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What does family planning
look like in a warming
world? | |
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The
answer will depend as much on climate anxiety as carbon
emissions.
By
Mark Harris
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In recent
years, climate change has thrown a
wrench into the intensely personal decision of whether
or when to have children.
A
2020 survey found that 78% of Gen Zers in the US weren’t
planning to have children because of climate
change. Some fear bringing kids into a world that will
see increasingly severe effects from global warming,
others fret at the carbon footprint of a new human—by
one estimate the equivalent of over five thousand
trans-Atlantic flights.
“Basically,
there’s a scientific consensus that the lives of
children are going to be very difficult,” said
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019. “And it
does lead young people to have a legitimate question: Is
it okay to still have children?”
For
others, fertility seems to be one of the least of
humanity’s problems, as decades-long efforts to improve
access to contraceptives and abortion, and tackle child
mortality, deliver positive socioeconomic and
demographic outcomes. For much of the world, there has
never been a better time to have a child.
On
a warming planet, our personal and collective futures
come together in some unexpected ways. Here we explore
some of the latest thinking, emotions, and
data.
• • •
The Anxiety Is
Real
1. As temperatures rise,
enthusiasm for families fall. Jade
Sasser, an associate professor at the University of
California Riverside, conducted a survey of 2,500
Millennials and Gen Zers for her book Climate Anxiety and the Kid
Question, published this month. “Having and raising
children symbolizes futures where we can feel good about
parenting children, giving them a good life, and leaving
some sort of legacy,” she writes. “For many people of
reproductive age, that hope is being threatened by
climate change.” A large meta-study of 13 studies with
over 11,000 people (mostly from the global north) found
that 12 of them had solid evidence linking greater
climate concern with intentions to have fewer children
or none at all.
2. More empty
daycares. When the economy slows,
fertility often dips as people postpone having children
for a short time. But in the years following the 2008 Great Recession,
births in the US never rebounded, found the Pew
Charitable Trust. Western states have been most
affected, with dropping school enrollment and looming
tax shortfalls in decades to come. Many other developed
nations like Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Australia,
and even China are also seeing historically low birth
rates.
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3. No climate baby
boom. A 2022 study by economists at the
University of Maryland and Wellesley College concluded
that even with a strong economy, there was no sign of the US fertility slump
reversing. The researchers could only attribute it
to “broad societal changes that are hard to measure or
quantify.” In 2021, the New York Times carried a report
about the growing “anti-natalism”
movement arising from people’s fears and
anxieties about climate change.
• • •
But Not Having Children Won’t
Solve the Climate Crisis
1. The next generation (and
its carbon footprint) is already
shrinking. This excellent summary page
at Our World in Data shows a continual decline in
birthrates due to the growing empowerment of women, and
declining rates of child mortality and child
labor in developing nations. These are the same
advances that slowly lowered fertility rates in
countries like the US and UK in the 19th and early
20th centuries, but on a much faster timescale. In
comparison, family planning and climate anxiety are
barely a blip.
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2. The carbon
clock. The climate impact of individual
fertility choices will play out over hundreds of years,
but tackling climate change requires immediate action.
The nonprofit Founders Pledge calculates that donating $1000 today to specific
climate charities that are sequestering carbon is far
more effective in terms of the climate than any
lifestyle choice—including having one fewer child. This
is because, the nonprofit says, many developed nations
are legally obliged to reach net zero by 2050, so any
child’s carbon footprint will end there. Even if that
goal is missed by 30 years, donations today will have
more of an effect than not procreating, they calculate.
But that still assumes that the climate charities they
pick out will actually deliver on their carbon removal
promises—which is far from certain in the tricky
business of climate tech.
3. Climate isn’t the first
existential threat we’ve faced. Britt
Wray’s thoughtful documentary for CBC points out that
“marginalized communities, especially Indigenous and
Black communities, have had to organize for centuries to
change the systems in which they live for the protection
of their children.” People have continued to raise
families under the specter of nuclear war and genocide.
“Rather than turn away from bringing babies into the
world, many work to change the world so that
their babies can more easily live within it,” she
writes.
• • •
What To Keep An Eye
On
1. When the personal meets the
political. Activism on such an emotional
topic doesn’t always play out as intended. This social
history of the BirthStrike for Climate group, which
launched in 2019 and disbanded in 2021, makes for fascinating, and at times quite
moving, reading. Despite never advocating for
population control, the group found its message
misunderstood and misinterpreted. “Raising the alarm can
be galvanizing for some, but paralyzing for others,”
wrote two British sociologists who chronicled the
movement’s rise and fall.
2. The world is growing up, and
that’s not bad. In his book Decline and
Prosper, Norwegian economist Vegard Skirbekk suggests we
embrace a low birthrate world. “Low fertility and shrinking population
size can reduce overcrowding and resource use, and
make it more feasible to meet climate targets and reduce
pollution,” he wrote in this insightful piece for Wired
in 2022. Although many countries will have aging
populations, seniors are healthier than ever, and there
are plenty of youngsters from nations still growing
rapidly to keep the engines of society ticking
over.
3. Worrying
returns to old ideas. Previous attempts to
interfere with families’ fertility choices have been
disastrous. Eugenicists and racists attempted to use
birth control in the US for social engineering, while forced
sterilizations plagued many countries. China’s one-child
policy probably set back its progress by decades. Nor
have attempts to stimulate fertility been any more
impressive. When the French government thought its
neighbor Germany was out-breeding it in the early
20th century, it restricted abortion and
contraception and gave medals to mothers of large
families, Matt Reynolds wrote for Wired. Nothing
shifted the birth rate until France’s post-war economic
boom.
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