I’ve been participating in a Women’s Climate Group since January where most of the women are of child bearing age and wrestling with whether or not they will have have kids. Being my age, and the mother of a daughter who is not having children because of the state of the world, the issue is fraught with sadness. Not only does my daughter miss out on the joys of having children, I also miss out on the opportunity of being a grandmother.
Back in 2022, NYT reporter Ezra Klein noted the most frequent question he is asked in his podcast is whether or not people should have children given the climate crisis. Klein, noting that folks dedicating their life to fighting climate change continue to have children, referenced two polls:
A 2020 Morning Consult poll found that a quarter of adults without children say climate change is part of the reason they didn’t have children. A Morgan Stanley analysis found that the decision “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.”
A recent Lancet poll determined “36% of teens and young adults were hesitant to have children due to climate change,” as reported in an article in Tuesday’s Detroit News Some young people planning fewer or no kids because of climate change.
Chicago — Collin Pearsall has friends who have started having children. But he has chosen a different path — due, in large part, to climate change.
Pearsall worries about the greenhouse gas emissions a child would add to a planet already experiencing the effects of rising temperatures.
And he is concerned about the impact climate change would have on the child: “the feeling of impending doom, every day, for their whole life.”
When he and his wife discussed having kids, he said, they found they were on the same page: “Why would we want to bring a child into the world with no consent as to whether they want to (deal with) all these problems?”
The decision on having children a climate threatened world is twofold: not only is there concern about bringing a child into the world, there is also concern about their carbon footprint.
In a Rochester Beaton article discusses how much polluting carbon dioxide can be reduced by having one less child. In How many children should couples have given ongoing climate change? the author cites research which compares the amount of CO2 emissions saved by abandoning automobile use for a year (2.4 metric tons of carbon) to having one less child a year (58.6 metric tons of carbon).
As a second example, research by statisticians shows that if carbon dioxide emissions stayed similar to 2005 levels for several generations, an American couple having one less child would save the equivalent of 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide. In contrast, driving a more fuel-efficient car, i.e., one that gives 10 more miles to the gallon, saves the equivalent of only 148 metric tons of carbon dioxide! In other words, compared to other environmentally friendly actions such as driving an electric vehicle, installing solar panels on one’s rooftop, and reducing red meat consumption, the decision to have one less child has a dramatic effect.
Virtual Reality & Climate Activism
A recent study in Science Communication determined that people are more likely to be motivated to actively support environmental causes if information is presented via virtual reality platforms.
“It’s difficult to communicate environmental issues to non-scientists because the consequences are usually long-term and not easily foreseeable,” said Mengqi Liao, first author and doctoral candidate in mass communication at Penn State. “Not to mention that it’s usually very hard to bring people to an environment that has been damaged by climate change, such as coral reefs, which, based on decades of data collected in part from NASA’s airborne and satellite missions, have declined rapidly over the past 30 years. This is where VR comes in handy. You can bring the environment to people and show them what would happen if we fail to act.”
Participants in the loss-framed experiences saw healthy then unhealthy coral ecosystems, with a message explaining the negative consequences of failing to adopt climate change mitigation behaviors. Those in the gain-framed versions saw unhealthy then healthy coral ecosystems, with messages explaining the positive impacts of adopting climate policies. www.psu.edu/...
UN weather agency issues ‘red alert’ on climate change after record heat, ice-melt increases in 2023
GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. weather agency is sounding a “red alert” about global warming, citing record-smashing increases last year in greenhouse gases, land and water temperatures and melting of glaciers and sea ice, and is warning that the world’s efforts to reverse the trend have been inadequate.
The World Meteorological Organization said there is a “high probability” that 2024 will be another record-hot year.
The Geneva-based agency, in a “State of the Global Climate” report released Tuesday, ratcheted up concerns that a much-vaunted climate goal is increasingly in jeopardy: That the world can unite to limit planetary warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels.
“Never have we been so close – albeit on a temporary basis at the moment – to the 1.5° C lower limit of the Paris agreement on climate change,” said Celeste Saulo, the agency’s secretary-general. “The WMO community is sounding the red alert to the world.”
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