Sunday, September 18, 2016

Children Are Good for the Planet

From The Federalist:
Take this recent NPR piece that asks: “Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?” If you want to learn about how environmentalism has already affected people in society, read about the couple pondering “the ethics of procreation and its impact on the climate” before starting a family or the group of women in a prosperous New Hampshire town swapping stories about how the “the climate crisis is a reproductive crisis.”

There are, no doubt, many good reasons a person might have for not wanting children. But, certainly, it’s tragic that some gullible Americans who have the means and emotional bandwidth — and perhaps a genuine desire — to be parents avoid having kids because of a quasi-religious belief in apocalyptic climate change and overpopulation.

Then again, maybe this is just Darwinism working its magic. In the article, NPR introduces us to a philosopher, Travis Rieder, who couches these discredited ideas in a purportedly moral context. Bringing down global fertility rates, he explains, “could be the thing that saves us.” Save us from what, you ask? The planet, he tells a group to students at James Madison University, may soon be “largely uninhabitable for humans” and it’s “gonna be post-apocalyptic movie time.” According to NPR, these intellectual nuggets of wisdom left students speechless. (Read more.)
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