People give up animal products, airplane flights, and single-use plastic in efforts to be “eco-friendly.” Now, they are also being asked to give up on having kids.
Antinatalism, or the philosophical position that bringing new life into the world is morally wrong, is far from a fringe idea today. It is no longer confined to abstract academic discussions or the musings of existential nihilists who argue that creating life is, in effect, creating more suffering. Those who argue that human reproduction is always at the expense of the greater environment would seem to be a niche subcategory of an already-niche group. But today, 1 in 4 childless adults say that their decision to have none or fewer children is influenced by their worries over climate change.
Similarly, Thirty-six percent of Americans aged 16-24 are hesitant to have children due to fears of a worsening environmental situation. NBC published an article in 2017: “Science proves kids are bad for Earth. Morality suggests we stop having them.” In the same vein, The Guardian advises: “Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children,” pointing out that for each child not born, 58.6 metric tonnes of CO2 are saved per year. The New York Times posits “To Breed or Not to Breed?”
While these ideas might be popular, they do not stem from a historically popular movement. These concepts did not proliferate organically — and why would they? The drive to reproduce is among the most universal and fundamental instincts we have as humans. No, these ideas gained notoriety and their lasting connection to the environmental movement in the 1970s, largely thanks to a single text and a perfect concoction of social turmoil. The Population Bomb was written and published in 1968 by Dr. Paul Erlich, who argued that human overpopulation was an imminent threat that required an immediate and radical response.
In The Population Bomb, Erlich identifies that our biology influences us to reproduce frequently and to ensure longevity for ourselves and our offspring. The massive technological progress of the 19th and 20th centuries — in particular, the advancements made in the areas of agriculture and medicine — have made the birth rate higher than the death rate. This exponential growth is throwing off the balance of nature, Erlich argues, and thus humans will deplete the natural resources necessary for their survival and the survival of other living things.
But how do we go about fixing this problem? Erlich points out that it is not socially acceptable nor particularly morally defensible to propose an increase in the death rate, so we must aim to decrease the birth rate. He proposes that wealthier people in developed countries have a moral responsibility to have fewer children, because their children will expend more resources than the children of poorer individuals in less developed regions. In general, he supports the proliferation and social acceptance of birth control and abortion to limit the catastrophe he believes unchecked human reproduction presents. Ultimately, Erlich argues that we must transcend our selfish, primitive biology in order to usher in a new human era governed by intellect over instinct.
Dr. Erlich was then a biology professor at Stanford University. The book, written in a three-week span by Erlich and his wife, was published quickly at the urging of then-president of the Sierra Club, David Brower, with hopes that it would “influence the 1968 presidential election” to enshrine access to abortion and birth control. It was massively popular, selling millions of copies in a matter of years.
As a result, Erlich became a celebrity, was invited frequently onto Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, and was regarded by the media as an expert on the emerging issue of “overpopulation.” The statements in his work were adopted and endorsed by many prominent global organizations, including various United Nations sub-organizations as well as pro-abortion and pro-sterilization groups such as the Planned Parenthood Federation and the Association for Voluntary Sterilization. We now know that Erlich’s doomsday predictions about human overpopulation did not come to pass. The environmental impact of humanity on the planet is undoubtedly sizable, but we are certainly not in a global apocalypse: We produce a surplus of food, and global life expectancy has risen significantly since the 1970s. While the global population has grown, birth rates have dropped below the replacement rate in many developed countries. Regardless, much of Erlich’s thinking has cemented its place in the Western philosophical canon.
Overcoming the desire to have children for the sake of the environment has become emblematic of the younger, educated, socially-conscious, wealthy circles in which these ideas first circulated. In 2019, Harry, Duke of Sussex, declared in Vogue Magazine that he would have two children “maximum” to minimize his “impact” on the environment. Two years later, a nonprofit organization called Population Matters — founded by Dr. Erlich himself — named Prince Harry and his American wife, Meghan Markle, “Change Champions” for their decision to limit their family size and for “normalizing” the choice for others. Similarly/As well,The British environmental charity, founded in 1991, has a “vision of a future in which our population co-exists in harmony with nature and prospers on a healthy planet, to the benefit of all.” It has attracted high-profile, well-respected spokespeople and conservationists, including Sir David Attenborough and Dr. Jane Goodall.
Many similar organizations have popped up in the United States and abroad, arguing that fewer people will result in better environmental outcomes. These organizations’ billing as environmental charities is misleading at best, because the central point is not an environmental one, but an anti-natalist one: People need to stop having children because of the burden that extra people create for what they see as a fundamentally fragile, overburdened environment. And because those in developed countries necessarily expend more resources, they should take the lead in having fewer children, eventually lowering the population through group buy-in to this ideology.
Some interesting accessory ideology often accompanies this line of thinking.
Many proponents of environmental antinatalism not only believe that citizens of developed nations have the ethical responsibility to have children below the replacement rate, but in the place of their offspring, welcome those from less-developed, more “population-burdened” countries. Research shows that people from less-developed countries adopt the consumption habits of developed countries when they move there. The environmental antinatalist does not seem to care that this argument is senseless. Rather, they aim to sneak in accessory ideology under the guise of “environmentalism” — whether it be welcoming foreigners as “climate refugees,” discouraging Westerners from having families, or promoting revisionist, “anticolonial” views of history.
Conservationism that does not seek to conserve the human race, or to see humans as inextricable from the environment, is doomed to fail — and it is spiritually bereft. It is helpful to interrogate why people care about conserving the environment to begin with. Many conservationists emphasize the importance of protecting our natural heritage so that it is available for future generations’ utility and enjoyment. Theodore Roosevelt himself wrote:
“I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.”
We do not protect things indiscriminately or unselfishly. Erlich himself identified that our chief motivations are related to the survival of our own species, and that our greatest advances in technology are born out of our desire to see our descendants thrive. But if we believe, as the modern environmentalist movement would have us, that humans have a uniformly negative effect on the environment, then why should we even try to improve it? What incentive do we have to better our world if we believe we should be the last generation of humans to inhabit it? It becomes obvious why antinatalism is not a pro-environment cause but chiefly an anti-human one — it requires us to resist our fundamental interest to create and preserve life.
Martyring our offspring for the sake of the “environment” is not a compelling idea. The sacrifice proposed is suicidal. Conservation is not anti-human, but the accessory ideology environmental antinatalists try to sneak by us certainly is. Proponents of environmental antinatalism seek to create social change by making the challenge of conservation intangible, impossible, and terrifying.
The admirable and necessary activities of conservationists interested in preserving a world where humans can thrive in tandem with the nature they are called to steward have been hijacked by a number of radical ideas which in fact stand in opposition to the original purpose of the movement.
Conservationism is an idea, proliferated and enacted by and for people. If fewer environmentally-conscious people have children, the result is not likely to be fewer people but specifically fewer environmentally-conscious people in the next generation.
Fewer human beings means fewer protectors of this Earth, which we have been called to steward. We cannot hope to protect our natural heritage if we believe that there is no heritage to be passed down. We cannot embrace antinatalism — in fact, we cannot hope to protect anything unless we believe that life itself is worth protecting.
