Fearmongering abounds about climate change.

Doomsayers predict an environmental apocalypse. Exactly when and how this will unfold is “unclear” (media-speak for don’t know).

Back in 2021, the UN issued an environmental “code red for humanity”. Climate change angst has fueled an anti-natalist movement to “save the planet” by not having children. Extreme? What else is new?

Alarmist reporting has enabled this silliness to accrue critical mass. That led Cardus, a pre-eminent Canadian think tank, to commission ace demographer Lyman Stone to see if “concerns about climate change lead women in Canada to have fewer children”. Stone’s research reveals much.

But first, some perspective on climate change consternation. 

Context

I once took a course on propaganda techniques. The professor, a retired diplomat, was already a septuagenarian when serendipity landed me in his class. He told us about his high school internship at the local desk of a big city newspaper. One day, the phones were dead, with no wires or couriers coming in. He said to his boss, “I guess there is just no news today.”

“Come with me,” he was told. Keep in mind this happened generations ago.

They went to the zoo and discovered that exotic snakes dined on young rabbits. The next day’s breaking news conveyed the impression that poisonous, slimy, sinuous serpents were being fed cute, cuddly baby bunny rabbits – on the taxpayer’s dime.

You’ve heard of “breeding like rabbits?” Wouldn’t you know, some poor slob in the community was scoring a wee bit of lucre catering the zoo with those adorable furball entrees. Outrage ensued. There were angry letters to the editor. Do-gooders got their knickers in a twist. The editors smiled.

This leporine massacre had been underway for some time. No one had given it a second thought – until the reporter, who taught his teenage assistant, “There is always news.” 

Fast forward a few generations, and there is climate change. Get the connection? As the French say, plus ça change. Some believe that not having children, or having fewer children, will somehow save the planet.

Royal renegade Prince Harry has said that he and Meghan would have a maximum of two children out of concern for the environment. Lyman Stone’s research delves into the subject. But first, why is such a study even necessary?

Climate derangement syndrome

Some time ago, the Babylon Bee UK Guardian ran the following headline/subhead:

Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

The next best actions are selling your car, avoiding flights and going vegetarian, according to a study into the true impacts of different green lifestyle choices.

This quite serious piece elicited a few chuckles. Will having fewer children impede climate change? Can climate change be stopped?

Then there was this gem in the British Vogue, read by thousands of young women, headlined “Is Having A Baby In 2021 Pure Environmental Vandalism?”

For the scientifically-engaged person, there are few questions more troubling when looking at the current climate emergency than that of having a baby… the declining health of the planet cannot help but factor in your thinking. Before I got pregnant, I worried feverishly about the strain on the earth’s resources that another Western child would add. The food he ate, the nappies he wore, the electricity he would use; before he’d even started sitting up, my child would have already contributed far more to climate change than his counterpart in, say, Kerala or South Sudan.

Note the lady “worried feverishly.” How about moving to South Sudan?

Here’s a CNBC.com headline: "Climate change is making people think twice about having children".

Key points:

• Analysts at Morgan Stanley said in a note to investors last month 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.”
• Some people are choosing not to have children because they fear that doing so will amplify global warming.
• “Over the last few years, the climate has definitely been a major contributor to us not wanting children.”

This is getting serious. A human-interest nugget:

James has two girls aged three and six. “Worrying about their future is a frequent trigger for me,” he said. “I’m constantly thinking about when it’s going to be appropriate to dissuade them from having children of their own, as I think we’re really past the point of no return.”

The poor fellow is triggered and longs not for grandchildren. Wish I could somehow assuage his angst. But his trauma paled in comparison to that of a 39-year-old teacher lady bloviating, “I refuse to bring children into the burning hellscape we call a planet.”