to think you can't understand climate science and want kids

I'm aware of what she has written - and she is free to have kids or not based on what ever criteria she wants.

But there is a section of population control who are hevaily influenced by eugentic movement in USA that is now wrapping up those old ideas in green concerns for their own reasons. Always worth looking why people are saying what they are and how reliable their "facts" are.

Also frankly there a lot of posters who come on MN to insist that only stupid women have kids - that they haven't seen though the lies or don't realsise it's hard work are too thick to understand climate science.

If OP doens't want kids - for whatever reason that 's fine - she's lucky to live in a socilety that mostly and increasingly deems it entirely her bussiness and choice.

She is also free to judge others that make different choices - and indeed imply every parent even climate scientists who have kids are wrong - but doesn't mean the reasoning is sound or that we all have to agree with it.

I agree.

Equally, being detached and cynical about the situation is not helpful to anyone, it's a moral emptiness that has it's roots in the culture of consumerism that caused all of the issues to begin with!

What actually needs to be reviv

It is the entire basis of the post-war settlement.

So what? It’s only the first time in decades. It’s not the first time in history, or even in living memory. It’s never been a given that each generation would be more happy and prosperous than the one before, what gave you that idea?

Not so. Fixing climate change needs billions of like minded people to happen. It’s not a one charismatic autocratic genius leader gets it done. It’s been a grass roots movement of millions so far to get the environmental protections we do have. This is a situation where every voice counts, we each may be just a drop, but enough drops make a rain storm.

If we look at the United Nations’ population estimates and medium projections, 64 countries and territories had already passed peak population in 2026.

These projections not only include assumptions about birth rates and life expectancy, but migration, too. We’ll address the sensitivity of these assumptions later.

link to source and maps
https://ourworldindata.org/which-countries-have-already-passed-peak-population-and-when-will-the-rest-do-so

In the map below, you can see which countries they are. Almost all of them are in Europe and East Asia, which have seen rapid reductions in fertility rates and persistently low rates since then. Many Eastern European countries have also seen large numbers emigrating, adding to the decline.
There are a few other, more surprising, countries that may have passed their peak, too. Thailand in Southeast Asia — which dropped below two births per woman in the early 1990s — now has a rate below 1.2. Uruguay in South America has also seen fertility rates drop to an average of 1.4 births per woman.

Many of these countries have only just passed the peak. But some, such as Japan and Italy, peaked more than a decade ago. If we include the UN’s projections to the end of the century, the decline is substantial. South Korea and China’s populations could more than halve. Italy could shrink by more than 40%. Spain and Thailand, by a third.

In the coming decades, many more countries are expected to join them.
By the 2050s, much of South America is projected to have passed the peak. By the 2060s, much of South Asia may do so. This includes the world’s most populous country today: India.

In the map below, you can see which specific countries these are. Using the interactive timeline, you can see how this evolves over different time periods.

These projections of population peaks are based on the UN’s “medium variant” projection, and sensitive to its assumptions about three things: fertility rates, life expectancy, and migration. All of these things are hard to predict 50 years into the future.
Recently, we published a tool that allows you to see how future populations would change if these assumptions were different.

@AprilMizzel But OP isn't advocating depopulation -she is talking about a personal choice regarding parenthood in the face of climate breakdown as a wellbeing issue. Not eco-fascism.

@Cluelessasacucumber Such a great, good-sense post. Something you said made me want to comment, because it's an uncomfortable truth that's definitely part of the sense-making puzzle of climate and parenthood:
"Many people will say "oh I feel so guilty for bring my children aged 15/ 20/ 30 into the world, I wouldn't do it now". This is bollocks that people tell themselves to try and paint themselves as climate conscious, but we've know about this issue for a long time (academically and publicly)."

I was brought up in the environmental movement, both parents anti-nuclear campaigners and Green Party activists. My childhood featured a healthy dose of marches, leafleting and lapel-pins. And eco-anxiety rumbling in the background.

And here I am, a parent of not one, but two teens. I don't fly anymore, but I did travel the world, backpacking for years, in my 20s. All the privileges of my generation who got to have these experiences before the boot of climate awareness really dropped and impact became tangible. The truth is that, despite 'knowing' about the threat of a warming climate, I, like so many, figured it was something that would happen to other people somewhere else, and probably not quite yet. Terrible for sure, and worthy of monthly direct debits to related causes, but always at a distance. And looking back, I must have been OK with that on some level, as awful as it sounds.

For me, it took the shift in the Overton Window and change in public discourse brought about by quite hard-line climate agitators and advocates for direct climate action nationally and in our own communities, which gained prominence around a decade ago, for the penny to really drop: now, here, all of us. I, and, I suspect, thousands like me who'd 'known but done it anyway', needed this step-change to go "Wait, wtaf!?" It's easy for us to smug-out and say, with our already-born DC, that we wouldn't, no, simply couldn't now, but we just need to own that we did.

While I agree the future dose look concerning, there's not actually been a point in human history where it hasn't.

Parents in the 80's questioned if they should bring children into the cold War situation, under threat of nuclear destruction.

Parents in the 40's questioned if they should bring children into a world where fascism was raising across Europe

Parents across history will have worried about bringing children into the wars or plagues of the time.

Stone ages Parents probably even worried about bringing there children into a world where the ice age was receding and sabertooth cats were kicking arround...

Eco-Fascism - a term I've just come across - they tend to be most vocal with over populuation emphasis and link it to limiting children especially of poor or certain ethnic groups or any other undesriables in their eyes and immigration.

The population bomb went off already - and world population will be falling maybe be as early at 2040-2050.

It also looks like population decline will not mean better environment for nature - at least it's not clear from Japan.

Fewer people doesn’t always mean better outcomes for nature – just look at Japan

I suspect it's because most "natural" enviornments are actually hevaily managed and have been for centuries so it will need active managment but socitey are also adapting to demand of aging population it may not get priorty it needs.

In what way am I downplaying it? It was your post that implied WW2 was a hard event that people got over. The narrative that you and others seem to subscribe to is that we’ve always had wars, big weather events, recessions, diseases, food shortages, etc etc and we always get through it. With climate change we’re likely to see all of these things at once. There is also an astonishing naivety around people who think that we in the UK will somehow be immune from the effects of climate change. That is proper head-in-sand territory. I agree that the world isn’t going to end, but it has every prospect of being fairly bleak.

I think you’re ill-informed about the impact of WW2 on some people and to downplay it like that is a bit disrespectful. But that aside, I also think that just as we managed to recover from devastating wars, we will eventually overcome the climate crisis. It will be hard because things will only start to change when they get REALLY bad, and I don’t underestimate the damage that will have been done at that point, but I don’t think the world will end either.

WW2 lasted 6 years, followed by a tough decade of recovery. The comparison to climate change is rather like people who can’t grasp the difference between weather and climate. Would it be different if WW2 had lasted for generations with little prospect of improvement?

Your posts are bang on @BrunoSaysItLooksLikeRain- wise and articulate, much appreciated 🙏

Gently, yes you are unreasonable. I do believe that the climate change will be one of the big challenges for the next generation, but every generation faces their challenges in one way or the other. My now deceased grandparents lived in Germany during WW2. Was it a terrible time? Yes. Did they wish they never were born? No.

@BrunoSaysItLooksLikeRain so much this!!!

@sensiblefootwear I really hear where you're coming from.
It's some strange quirk of human psychology.
We love the idea of having babies -they bring joy and are just delightful.
We love the idea of ourselves as parents.
We have easy access to all the climate science the internet makes available to us, we see global heating play out across continents, oceans and atmosphere, we hear hard-nosed corporations reflect on the science and make forecasts and decisions which, even a decade ago, would have been unimaginable and seem totally arbitrary, yet now, in a world which is changing so rapidly, they make perfect sense.

We know all this and we still bring new life into the world, we grow our families.
And in some of us, this little switch-up occurs where, it would seem, we can't quite face what this says about who we are -we made a decision that for all the reasons we know can be construed as selfish, wilfully short-sighted, and perhaps even cruel.
This understandably causes significant cognitive dissonance on a personal level -we are wired to be social beings, to want to be good. Not set our DC up for future suffering.
So we detach from the material fact of the science. It's not happening here, not yet, not in my lifetime, it's always been happening, we'll find a way through, we'll deal with it when it happens -as if it's not already here.

I think it is rare to be fully embodied in both 'camps' as you put it, and hold both realities at once. Because it involves accepting that, despite loving your DC with everything you've got, you knew and you did it anyway.

Hi OP, I've not read the whole thread but I was skimming it last night whilst awake with my baby. 5 months old and he's already lived through 5 heatwaves.

Both my partner and I work in the environmental sector and work with the reality of climate chaos and ecological collapse daily. We had pretty much decided not to have (biological) children and this was a huge factor in that decision, and I think it is a very respectable, reasonable choice (not at all doomerism) if you do decide not to. But here we are...

There is a massive emotional component to making the decision which can't really be rationalised but for us at least we also went through the mental gymnastics, as have many of my friends and colleagues (as others have said, lots of climate scientists do have children, although often only 1). I'll explain some of the key points that ultimately meant we decided to go ahead.

Firstly, this isn't a new problem. It is different from a war, plague, politics etc but it's not new. Many people will say "oh I feel so guilty for bring my children aged 15/ 20/ 30 into the world, I wouldn't do it now". This is bollocks that people tell themselves to try and paint themselves as climate conscious, but we've know about this issue for a long time (academically and publicly). I learnt about it in school and the predictions were more dier at that point. It's very easy to say you wouldn't have children after you've had them, but the reality is having children is always a selfish decision whatever the time and place you bring them into - own that decision. My parents knew all about environmental crisis but still had me, and my life has for many global reasons (financial crash etc) been objectively harder than theirs, but it has still up to this point been good and I don't resent being born.

Bringing a child into this world means bringing them into uncertainty and you cannot guarantee a good life, but this has always been so. However, it does not mean certain doom and misery. The world is changing and that is going to bring MASSIVE change and challenges, this can't be understated, but it does not mean the planet is going to be completely unlivable, we have the opportunity to adapt.

There are many climate and ecological changes locked in but we also have the solutions for slowing warming and adaptation. The biggest issue we face right now is political will. Every degree of warming makes a difference. What often doesn't get reported is the enormous progress we have made. We have already hugely reduced the rate of warming (when compared with what was being predicted when I was a child) because of the rapid and unexpected progress on renewables. Your carbon footprint is probably similar, if not less than that of your grandparents despite use of more days to day technology, taking more flights etc, and this is all down efficiency in technology and renewable usage. We can do better. And there will come a tipping point (soon I believe as the issue is now landing on western shores) where politicians can no longer deny the issue and there will be action on adaptation in particular.

Finally, when considering if I should have a child my colleagues who already had children advised me to think about what advice I would give to my child if they were already here. And it's this - live a big beautiful life. Do so responsibly, care for the world and people, try to make the world a better place, and take ownership of your choices but don't let guilt and anxiety dictate your choices.

Yes it is. No one can guarantee a time of peace and plenty for their child. People could not have predicted World Wars, Great Depression, Potato Famine however people who lived in those times knew happiness as well as struggles.

Happiness is never a guarantee but I will do my best to give my children all the tools I can.

@MyLimeGuide I think it is safe to say that, for every climate 'hype' in the media, there is a rigorously researched and peer reviewed report into some other area of climate science that never sees the light of day, another bleak acturial forecast by one of the Big Four, and another day of men, women and children in the global South reaping the fruits of our cavalier attitude to early climate warnings. Our lives here are a stroke of luck -an accident of birth, and no merit. You glibly write off the experience of billions while popping your la-la-la fingers in your ears.

There will always be adverse weather events. We just have to deal with them.

Climate scientists are not dispassionate automatons. As if they would advocate for anything of the kind.

You also don't know what they are saying behind closed doors.

We don't think climate change is the only bad thing to happen. It is, however, the bad thing that is unlikely to get better. War is different. Wars can and do end. It's possible to leave a war torn country. It isn't possible to leave the planet (well, it might be one day, but that is still unlikely to be accessible to the majority even if it ever happens).

Ok @MyLimeGuide. I think you’re naïve, but you are of course entitled to believe whatever you do.

This is your opinion, I have mine. There are also many scientists that agree with me but media wont highlight. I remember David belllamy RIP got shamed for his views, even after he died. Yes I can see the fires on the news and the hot summers, we also had covid, there was WW1, WW2, life goes on!