Article Debunks

Debunk of an article from The Western Journal

Overview of pronatalist bias on Vox

Debunk of “Having fewer kids will not save the climate” from Vox:

• The article assumes future government policies will significantly reduce future carbon emissions. This is not a certainty nor are the effectiveness of these policies known. For example, conservative government officials may reduce environmental regulations to promote free market principles (as the US President Donald Trump, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and German chancellor Angela Merkel had done), liberal governments may not be able to pass comprehensive environmental reforms due to resistance from conservatives and moderates or a lack of motivation to do so (as US President Joe Biden failed to do), the regulations may not be enough to solve the issue, or they may not be implemented in time to prevent future crises. 

  • Pro-natalist climate scientist Kimberly Nicholas agrees with this possibility: “Right now, governments are reducing emissions 10 times too slowly to meet our Paris agreement goals. We are not doing nearly enough and we are really in danger of completely missing those goals.” (Source)

• It advocates for charity donations in lieu of forgoing reproduction. There is no reason why people cannot do both. In fact, forgoing reproduction actually means that would-be parents would have more money to donate as well as reduce personal emissions from children. 

• It states that past doomsday predictions failed to pass, meaning climate change will not cause societal collapse either. This is a hasty generalization fallacy as past failed predictions does not mean future ones will fail as well, especially considering how climate change is not directly in control by humans and there are no corporate pressures incentivized to push the public ignore the problem. And even if major harmful effects could be avoided, it is a risk that parents are taking on behalf of their children, but only the children will face the consequences of that choice despite never having a say in it. 

• Lastly (and perhaps most pathetically), the article utilizes intense appeals to emotion about the joy of children and having hope in the face of desperation. Something the children will certainly appreciate as temperatures, droughts, heat waves, natural disasters, and sea levels increase while resources become scarcer, which may or may not lead to widespread violent conflict. (Source)

Debunk of “A climate scientist explains why it’s still okay to have kids” from Vox:

• Nicholas claims that having children now will not impact climate change because “we only have the next few years to solve the climate crisis reasonably well.” However, having more children will increase carbon emissions immediately as even an infant will increase resources consumed, waste production, and alter the lifestyles of parents. Even if it didn’t, their emissions in the future would also exacerbate the situation even more as the severity of climate change increases as more emissions are produced. Additionally, this also means that the child would need to live in a world that may be seriously affected by climate change, but they cannot do anything about it as it will be too late to fix the situation by then. 

• Samuel notes that projects to educate women to reduce birth rates would target the Global South despite the fact that most emissions come from the Global North. Even if this is unfair, the Global South would be disproportionately impacted by climate change. This means it would be preferable for fewer people to be in those countries as they would suffer the effects the most. And since those countries are also industrializing, more children in those countries would lead to significantly higher carbon emissions due to the potentially rapid growth and the lack of widespread renewable energy sources in comparison to nations that have more developed infrastructure.

• Samuel believes that focusing on the actions of individuals distracts from making substantial changes to policies that would have a larger impact. He is creating a false dilemma by assuming that we need to choose between making systemic changes or forgoing reproduction when it is possible to do both. In fact, not having children would allow activists to have more time and money to contribute to fight for these changes, as well as prevent those children from suffering due to circumstances outside of their control.

• Nicholas tells parents to ask themselves what they believe a meaningful life is and what would be necessary to have one when deciding on whether or not to have a child. However, this ignores the needs and desires of the children themselves. The parents may believe the risk is worth it or that a child can have a meaningful life despite climate change, but the child may disagree. Since it is the child that is affected without consent, only their opinion would matter. Focusing on what the parents believe completely disregards this. And since it is impossible to know what the child feels until it is born (at which point it would be too late to reverse the decision), it is unethical to reproduce knowing what will happen to them.

• Nicholas and Samuel agree that having children is ethical because people have had children in the past despite bad circumstances. This does not excuse those actions. Many people suffered greatly as a result of those decisions (e.g. the existence of child starvation and poverty, child labor, child sexual abuse and slavery, child marriages, etc.), and that should not be repeated. And circumstances could become even worse in the future or revert back to the conditions of those eras. It should not be the parents’ decision to make when the children will suffer the consequences despite having no say in it.

• Perhaps the most deranged part of this interview is when Nicholas describes a friend who was happy that she may die of cancer soon after having a child because it would be a “beautiful and wonderful and meaningful and lovely” experience. I cannot even begin to describe the selfishness and callousness of this action, especially when considering that cancer is an inheritable disease. Not only will the child be left behind with a single parent (dramatically increasing the risk that the child becomes an orphan if that parent dies and increasing the stress on that parent to provide for the child both financially and emotionally, which leads to poor outcomes for both of them), never be able to meet their own mother, and potentially develop the disease themselves, but it does not seem the mother even understands what she is doing beyond fulfilling her own desires.

• The final argument made in favor of reproduction is that the child might make a significant positive change to the world. See Counterargument 3 for a detailed response to this. 

  • Nicholas also makes a good point that no one will save us, and we must rescue ourselves from climate change. Not only is it improbable as she previously acknowledged that we only had a few years to solve climate change, but it is not the responsibility of future generations to fix our mistakes or suffer immensely if they fail.