Climate fatalists want us to believe the end of the world is imminent. They suggest – without hesitation – that the only way to ensure the continued existence of this planet is to already be at carbon zero. We are forced to accept the reality that our future is doomed, and our children’s even worse.
A certain amount of alarmism has its place in a crisis of this severity. But, as some activists toy with doomsday rhetoric, we have to know when to push back. Out of all of this apocalyptic reasoning, a worrying trend is emerging: the suggestion that having children is an act of environmental and moral vandalism.
Analysis from Morgan Stanley concluded that the “movement to not have children owing to fears over climate change is growing and impacting fertility rates quicker than any preceding trend in the field of fertility decline”. Countless polling has added to the evidence – in 2020, one study found that a quarter of childless adults cited climate change as their reason for not having children.
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And all of this is fed into by anxious pronouncements of powerful celebrities who exert undue influence on young people. Vogue, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, pop star Miley Cyrus and Prince Harry have all raised questions, with varying intensity, about the morality of having children or a large family on a rapidly heating earth.
The natalist angst relates to two areas. First, it is existentially wrong to bring a child into a world if they are set to suffer on a planet besieged by natural disasters and unbearable temperatures. And second, it is actively harmful to add another consumer of carbon into a world already pushed to breaking point by its eight billion carbon consumers.
The propagators of climate doomism are responsible for this mindset. And it is hard to think of a position more devoid of humanity. We are supposed to believe that wanting to start a family is not just an immensely private act but instead a cruel, destructive and unethical one. And now we are told to accept that a deeply personal decision should be made political.
This mode of fatalism seems steadfastly adverse to hope. There is little point in denying the terrible state of an environment only assumed to get worse. But the human capacity for adaptation is remarkable. There are calamitous predictions for temperature increases. But the cost of clean energy is falling and its technology is improving. Climate-change policy is climbing the list of electoral priorities. And more and more radical solutions are being touted. All of this has the ability to change – though not reverse – our trajectory.
There are always grounds for confidence. So why be a climate activist if so allergic to optimism? For whom are we rescuing the planet if not for future generations? Hasn’t the act of bringing children into the world, as writer Ezra Klein suggests, always been a hopeful one?
Ideological bunkers
And practically speaking, this mode of fatalism does not help the environmentalist movement, no matter how much we want it to. Over the pandemic, we learned something important with vaccines. Our failure to translate that to other causes in our lives – the environment most of all – is frustrating.
When confronted with the vaccine hesitant, we know it is wrong to attack them for ignorance, recklessness, or selfishness. Not least because it is cruel. But also because it does not work. Instead, it causes people to retreat even further into their ideological bunkers and harden their resolve. To win people over to our side, we have to convince them on their terms, not our own.
And so a political project that even indirectly suggests the immorality of starting a family will only ever have a shallow foothold. It does not chime with most people’s priorities and it alienates them from the cause before the starting whistle.
It is the same reason why the protester who threw a cake at the Mona Lisa in the name of the environment didn’t succeed in reducing any carbon emissions. And it is the same reason why Extinction Rebellion disrupting public transport routes (in a perfect example of misdirection) led the group to lose rather than gain favour. Their and radicalism might be romantic, but with these tactics it can never be a movement that scales.
It is sad to see increasing numbers of young people – captured by these doomsday narratives – uncertain over whether to start families for the sake of the environment. This is an immense personal sacrifice being made at the altar of a far-reaching political problem. And this kind of asceticism does not resolve the issue. Rather, it foments despair and anxiety, neither of which are helpful emotions.
The relentless burning of fossil fuels with little thought given to future generations should fill us with righteous anger. There have likely been moments of criminal environmental negligence that have seen irreparable damage caused to the planet.
The one thing we might consider worse is the suggestion that young people are morally compromised for wanting a family. And with that the unavoidable accompanying view: that we should have no hope for our own future, let alone our children’s.