One thing’s for sure we have to curtail the human birth-rate, but how is the question. Every new heart that beats increases the strain on Earth’s resources. Every new pair of lungs that breathes for the first time adds to our collective carbon footprint. Jedediah Britton-Purdy posed the question should climate stop us from having children in The Atlantic on January 6, 2020.
Should Climate Stop Us Raising Families
The Atlantic writer has an infant son born August 2019. He teaches environmental law so he has his fingers on the numbers. Young James added his seven pounds ten ounces to Earth’s weight. A fragile planet where humans and their domestic animals weigh twenty-four times more than all other land-based vertebrates together.
Moreover James, being an American, is already emitting sixteen tons of metric carbon a year. A French infant, by comparison only emits five, and a baby in India just two. James cannot opt out easily from the situation he came into. He would have to shun the energy that keeps him cool or warm, provides his food, and transports him around. Should climate stop us bringing more children into a world like that?
Should We Encourage a Zero Birth Rate Instead?
Jedediah Britton-Purdy believes he should continue having children. He understands he will have to explain how climate change is destroying habitats, and acidifying oceans. Eventually, he will have to justify bringing James and his siblings into a world where large swathes of land became uninhabitable for people.
But how will he normalize a world in perennial crisis (his words)? How will he walk with James through a forest where he knows all the trees will die? The world is good and bad, he says he will explain to them. The steady warming is threatening human extinction. But Jedediah Britton-Purdy says he wants to help human life and culture continue.
Related
Climate Change Chronicles: Australia Fires
Air Pollution Affects Our Mental Health Too
Preview Image: Sprague Wildfire
