by one new person is a drop in the bucket compared to the over 70 percent of global emissions generated by just 100 companies. Still, Alice isn’t the only person considering its very serious ramifications.


“I feel that I haven’t given any future kids the space they require to thrive, and it’d be cruel to bring them into such a disaster of a planet,” Rachel, 22, tells MTV News. “I feel guilty thinking that I have a responsibility as a mother to give my kid the perfect conditions possible and I’m not fulfilling that. To think that I would force them to be place on Earth into a global that is going to create them struggle makes me wonder if the ideal thing for them is to not bring them in, whether that’s for them or for society as a whole.”


Kristina, 30, agrees. “Climate change is certainly a factor for me in deciding any time and whether to have kids, and also cash and lifestyle concerns,” she says. “I worry about beginning a new life If I know their future will be more uncertain and most likely far less comfortable than my own.” She and her hubby have discussed seriously about whether the choice to have a family member throughout the current crisis is selfish; she also tells MTV News she “can’t imagine” having more than one child at all, a decision she credits to both climate change and personalized finances.


Any time it comes to the impact of the environment on future generations, Rachel adds, "You [can't not] think about it."


Every world crisis, from economic havoc to nuclear war, prompts heated debates on whether it’s ethical to bring new children into the world at all — and it’s a discussion that isn’t going away any time soon. Travis N. Rieder, a Statistics Scholar at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University, caused a strong reaction if he recommended in a 2016 NPR interview that people should aim to have fewer children because of climate change. Critics accused him of being “anti-life and anti-human,” yet Rieder contained strong in his argument.


“The premise appears to be that those who hope to lower fertility rates must misanthropic, or fail to be able to see the value of humans,” he wrote in response for the Conversation. “But that gets things exactly backwards: A radical concern for climate change is precisely motivated by a concern for human life – in particular, the human lives that will be affected by climate disruptions.”


Among the several businesses seeking to promote activism around climate change, young activists all over the world — from Sweden to Uganda and in over 100 other countries — are helping to lead conversation and action around the provide. In the U.S., Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is co-sponsoring the Green New Deal, which aims to reposition how the nation sources and uses renewable energy in every single industry.


That focus fits in flawlessly with the aims of youth-led businesses like the Sunrise Movement, which has brought high school and college-aged activists to the face of the fight for climate action, including the group's highly-publicized meeting with Sen. Dianne Feinstein in February 2019, if they lobbied her to vote in favor of Green New Deal legislation. If the youth shall inherit the Earth, they’re not wasting as soon as holding past generations responsible for their errors.