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

[sensiblefootwear]

Hoping that people will (gently, with good evidence) tell me I'm BU.

I love children and have always wanted them. But for the past few years and especially this year I'm finding the science on climate change and the tangible effects of it (houses on fire in nearby towns, schools so hot people's children have been sent home after fainting, looming food and water shortages, etc etc) increasingly difficult to ignore and I can't help but thinking it's an incredibly unwise decision to choose to bring another life into this world.

To be clear, I'm not talking about choosing not to have children because I think it will somehow have any impact on the climate, because of course it won't. I'm talking about choosing not to have them to spare them the horror of what's to come in the next few decades.

Am I being unreasonable to feel this way? I'd really love to hear from people who genuinely understand climate science and know where things are heading, but are still staying firm in their decision to have children in the future.

Thank you @BrunoSaysItLooksLikeRain and everyone else who has responded to what I was asking, yes I think you've hit the nail on the head with what I was getting at. I'm genuinely curious as to how one can be in both camps, so to speak. I only seem to meet people in one or the other. I do get worried about climate but I also experience a lot of joy in my day to day life and I'm doing what I can do help. And FWIW yes I am considering adoption and fostering but as I said above these are not necessarily appropriate options for everyone who's not sure about / not able to have bio children.

Yes. I know. I am an adoptive parent. I mostly wouldn't recommend it to people who are having fertility problems (though that was why I adopted) but I'm this specific case where someone has ruled out having a biological child for very specific reasons it's worth considering I think

The absolute societal collapse which would ensue if everyone today decided not to have children would, imo, be significantly worse, faster, and more horrific than the (very real) dangers of climate change which can, at least, still be mitigated, and will not end the world in my children's lifetimes. So I guess it's a case of pick your poison?

It's a good reason not to have children and you shouldn't feel bad about your choice if that's the one you make.

I fully agree with you. Why has everyone allowed themselves to be so foolishly scared by the media! Mass extinction has been a thing since the beginning of time due to climate change, the world changes, deal with it! Its not going to really effect you or your children or your grandchildren. Those few incidents you see on the news that get hyped up are in no way more a threat to mankind than planet earth existence has ever been.

Being informed by scientists who have spent decades studying climate change is not the same thing as being ‘foolishly scared by the media’.

Those who are ignoring climate messaging are the foolish ones, IMO.

Climate change is already affecting the UK (surprised you haven’t noticed!) so yes it will affect our children and grandchildren.

@Waitingforthetimetopass "I fully understand the problem however I believe that my children are happy. By giving them a strong bases of resilience they will face whatever comes and still be happy."

Childhood is short, and with luck, we're there to make our DC's childhoods happy. And here, in the global North, we're fortunate that the impact of the changing climate is not yet impacting life to the extent that it gets in the way of ensuring our DC are safe, secure ...and happy.

But our DC will not always be children. They will be adults for whom, in a generation, life is likely to look different. We talk about adaptation and that science and human ingenuity and resilience may yet save the day. Adaptation happens in the face of challenge and threat. Resilience likewise. Is that a reasonable hand to deal them?

Do you live on earth??
Climate change is already affecting us, our children and our grandchildren.

Higher insurance premiums, travel delays, increased building costs, health impacts, job changes, water shortages, rising food prices, loss of wildlife etc.

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!

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

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).

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.

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

@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.

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.

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.

@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.

@BrunoSaysItLooksLikeRain so much this!!!

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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...

@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.