My own Thoughts on Climate Parenthood - Part 1

I was born in 1994, when the world population stood at 5.7 billion, while today we stand at 7.8 billion. The rate of acceleration is slowing, and with urbanization, the rural population is growing much more slowly, for what it's worth. There are a lot of nuances related to the nature of this growth, but there are some unavoidable ways that more people means more resources are used up. For many, this begs an unavoidable question: "Is it ethical to have children in 2020?"

When I discuss this with peers, I think there are actually two conversations being had. Many people are actually considering ethics, but I think there's also a general sense of pessimism infused in their answers. To the extent that people are actually worried that their kids won't have a livable world, it strikes me as a red herring, at least for affluent Canadians. Any child being born in Edmonton today is safer from war, disease, most prejudices, and yes, probably even natural disasters than ever before in human history. Climate change may ravage Sudan or The Maldives, but Edmonton is due for a much more mixed plague, and has more resources to handle it. Some want to reject this, but I maintain that self interest is a bad reason to despair for the future (In Canada).

Obviously, the present is not the future, and a trend is not destiny. Also, there are plenty of countries that legitimately should fear for their future with climate change and a growing population. Here, however, being at risk of climate change and having a higher birth rate seem positively correlated. Poverty is the clear proxy, which both diminishes a country's ability to respond to climate effects and is related to birth rates. Some historical trends which reduce wealth near the equator certainly don't help (and there are many exceptions to this rule, such as rich states on the Arabian peninsula with low birth rates that will face major challenges in a hotter world). This doesn't really matter, I just want to point out that when people talk about not wanting to bring kids into an uncertain world, the world as a whole is not using that metric.

While I don't think parenthood is often related to the child's future hopes, I also don't think it's related very often to the ethics of procreation (which I'll actually address in Part II). That's not to say I don't think parents in the West seriously consider the ethics, I just don't think it affects their choice. Polls have been conducted fairly often asking what is ethical to do to animals, whether it's okay to hurt animals for small personal pleasure, and how valuable people think various animal consciousnesses should be valued in relation to other beings. If we trust those polls to be accurate, then well over half of Canada should be vegan, heck, some of the responses seem so skewed it seems half of Canada should be in PETA. There are a lot of reasons why morals don't necessarily translate to action, and I don't need to single any of them out, I just want to say that I again don't think morals around parenthood are likely to translate to action in the vast majority of cases. Of course there are vegetarians, just as there are people who forego kids, and of course it's not clear that having kids is immoral in the first place, I'll get to it.

This post is running away from me a bit, so let's just say that I clearly think the main factor for the number of kids is economic. I don't think I need to convince anyone, so I won't try that hard, but I think housing and women's education are two of the biggest factors borne out in the data. Obviously, women's education is a great reason to wait on kids, while a lack of affordable housing seems like a policy failure, and a separate blog post besides. Religion plays a large role in family size too, but not as big as I once thought. Certain religions are correlated with larger families, Mormons and Muslims come to mind, but even this seems to fall apart outside a rural setting, or varies a lot by country. Catholics once had this stereotype as well, and now simply prove a good example of how it can dissipate in my mind.

Do I look at any of this as inherently positive or negative? Short answer, no. Longer answer, another post.