Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Imagine kids growing up in a household where the eco-activist parents think their own children are an unacceptable burden on the planet.
Climate ‘apocalypse’ fears stopping people having children – study
Damian Carrington
Environment editor
Fri 27 Nov 2020 22.00 AEDTSurvey of 600 people finds some parents regret having offspring for same reason
People worried about the climate crisis are deciding not to have children because of fears that their offspring would have to struggle through a climate apocalypse, according to the first academic study of the issue.
The researchers surveyed 600 people aged 27 to 45 who were already factoring climate concerns into their reproductive choices and found 96% were very or extremely concerned about the wellbeing of their potential future children in a climate-changed world. One 27-year-old woman said: “I feel like I can’t in good conscience bring a child into this world and force them to try and survive what may be apocalyptic conditions.”
These views were based on very pessimistic assessments of the impact of global heating on the world, the researchers said. One respondent, for example, said it would “rival world war one in its sheer terror”. The research also found that some people who were already parents expressed regret over having their children.
Having a child also potentially means that person going on to produce a lifetime of carbon emissions that contribute to the climate emergency, but only 60% of those surveyed were very concerned about this carbon footprint.
“The fears about the carbon footprint of having kids tended to be abstract and dry,” said Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, of Yale-NUS College in Singapore, who led the study. “But the fears about the lives of existing or potential children were really deep and emotional. It was often heartbreaking to pore through the responses – a lot of people really poured their hearts out.”
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/27/climate-apocalypse-fears-stopping-people-having-children-study
The abstract of the study;
Eco-reproductive concerns in the age of climate change
Matthew Schneider-Mayerson & Kit Ling Leong
Media reports and public polls suggest that young people in many countries are increasingly factoring climate change into their reproductive choices, but empirical evidence about this phenomenon is lacking. This article reviews the scholarship on this subject and discusses the results of the first empirical study focused on it, a quantitative and qualitative survey of 607 US-Americans between the ages of 27 and 45. While 59.8% of respondents reported being “very” or “extremely concerned” about the carbon footprint of procreation, 96.5% of respondents were “very” or “extremely concerned” about the well-being of their existing, expected, or hypothetical children in a climate-changed world. This was largely due to an overwhelmingly negative expectation of the future with climate change. Younger respondents were more concerned about the climate impacts their children would experience than older respondents, and there was no statistically significant difference between the eco-reproductive concerns of male and female respondents. These and other results are situated within scholarship about growing climate concern in the USA, the concept of the carbon footprint, the carbon footprint of procreation, individual actions in response to climate change, temporal perceptions of climate change, and expectations about the future in the USA. Potential implications for future research in environmental psychology, environmental sociology, the sociology of reproduction, demography, and climate mitigation are discussed.
Read more: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-020-02923-y
On one hand, perhaps we are seeing evolution in action; if the only people who have kids are those with an unusually strong urge to procreate, expect to see a lot more children in the future.
But my heart goes out to the few kids those radical activists decide to have despite their beliefs, and the psychological trauma some of them must be enduring.
Imagine growing up in a household where the parents literally think their children are planet wrecking wastes of space or worse. Imagine being taught from the cradle that you are your parents’ guilty burden on the planet.
How do the children of parents who see their very existence as a mistake, whose parents teach them that their inevitable future is misery and a painful fiery death, ever discover a sense of self worth and happiness?
“Daddy, daddy, look what I made in art class!”.
“That’s lovely, but it doesn’t really matter, because you’ll die a horrible death from global warming before you reach adulthood. And you’re helping to make it happen just by being alive”.
“Eat your termite paté with seaweed sauce. Don’t you know there are children out there scarfing down “Happy Meals” destroying the planet?”
ROFL 🙂
Climate Bedwetters don’t want children?
Shocker.
They really shouldn’t have them anyway, forcing their climate psychosis onto their own children.
The ultimate in bad parenting.
I suppose the bright side of this is that they are not attempting to reproduce their own kind.
I say again
There needs to be penalties for climate alarmism causing the young and otherwise weak minded to despair of the future and contemplate suicide?
The equivalent of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater
Should start a website for parents of children who have taken their lives over this and post lists of the people in each country most guilty of spreading irrational fears.
Then those parents can go visit said climate scientologists.
This only gets better when real penalties are applied
Otherwise it’s like ethics in canada. Over the top ethics violations garner a $300 fine and no further penalty
Hence we have the most unethical cretin as PM as possible
Unfortunately it’s difficult to imagine a law regulating what lunacy parents are allowed to impart to their children which wouldn’t immediately be abused by do-gooders trying to push their own brand of lunacy.
This must be the ultimate example of every cloud having a silver lining, story
The next generation of easily led delusional greens will not be born.
That may be the most helpful thing the greens have done in a very long time.
If any of them start to berate there own children for simply existing, then those crazy individuals should be locked up for the sake of the innocent children they hate!
Or the parents purposely mislead and misinform the child who already has mental challenges, then shills that child out to the world as some sort of saviour prophet while using huge amounts of the very products they decry…
It appears there are no innocent life of Gaia that climate alarmists are not willing to parasitize and consume.
Darwin’s natural selection at work. I wonder if they realize that without CO2 feeding plants they would eventually suffocate from lack of Oxygen. They probably havent examined the CO2 spectral absorbance curve for black body radiation. Oh well, don’t worry, be happy.
Here’s the give-away quote that alarmists are incapable of thinking –
One 27-year-old woman said: “I FEEL like I can’t in good conscience bring a child into this world and force them to try and survive what may be apocalyptic conditions.”
Note that these numpties are always led through life by what they FEEL.
That’s because they are incapable of rational thought, comprehension and logical conclusions.
… also incapable of correct grammar: “…bring a child into this world and force them…”
If those morons who really believe in an impending apocalyptic climate disaster decide not to have children, that’s surely a good thing isn’t it? The last thing we need is a lot more little morons.
Climate activists shouldn’t be allowed to have kids. We don’t need those who are easily fooled to pass on their genes.
Any people as mentally ill as the Thunbergs would be well advised to NOT have children. The torturous life of Greta is something to behold and the should be incarcerated for what they have done to her.
Amen
Here’s the inside story of a Guardian journalist sacked because her feminism made her a transphobe
https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2020/11/26/suzanne-moore-why-i-left-the-grauniad/
Trans/homosexual, bisexual, intersexual, neosexual? The biggest transphobes are trans/homosexuals who take gay pride in their pure transgenderism (e.g. sexual orientation deviation – diametrically – from normal). Embrace the Rainbow (exclusive of black, brown, and featuring the shredded remains of white) – a symbol of unity and inclusion. That said, they should lose their Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic, relativistic (e.g. “ethics”) quasi-religion and discover principles.
The Guardian is also worried about too many white girls from next door in the Olympics. Rabid diversity (i.e. color judgment), not limited to racism.
Some Olympic events are now only open to certain races. 😉
Hah, I thought it was a play on words, but you were speaking literally. Next: trans neo- and masculine females (excluding trans/homosexual and bisexual females) replacing feminine females. Hey, if two males or two females can father and mother, respectively, a child. So, science progresses.
I read it (the whole thing, which is rather long), and feel sympathetic, and it is a bit of an eye-opener to what is going on in the what can only be described as bizarre world of sexuality today, where not only does anything go, but what was once described as normal is now sneered at, and called “binary” (a dumb descriptor). Feminism itself, though, has been guilty of excesses, and in a way, that has come back around to bite them. Still, us “binaries” need to stick together. We’re not the haters, they are. And a lot of that hatred stems from self-hatred.
You’re such a “burden” h/t Obama. I should have “Planned” you, sequestered your carbon, or recycled, reused, redistributed your profitable parts. Here’s to the good people for social progress and other purposes. #WickedSolution
Here’s another (O/T) unintended — but easily seen coming — consequence of the big city mayors and governors not understanding what they are doing.
“In San Francisco, the Muni transit system faces the biggest crisis of its 110-year history, said Jeffrey Tumlin, transportation director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. Bus boardings are down 70%, and transit revenue has plunged 93%.” [from the WSJ]
Send more money! Right.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Some ideas: Stop testing — number of “cases” will tank.
Stop arresting folks, many know more than the mayors and goveronors.
Open schools.
Stop wasting money on wind turbines and build elderly care facilities as though the lives of the elderly depended on it. [If you don’t trust my word on this — go visit several “standard” facilities.]
There is a little wealth remaining — stop draining it away. [Too late for many.]
I’m grateful to the authors for posting, up-front, their biased sample selection. It means I do not need to read any further.
The picture in the lead article is exactly how I imagine climate worriers to react when their world view is shattered with scientific fact.
I am 53. My generation was discouraged from having kids because of the population bomb. I remember feeling sick to my stomach when one of my professors in college promulgated that point of view. I didn’t listen and have two children of my own. I think this is all the same self-destructive garbage. It just has a different wrapping paper.
What is it about some (many) people that they have such an overwhelming need to be completely terrified about everything?
It is the parents own fault. They should have thought about that before they went ahead and had children. The planet is already overpopulated with humans anyway. It is not like that well if they do not have another child the human race will become extinct. It has nothing to do with climate but it is a matter of how much resources and space is available per human. The Earth has only a finite amount of resources and of space.
The ability to predict is the best objective means of assessing scientific competence, and the global warming alarmists have NO predictive track record – they have been 100% wrong about everything and nobody should believe these fraudsters – about anything!
“MacRae’s Maxim”:
“VIRTUALLY EVERY SCARY PREDICTION BY GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISTS IS FALSE.”
The Great Global Warming Fraud is a litmus test for basic intelligence – if you believe is catastrophic human-made global warming (aka “climate change”) hysteria, then you are an unscientific dolt, and no useful knowledge can be imparted to you. This is your unfortunate personal affliction – kindly get help for your very personal turmoil and do not foist your false mania on others, especially schoolchildren. I suggest that you avoid children and small animals – you are seriously deranged and may even be dangerous.
The Great Global Warming Fraud has no place in polite, intellectual company – it is a scary fiction, concocted by wolves to stampede the sheep. It is not real – be comforted by this fact.
Would be nice if the Gretas of this world would be factored out by climate fears of the millennials. But I think it’s a BS study. People want to have fun before they settle, can not find/ afford a place to live or they exaust themselves in 80 hour work weeks in order to afford a place to live….a host of reasons to postpone having kids indefinitely. Guess what, there’s adequate contraception available to sponsor all this mayhem.
Maybe I’m mistaken but climate believers/ lefties are very hypocritical usually. They will have kids while denying others the pleasure just like they fly around the world (or in Gretas case let people fly around the world to serve her) or attend parties while bestowing corona porn on hoi polloi aka the deplorables or join BLM protests in droves while it’s about forbidden to take a walk in the parc with your neighbours. It’s just noise they’re making and this “study” seems 2b part of that.
Environmentalism means calling your parents bastards for having you.
Looking at the bright side, it’s encouraging Leftists are afraid of having children, which translates to fewer Leftists in the future as most children naturally adopt the philosophy of their parents…
I love Darwinism in action.
Perhaps just Leftists will eventually go extinct before their insane actions cause all humans to suffer the same fate..
Leftism is such a bizarre religious cult…
That’s good news !
Climate activist is an endangered species on the way to disappearance from our planet !
OK.
I’ll have a diet Coke.
great article. they tried depopulation but it isn’t working!