Are Liberals Really Obsessed with Not Having Kids Because of Global Warming?

Ezra Klein is not necessarily the sharpest knife in the drawer or the greatest writer in the world, but he did have a fascinating admission about children in a piece he did for the New York Times. This will give you the gist of it:

To his credit, I suppose, since the piece is mainly filled with dubious global warming dreck (It’s supppperrrrr scary, but maybe not as bad you think, you guys!), Klein does at least point out that things have always been “bad” in one way or another:

As Dylan Matthews writes at Vox:

What today we’d characterize as extreme poverty was until a few centuries ago the condition of almost every human on earth. In 1820, some 94 percent of humans lived on less than $2 a day. Over the next two centuries, extreme poverty fell dramatically; in 2018, the World Bank estimated that 8.6 percent of people lived on less than $1.90 a day. And the gains were not solely economic. Before 1800, average life spans didn’t exceed 40 years anywhere in the world. Today, the average human life expectancy is more like 73.

No mainstream climate models suggest a return to a world as bad as the one we had in 1950, to say nothing of 1150. Was the world so bad, for virtually the entirety of human history, that our ancestors shouldn’t have made our lives possible? If not, then nothing in our near future looks so horrible that it turns reproduction into an immoral act

In one sense, all of this is nothing new. Before global warming, people were wondering if they should bring kids into the world because of the supposed overpopulation that was coming. Before that, it was the possibility of nuclear war. Of course, all of those are foo-foo problems compared to what previous generations of humans have endured:

“We’re serfs who work in the fields all day, our feudal lords take most of what we earn and if we complain about it, they’ll string us up. Should we have kids?”

“The Nazis are winning and unless something changes, they’ll conquer the civilized world and bury every good and decent person under their tyrannical boots. Should we have kids?”

“The barbarians across the valley may attack at any time and if we lose, they’ll murder the men, take the women for breeding, and use the children as slaves. Should we have kids?”

“Hey, we’re slaves. Should we have kids?”

As much as all of us, myself included, complain about how the world is today, we Americans are doing better than 99.9% of humans that have ever lived on this planet. If you went back through time, a large percentage of noblemen, lords, and kings would undoubtedly happily trade places with the average American once they understood what our world was like:

“So, you are living in a house with air conditioning, refrigeration, a stove, a microwave, a soft bed with no bedbugs, you have hot and cold running water, and you can use a toilet instead of crapping in a pan. For entertainment, you look at blockbuster movies that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, listen to millions of different songs, play video games, and watch millions of different women engaged in every perversion imaginable via pornography. Not only is better food than we have readily available, but you’re in little danger of being killed by foreign armies, and you can call the police on a magical device to come defend you if you’re bothered by criminals. You can even quickly and effectively move across the country via cars or flying devices called planes that allow you to visit other continents in hours. Meanwhile, all of this is theoretically possible on the salary you make as an assistant manager at somewhere called Kmart.”

However, there is one important thing that has changed a great deal. Children used to be people’s retirement program. If they didn’t have kids, who was going to take care of them when they got old? Who were they going to have work around the farm? Who were they going to marry off to secure an alliance with France? On the other hand, today children are no longer a huge financial asset. On the contrary, they’re an enormous financial liability.

So, think about that, along with the fact that Americans, particularly American liberals, are probably some of the most narcissistic people in human history. There have to be a lot of them thinking, “You can take a lot of vacations, get nicer cars, and buy a lot of Starbucks lattes for $240,000. Why not just spend that on me instead of on some little brat?” Granted, some of that is a blessing for humanity because there are people in this world who just shouldn’t be having kids (see all the parents taking their kids to drag shows or trying to convince everyone that their small child is trans as great examples).

That being said, you put it all together and there are some people that have simply decided that they don’t want kids. In a previous era, they may have just said that. In 2022, they feel compelled to use it as yet another way to virtue signal. You know:

“I care about Mother Earth so much that I just can’t bear to bring a child into the world that will strip her of more of her precious resources. That may seem extreme to some people, but if you really love the environment like me, you need to go that far. Besides, if I had children, because I’m such a good person, I’d spend all my time worrying about their future on this precious world we’re destroying. Sometimes it’s a curse being this sensitive and caring.”

Do you think I’m exaggerating? Here are a few of the popular (most recommended comments) on the thread and they do seem representative of most comments.

* Ezra, Ezra, Ezra. This piece reads as a well-written attempt at rationalizing your way out of the guilt of being one of the most privileged procreators on earth. You and Steven Pinker share the tone-deaf luxury of being able to reframe anthropogenic biosphere collapse in terms of techno-optimistic progress.

* I've been writing about climate for decades...me, McKibben and a handful of others, and reject the premise advanced by the people you quote as utter madness. Having children is an act of hope FOR THE PARENTS, and the kids, recently born and yet unborn, will pay an unconscionable price for our terminal uniqueness...far from being an act of hope, bringing children into this world today is an act of cruelty paid forward by people who will be long gone. This piece is irresponsible in the most selfish of ways...

* The earth hit its long term sustainable human population number of about 1 billion back around 1800. Your argument amounts to you do not care about the ecological destruction of the past 200 years. And you think the deficit in sustainable ecology does not exist. Support a one-child policy. That is still probably more than the earth can deal with at this point.

* The fastest way to reduce CO2 emissions is to reduce the world's population. Any other conclusion is just sticking your head in the sand and hoping for the best. Eliminate one person in the US and poof ~1,125 tons of CO2, gone. And that's just the one person, if they aren't here they can't produce babies either. . . While we're at it let's reduce airplane travel by 50-75 percent. The most incredibly wasteful form of transportation (except perhaps the automobile). And companies are touting supersonic airplanes! Everyone wants to eat ice cream but not the calories. I've got news for folks, it doesn't work that way.

If I’m being perfectly frank here, I have to admit that the woke having fewer (or no) children isn’t all that disturbing to me even though, human nature being what it is, a lot of their kids would probably turn out to be raging conservatives just to stick it to their annoying parents.

I look at all this a little differently and not just because I think global warming “science,” such as it is, is a huge joke. Maybe this sounds odd to say for a man who’s getting older and hasn’t had kids yet (I still plan to though), but if you look back at your own personal, genetic history, do you know what you’ll see? Ancestors from the beginning of time to the present day that bred. If you go back thousands of generations in your bloodline, there was a man who bred with a woman, who produced a child who repeated that pattern until it came to you. Do you think you’re going to break that chain that could in one sense be described as a big part of the evolutionary reason you exist at all and BE HAPPIER for it? I REALLY doubt that.

Besides, do you think your whole life is going to be one big pleasure cruise without kids? Are you going to be a guy who’s out chasing tail at 70 or a woman who’s perfectly sated by sitting around the house with your 13 cats? Again, I really doubt it. For all the cost and trouble, kids are a big part of what makes life worth living, particularly when you get older. Passing on your wisdom, helping your kids succeed, taking pride in how they turned out and joy in their love – that’s something powerful and worthwhile that you’ll never get from hedonism or “looking out for #1.”

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