Claim: Climate Change is Driving Child Marriages

Essay by Eric Worrall

Maybe if mom or dad had a high income oil or gas job they wouldn’t have to marry off the kids to strangers.

Climate change becoming a major driver of child marriage across Asia and the Pacific

Topic:Climate Change
By Claire Campbell

…

Runa was 15 when she married a man she had never met before.

Cyclone Remal had ripped through her camp in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar region, killing her family’s chickens and ducks, which were the source of both their food and income.

Runa’s mother, who had become the sole income earner after her husband died a year earlier, then lost weeks of labouring work due to the natural disaster.

She could no longer financially support Runa, now 17, and her three brothers.

“She felt she had no choice but to arrange my marriage,” Runa told the ABC.

…

Climate change is now believed to be a leading contributor to more frequent and younger nuptials.

…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-10/climate-change-leading-to-more-child-marriages-advocates-say/106766756

The problem is clearly economic hardship, not climate change.

Natural disasters may have contributed to that hardship, but fossil fuel driven economic development would help these people more than building a few wind turbines. Rich people don’t have to marry the kids to strangers, to ensure they have enough to eat.

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35 Comments

Bill Toland

July 9, 2026 10:40 pm

Is there anything that global warming can’t do?

Sunsettommy

Reply to Bill Toland

July 9, 2026 10:45 pm

I can’t give me $5 Million…

varg

Reply to Sunsettommy

July 10, 2026 12:37 am

haha, I would settle for 2 🤪🤣🤣

Leo Smith

Reply to Sunsettommy

July 10, 2026 4:08 am

You should have bought a solar farm…

varg

Reply to Bill Toland

July 10, 2026 12:35 am

Yes, it is unable to get rid of ALL this eco and alarmotards.

Guessing by their hysteria and BS claims we all should be already dead by now…them included.

sarc note on the side: awaiting the idiot to claim that his ingrown toenails are due to climate change…

Oldseadog

Reply to varg

July 10, 2026 2:19 am

But they are.
I am just waiting for someone in Government to bankroll my research which will prove it.

michael fellion

Reply to varg

July 10, 2026 8:03 am

Mine are due to climate change, They are forced to grow ingrown as all the cold air of winter makes one wear shoes and in summer the pavement is hot which makes one wear shoes as well. Oh for the good old days when is was 72F all day and night long.

Sparta Nova 4

Reply to Bill Toland

July 10, 2026 1:42 pm

It can’t make me 50 years younger. 🙂

Ddwieland

July 9, 2026 10:45 pm

Incredible! There’s apparently no limit to mindless misattribution of every natural disaster to human-caused climate change. No actual change in the climate is required, but it’s mandatory to lie that it’s getting worse and storms are increasing. When will the madness end?

Sparta Nova 4

Reply to Ddwieland

July 10, 2026 5:16 am

There is an old saying, “The is a limit to good taste, but no limit to bad taste.”
A version of that applies.

michael fellion

Reply to Ddwieland

July 10, 2026 8:06 am

In the modern day when the french revolution madness of 1788 to 1799 repeats itself. It seems to be going in that direction at present.

George Thompson

Reply to Ddwieland

July 10, 2026 8:37 am

Soon I hope-but remember there will always be a new doom and gloom crisis, so relax and just wait. Unless, that is, a real, by God serious we’re all gonna die situation arises-like maybe an incoming asteroid…and that will still be blamed on humanity. Only the issue will change, not the actors.

Phillip Chalmers

July 9, 2026 10:46 pm

Child marriage is primarily driven by belief in a religion which has a prophet who is supposed to have travelled by a winged steed to Jerusalem.
Rich and poor, in cold countries or tropical ones, nothing to do with the climate only the cultural beliefs from a thousand years ago.

1saveenergy

Reply to Phillip Chalmers

July 9, 2026 11:05 pm

[“Rich and poor, in cold countries or tropical ones, nothing to do with the climate only the cultural beliefs from a ~~thousand~~ years ago.“]

Totally agree, but it’s much older than that;
Rules for Child marriage are in the 3,000+ year old Torah that is the basis of Christianity, Islam, & Judaism.

Michael Flynn

Reply to Phillip Chalmers

July 9, 2026 11:22 pm

I assume you are referring to Islam as the religion which has a prophet called Mohammed. Why beat around the bush?

Correct me if I’m wrong. It is interesting to note that-

A substantially higher percentage of countries in the Americas permit the marriage of girls below the age of 18 with parental consent, 90 percent compared to 62 percent in East Asia and the Pacific, 53 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, 50 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, 38 percent in South Asia, and 26 percent in Europe and Central Asia. – PubMed.

An example might be the marriage of the singer Jerry Lee Lewis to his 13 year old cousin. Just following the tradition of early American colonial history – at that time the minimum legal age for marriage for girls was 12.

Thomas Jefferson said

It does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are 20 gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Maybe you don’t like anybody whose opinions differ from yours. Good luck with that.

Fran

Reply to Michael Flynn

July 10, 2026 9:48 am

Lawful age of marriage is irrelevant if not enforced.

Sparta Nova 4

Reply to Michael Flynn

July 10, 2026 1:45 pm

There is a significant different between religious rules and government laws.
Not everyone believes and not everyone who believes follows the teachings religiously (pun intended).

Michael Flynn

Reply to Sparta Nova 4

July 10, 2026 3:39 pm

There is a significant different between religious rules and government laws.

Not always. In Israel, for example, marriage and divorce are subject to religion – and only a few religions at that. Interfaith marriages cannot take place in Israel, but are recognised if performed outside the country.

The system is similar to that used in the Ottoman Empire, and some other Israeli government practices mirror those of previous Muslim governments – in a Jewish way.

One Israeli minister (Rabbi Toleano) called for the lowering of the marriage age to below 17 – maybe 14 or less.

Maybe we’re more alike than different.

-1

varg

July 10, 2026 12:42 am

Seemingly another desperate climarati attempt to attract attention, ridiulous and pathetic.

Couldn’t this planet be just hit by another giant meteor and so rid us all from those retards for good? Phyrric as it sounds but give it a thought, I would like to hear them truly scream…

sherro01

July 10, 2026 3:26 am

In the illustration from Aunt Louisa, the female being wed appears to have average boob size, so how is she called a child? In those times, the 1870s, puberty and breast development in females happened at about 16 years of age. Geoff S

Sparta Nova 4

Reply to sherro01

July 10, 2026 5:18 am

Maybe an “early bloomer?” 😉

Hartley

Reply to sherro01

July 10, 2026 8:04 am

I’m guessing the artist added those to ensure the viewer knew it was a boy & a girl being married. It’s not a photograph.

MarkW

Reply to Hartley

July 10, 2026 11:43 am

Back then, there was no other kind of wedding.

2hotel9

July 10, 2026 4:40 am

Really? A practice that has been widespread throughout the region for millennia was caused be the climate changing in 2026?

Sparta Nova 4

July 10, 2026 5:15 am

Back in the days when life expectancy and childhood mortality rate were much worse than today it was common to marry at or just after puberty.

Example: IN the 1920-1930 setting on which Gypsy is based,
The sister of Rose Louise Hovick, June Hovick, married at the age of 13 (New York).

Curiously, the alleged causes of “Climate Change” resulted in raising the minimum age for marriage.

DMA

July 10, 2026 7:08 am

“Runa was 15 when she married a man she had never met before.”
“She could no longer financially support Runa, now 17, and her three brothers.”
If this author can’t get the ages straight you can’t really trust any of the message.

-1

Hartley

Reply to DMA

July 10, 2026 8:06 am

She got married 2 years ago.

MarkW

Reply to DMA

July 10, 2026 11:44 am

“now 17”

Obviously the marriage being talked about was in the past. Presumably two years in the past.

Jeff Alberts

Reply to MarkW

July 10, 2026 12:55 pm

Then obviously the marriage didn’t result in additional financial stability.

MarkW

Reply to Jeff Alberts

July 10, 2026 4:20 pm

Can’t tell from the quote. The quote just mentions how at the time of the marriage the mother couldn’t afford her and her 3 brothers.

Sparta Nova 4

Reply to DMA

July 10, 2026 1:52 pm

The author is Claire Campbell, who did not write the piece for WUWT.

That aside, let me introduce you to a word: typo, which is a short form of typographical error.
Perhaps it is the ABC AU editor who needs your attention.

That aside, the credibility of the original article can be found in the sewer.

michael fellion

July 10, 2026 8:00 am

Marrying late is a western custom. In the arab world it was as young a 9 and still is is some places. In the 1840’s USA 20% of women married before the 20’s usually 18 or 19 so 17 in not far out of line and was driven by economics in this case. It also happens to be illegal before 18 in Bangladesh without parental consent and special circumstances. Poverty may fit the definition. One notices arranged marriage which means the woman has zero say in the matter.

michael fellion

July 10, 2026 8:19 am

Look up the Bangladesh marriage law and custom. The bride got a certain amount of money upfront and or deferred from the groom. The bride’s family gets gifts. In this case due to the low status of the bride’s family most like the minium with some live chickens for the mother.

Ed Zuiderwijk

July 10, 2026 8:38 am

The suggestion alone is offensive in the extreme. These activists really have lost all
perspective.

MarkW

July 10, 2026 11:40 am

Child marriage was pretty much the norm in centuries past.
The cause then as now, was poverty.
The solution is to do what we can to increase wealth so that parents can afford to not sell off their children.
The climate warriors are making people poorer.