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Climate Change Alarmism Fueling Population Collapse

Posted on Monday, March 13, 2023
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by Andrew Abbott
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AMAC Exclusive – By Andrew Abbott

Climate

Combatting climate change alarmism might not just be about pushing back on bad science and political opportunism. It might also be a battle for the survival of the human species.

According to an analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis released last week, “the era of rapid population growth is coming to an end.” By 2100, the report states, the global population is predicted to peak at 10.5 billion before falling precipitously. Under this projection, almost every developed nation will see a significant population decline.

The U.S. population is expected to level off at around 400 million people, and will by surpassed by Nigeria’s population around 2050, according to the data. India is expected to overtake China as the world’s most populous country this year and peak at around 1.7 billion by 2060.

Europe, meanwhile, is estimated to have already reached its population peak – a consequence of rapidly declining fertility rates in recent decades. Even as life expectancy continues to rise, couples are having fewer children.

Historically, population declines throughout the world have been driven by external factors. Things like war, famine, and disease have been what have stopped societies from growing their numbers.

Throughout the West today, however, none of these factors are present. Even with widely available modern healthcare, no active wars outside of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and relative political and economic stability, people just aren’t having children.

While the reasons behind declining birth rates are unique to each country, one common underlying factor is leftist alarmism about climate change leading to the perverse idea that it is morally wrong to have children.

A Washington Post article from December describes one young woman named Meera Sanghani-Jorgensen feeling “weighed down by the consumption of her children before they were even born.” Jorgensen “couldn’t shake the feeling that, by giving birth, she might be doing something bad for the earth.”

That sentiment has become increasingly common among young people in recent years. In 2021, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a letter to investors that “the movement to not have children owing to fears over climate change is growing and impacting fertility rates quicker than any preceding trend in the field of fertility decline.”

A December 2020 ABC News poll found that 23% of adults ages 18-45 are rethinking having children because of climate change. Another poll from 2020 found similar results.

Hollywood celebrities, mainstream media journalists, and even Democrat politicians, meanwhile, have all fueled the anti-baby fire.

Singer Miley Cyrus, for instance, vowed in 2019 not to have a baby on this “piece of s*** planet.” Ex-British royal Prince Harry, a father of two, has said that having any more children is “irresponsible.”

The New York Times, meanwhile, has openly mused on the question of “To Breed or Not to Breed?” The Atlantic has also speculated on “A World Without Children,” while the London Review of Books plainly asked “Is it OK to have a child?” and an NBC News opinion piece declared “Science proves kids are bad for Earth. Morality suggests we stop having them.”

Progressive darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has waded into the debate as well, saying in 2019 that it is a “legitimate question” to ask whether it is “moral” for people to have children amid climate change concerns.

At least as far back as 2009, academics have also been stoking fears about the supposed “climate impacts” of having children. That year, Oregon State University professors Paul Murtaugh and Michael Schlax concluded in the only original piece of academic research to date on the question that having a child in “a developed country like Russia, the United States, or Japan, would result in approximately 60 metric tons per year in CO2 emissions – an amount roughly equivalent to putting 13 gas-powered cars on the road for a year.” According to the two authors, each year a couple goes without having a child amounts to 24 people living car-free.

The study gained renewed interest when it was repackaged into a literature review in 2017, spawning a new wave of anti-child sentiment. In 2022, in large part motivated by the Oregon State study, two teachers founded a movement called “Birth Strike” which counter-intuitively proclaims that having children is a “crime against humanity.”

However, a Washington Post analysis last year found that, more than a decade later, the 2009 Murtaugh and Schlax paper ultimately made two glaring miscalculations.

First, the authors assumed that a mother and father were each responsible for one-half of the emissions of their future child, one-quarter of their grandchild’s emissions, and so on. Thus, the study assumes parents are at least partially responsible for all climate emissions their family generates, leading to a massive overcalculation of a child’s “carbon footprint.”

Second, the authors also assumed that carbon emissions would never decrease over time – speaking to a greater fatalism about the climate movement generally. Both of these assumptions led the authors to paint a dire portrait of the future.

NYU business professor Scott Galloway has offered an opposing view. He asserts that we will never “shrink” our way out of the challenges we face. Instead, the only way to overcome our global challenges is by having more children and investing in innovation and education. He writes, “The greatest threat to humanity isn’t climate change or thermonuclear war, but nothingness.”

Indeed, the notion that entire countries must simply “give up” and reduce themselves into oblivion to serve the environment is not only wrong but defeatist – the result of telling multiple generations of young people that they’re already doomed.

Instead, cultural and political leaders might be wise to choose a more optimistic message – one that values human and parenthood life as a blessing and a joy, rather than an unbearable burden.

Andrew Abbott is the pen name of a writer and public affairs consultant with over a decade of experience in DC at the intersection of politics and culture.

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Jeri
Jeri
1 year ago

US population will be unable to level off at 400 million if the border is not closed.

James Thompson
James Thompson
1 year ago

This is all by plan. They want to control the population. Pushing gender policies and abortion. The world has to many people according to the left and this is just another way to control us.

Paul DAscenz
Paul DAscenz
1 year ago

Close the Southern Border.
This is the answer!

Stephen Russell
Stephen Russell
1 year ago

Yet None drive EVs the Eco elites

William C Smith
William C Smith
1 year ago

Everyone has I-phones. Who needs kids, or wives,husbands, or lovers?

Morbious
Morbious
1 year ago

The nyu prof is right. The left ignores human potential and focuses solely on liabilities. They assume every child is nothing more than dead weight on an overburdened system. If we could rid ourselves of leftist influence in education and govt we would see a creative burst of achievement that would dwarf the renaissance.

jocko
jocko
1 year ago

GLOBAL liberals DESTROYING ALL OF US

Nick
Nick
1 year ago

The only people stupid enough to buy into the global warming bull puckey are Democrat liberal Marxists. So it follows that they are also the ones not having children. Presto, less Democrats. A win win for society. They are becoming a self limiting wacko group. They always have unintended consequences for everything they do.In this case a really good one!

Jerry
Jerry
1 year ago

The Bible says that God controls the weather and it also says to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. But how many believe the Bible anymore?

VoterAnn
VoterAnn
1 year ago

So Miley hates the planet. Any plans to find ANOTHER planet that will take you?!

CoNMTX
CoNMTX
1 year ago

2100? Who actually believes we will be here then? Hopefully, Christ will soon take us in the Rapture and we won’t have to deal with all the Globalists.

Casey C Matt
Casey C Matt
1 year ago

How can the future population of the United States be estimated when so much of south and central America is invading the country? And if the “natives” aren’t procreating the interlopers are sure known to do so.
I dunno about that “rapid decline” forcast……but its an easy guess when the readers will all be dead by the end of the century or in such a state of age related decline that they just as well should be.

anna hubert
anna hubert
1 year ago

Leave it to the “experts” they know the best They all should be the fortune tellers at the county fairs

steve
steve
1 year ago

The liberal crystal ball at work again, you can fold every other crazy oil and water ideas into climate change,

Carol
Carol
1 year ago

Less people makes it easier for those who want to control others to do so! This is all Marxist and another evil perpetrated by the left! God created everything so we should be more concerned about Him and NOT worship the creature but the creator! He told Adam to tend His garden, let’s tend the garden and let God worry about the big picture – that’s His area!!! I put my trust in HIM!

RC100
RC100
1 year ago

I suggest we all stop listening to these “climate” idiots…. I plan to do what I do until I see all of them, including algore and aoc, stop personally emitting CO2 and methane. Then I will admit they are serious…. not correct, just serious.

Vietvet 6768
Vietvet 6768
1 year ago

Climate change really, I learn the planet earth will shift on its axis and this happen climate will change world wide,

Granny26
Granny26
1 year ago

The climate has been changing since God created the earth and it will keep changing until he ends it….and I don’t think that’s too far off.

David Campbell
David Campbell
1 year ago

Natural selection will remove this idiocy from the earth. I am perfectly fine with climate activists not breeding. And leftists in general. And…well, you get the idea.

Gloria
Gloria
1 year ago

What’s this? More Porn-Fear? God created His world, not to be moved. It’s the humans who think they are gods and mess with the atmosphere with chemicals.

Max
Max
1 year ago

Everything in this article is just speculation based on data that cannot be truly proven by anyone. The data is just interpretation of what people believe it says.

InsanitySquared
InsanitySquared
1 year ago

The right number of kids for me is big, fat zero. I avoid responsibilities as much as I can and use my time arguing with people on the Internet. I call that a win!

David Millikan
David Millikan
1 year ago

Pure speculation by Federal Reserve Bank.
Anybody that believes Global Warming LIE and that having children is morally wrong and having children would hurt the planet is just plain stupid.
If they believe such nonsense then why were they born since they are hurting the planet themselves?
Total hypocrites.

Slick Rick
Slick Rick
1 year ago

I think couples should think hard about bringing a baby into this world as well but for a different reason. It is because of the fear of what it will be like for them growing up in a leftist, socialist, anti God world. And it is headed in that direction at a much faster pace than just a few years ago.

A Voter
A Voter
1 year ago

Everything liberals, socialists, communists, progressives et al do is for one purpose and one purpose only. Complete and total control. The means with which they intend to reach the end is through a culling of the herd. The smaller the herd the easier it is to control. Corona virus was not by accident, it was on purpose. The likes of Al Gore, Biden, Bill Gates and the rest disgust me to no end.

Sue
Sue
1 year ago

Personally I’m happy if the woke don’t reproduce.

Tplorable
Tplorable
1 year ago

Awesome! Idiots that shouldn’t have children to begin with, don’t want to have children! That is a huge win-win!

Kim
Kim
1 year ago

I think we should just let the AOC’s of the world think having children is immoral. That way, there will be fewer people like her populating the earth in the future.

Barbara
Barbara
1 year ago

Quite frankly I’m okay if people with these crazy fears and notions don’t procreate. We definitely need less of them, and they would certainly push their fears onto any children they would have. My college major was Geology so none of this ever made sense to me anyway. And while doing a trivia test this morning I came upon this little gem of knowledge which didn’t surprise me at all. The question was concerning what would happen if all the glaciers melted at once. The part after “every coastal city on the planet” is the part the global climate change pushers avoid mentioning. As well as all the times this has happened before there were no people on earth to cause it. The earth will do what the earth will do with or without us.

“There is still some uncertainty about the full volume of glaciers and ice caps on Earth, but if all of them were to melt, the global sea level would rise approximately 230 feet (or 70 meters), flooding every coastal city on the planet. And this has already happened before, geological records of temperature and sea level indicate that during past warm periods over the last several millions of years, the global sea level was higher than it is today.”

Source: USGS

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