Guest essay by Eric Worrall
For a climate activist, having babies is apparently a troubling ethical dilemma, a distressing personal contribution to the global anthropogenic carbon footprint. But somehow they keep popping them out.
I’m worried having a baby will make climate change worse
Sophie Lewis
Part of my motivation for becoming a climate scientist was my grave worries for our future and my desire to make a positive contribution. In today’s world, this isn’t straightforward.
Earlier this year, I wrote publicly of my qualms around desiring children. I have always loved children and always wanted children in my own life. At the same time, among my friends and colleagues, such ordinary desires are increasingly accompanied by long, complex conversations about the ethics of such aspirations.
Children born today face a dramatically different climate future than their parents did. A child born today is a child of a changing – and extreme – global climate. The decision to have a child is a decision to exacerbate such climate extremes.
…
Nonetheless, in recognising the sadness of our near neighbours, I also feel compelled to recognise the beauty and opportunity of my own life. Despite my uncomfortable internal conflicts, the impending arrival of a much-wanted baby is intensely joyful.
Dr Sophie Lewis is a climate scientist and research fellow at the Australian National University.
Sophie isn’t the first anti-population and climate crusader who somehow made an ethical allowance for their personal needs. Last August WUWT wrote about US climate philosopher Travis Rieder. Rieder travels the country trying to convince students not to have kids for the sake of the climate, and wants to tax your children, but somehow he ended up having a daughter of his own.
No doubt a similar process of personal angst and philosophical self flagellation concludes with the purchase of lots of airline tickets to fly to all those climate conferences.
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What a poser. People were having kids during the 50’s, the height of the cold war, when nuclear armagedon seemed much more likely. Is she trying to justify her apparent hypocrisy by claiming credit for the angst she has suffered ?
She shouldn’t have a baby because we all die in the end … yeah, spoiler sorry.
It would seem to be a stretch to call Ms. Lewis a scientist. An activist definitely.
Her specific area of research and interest seems to be to link specific weather events to human caused climate change.
OMG, what a waste of time.
She apparently got her PhD studying the history of long-term changes in the Australian monsoon, and is doing post-doctorate work in reconstructing past climate change, and yet seems to think that heats waves in Australia are some new thing, and coping with heat a baffling problem with no apparent solution.
She seems completely unaware that there are hundreds of millions of people who live in places that have entire seasons every year in which the normal temp exceeds what is called a heat wave in her neck of the woods.
The same thing happens here in the US…for large parts of the country, a week in a row of normal Florida summer weather is called a crippling disaster.
This vexing challenge seems to call more for a army of HVAC workers, cheap power, and efficient air conditioning units, than for self-absorbed, worrywart, fear-mongering “climate scientists”.
Lady, relax! No need to Darwin Award yourself. No need to voluntarily (and tragically) remove yourself from the gene pool because of green-left anti-capitalist, anti-industrialisation, white-guilt propaganda. Treasure your time as a mother.
Oh…and find another branch of science to get into. Climate Change (TM) is passing its use-by date.
Soon hapless climate scientists may be jumping out of tall buildings en masse. To a couple of folks that will seem like a tragedy.
And whilst she and her ilk fret about their kids futures, they utterly ignore the plight of children today.
Our parents and grandparents had more on their minds, like global conflict, to bother worrying about what they were leaving their children. Indeed, without even considering it, by defending their freedom, they left the world in a far better condition than when they were in it.
I can’t ever recall a conversation, nor a media peice in my youth that droned on about the future we leave for our children beyond leaving a small inheritance, perhaps by leaving the house to be divided amongst the family.
How does one eat an elephant? One small piece at a time. These grandly posturing, self obsessed fantasist’s imagine they can influence what happens 100 years hence, and have the audacity to broadcast it on a public forum.
In reality, they can do no more than work hard and perhaps change one small thing in a lifetime. But this woman grandly presents herself as the Einstein of the moment, with all the solutions, to all the problems, not that even Einstein would have claimed that.
Then she goes right ahead and drops a brat into the world. How special will that child feel when he/she realises his/her mother decided to question the scientific value of bearing it? Doubtless it will feel like just another experiment worth conducting because it’s mother decided she could save the world.
Poor kid.
Life always was life-endangering.
Meanwhile our pal Recep Erdogan, President of Turkey, calls upon all Turks living in Europe to have at least five children, to speed up the conquest of Europe “by the womb”.
Doesn’t he know the dilemma he is putting his fellow-Turks in ?
Dr. Lewis, despite her self-inflicted misgivings, is willing to feel “intensely joyful” at the arrival of her baby. She is built to do so, and to deny that feeling would be a great shame. So please pardon me for also experiencing intensely joyful wonder as I observe the atmosphere doing exactly what it is built to do: It moves. It responds to heat itself. It circulates. Thunderstorms emerge on their own, to launch heat upward with impressive power. Cumulus clouds form easily, reflecting the heat of the sun just enough to maintain a pleasant climate in which we thrive. Wow.
Inscription in Ashbourne churchyard, Derbyshire: ‘She was in form and intellect most exquisite. The unfortunate parents ventured their all on this frail bark, and the wreck was total.’
A white marble monument commemorates the five-year-old Penelope Boothby, who died in 1791, the only child of Sir Brooke and Lady Susannah Boothby. She had been painted in life by Sir Joshua Reynolds and was immortalised in death as a sleeping child by the sculptor Thomas Banks.
‘He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.’ Francis Bacon
It’s a tough job but someones got do it.
Ugh, these people are completely misguided. Talk to any parent, at least conservative pro-life parent, and they will tell you the greatest joy in their lives are their children. These sanctimonious liberals are like the flagellants of the dark ages that went around whipping themselves to save the earth from the plague.
Climate “Science” on Trial; Useful Idiots Don’t Rely on Facts
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/03/19/climate-science-on-trial-useful-idiots-dont-rely-on-facts/
+10. Your blog site posts are excellent. Thanks.
Thanks again, much appreciated. Please be sure to share.
For some of us old enough to remember I am reminded of the argument that Gloria and Meathead had on “All in the Family” about having children. To me this well illustrates how profoundly stupid some liberals can be. Let me also remind you what John Holdren, Obama’s science advisor, once said about forced abortions.
“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”
I’m pretty sure they would have decided to abort the Republican’s kids first.
This attitude of total self-loathing is only trumped by their selfishness.
She could easily have adopted a Syrian refugee
I am sure there was a post about leaving potential refugee adoptees where they are because if they were adopted into western countries, their “carbon footprint”, would be so much bigger! Meaning, leaving people in need in perpetual poverty and threats of danger and death.
Then she could adopt a local child. It’s not, er, climate science.
That does not attract media attention.
Reading through the Sydney Morning Herald comments on this self absorbed mother’s essay is a depressing look into the minds of a bunch of reactionary uninformed selfish people. If course they dress their derivative thinking as if they “care” but the bottom line is that nearly all of them have bought into Ehrlich’s misanthropic mythology and fail to see the real progress around the world and instead see guilt ridden doom.
Strewth! Another SMH, well researched, article! I didn’t check that far! I am banned from posting comments at the SMH.
There is an easy way to stop having children…
Stop f…g about!
The comments at the SMH page are simply unbelieveable. I share this country with these type!
BTW, I am in the process of bringing children from Zimbabwe to Australia, right now. Visa’s have been approved, my wife is, right now, over Australia still, on her way so that she can bring two young people here.
“Good enough for thee, but not for me.”
–Sez every left wing crusader, everywhere.
Guys, you all got pawned. NO WAY is that a serious essay. Somebody that stupid couldn’t get an advanced degree in such a difficult area as climate science. Only our best and brightest do into that field.
But, if that essay were sincere… well, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.
“difficult area as climate science”
surely that’s sarcasm.
I guess that means we should celebrate serial killers as environmental heroes. It makes me wonder how she can stand to go on living each day with that miserable carbon footprint each day.
I heard this kind of tripe when I was in middle school in the early 70s (we called it junior high at the time). Of course when I was twelve it just seemed “out there”.
What was old is now new again.
By the way, “SMH” is clearly a perfect acronym.
And the comments – they’re sadder than the article!
You’re a good person as long as you feel guilty about it. Pathetic drivel really and worse still rehashed pathetic drivel from the cold war era. The only concerning part is that students at the university may mistake her for an educator and scientist.
If your having a baby is an “ethical entanglement,” then what does one call expecting other people/strangers being forced to pay for your child’s rearing, education, and healthcare?
No father/husband in sight.
https://twitter.com/aviandelights
https://sophieclewis.com/
https://sophieclewis.com/2016/10/27/when-everyone-else-is-perfect/ (oh these rejections)
I forgive you Sophie. Enjoy your baby.
But forget the computer. While you are tending your baby’s needs, initially you won’t have time anyway and later you’re likely to rework your construct fundamentally. Happy discovery.