Is Climate Change a Reason to Not Have Kids?

I think the answer is questioning the question.

Flickr by joeanneah. CC BY 2.0.

Climate change is here, and it’s real. When I read this story citing the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report about the effects of a 1.5°C increase, I was frightened. Frightened.

I was frightened because a 1.5°C increase is our best case scenario. And in this best case, by 2040 (which is only 20 years away), most coral reefs will die out, wildfires, heat waves, droughts, and flooding will rage with higher frequency, and the world’s food supply would not be consistent. To improve this best case scenario, we would have to transform the economic system dramatically.

I like to see myself as someone that has radical hope for the downfall of capitalism, the liberation of black, queer, non-binary, and trans people, and for something, anything, with the spirit of Green New Deal to be a remote possibility.

But I also see myself as someone pragmatic, someone that recognizes that radical change will likely be incited when survival — not choosing whether you should use fewer plastic bags or buy a bamboo straw or eat less meat or wondering whether your Zico Coconut Water bottle is actually being recycled — is our only choice. My fear, confirmed by this report, is that when this happens, it will be…