S ophia and her partner have been thinking about having children for about five years. They are concerned about humanity’s impact on biodiversity loss and climate change and worried about what the future holds. “Our conversation has two parts,” says Sophia, a communications specialist who preferred not to use her full name.
“One is: what’s the contribution of a child to the global [climate] crisis? The second one is [about] what would their life be like. “I live with heaps of grief about biodiversity collapse. I think about the future and what the future of a child would be like in that sense.
” The fear of climate change has led to couples having fewer babies ; about one in five female climate scientists say they will have no children or fewer children because of the crisis. It’s not the only reason for what governments and headlines are calling a baby crisis, a population crisis, a fertility crisis, a demographic crisis, an ageing crisis and an economic crisis. The cost of living, housing security and a lack of opportunity also play their part.
The upshot is that all over the world (nearly – but more on that in a bit), governments are concerned that women are simply not having enough babies. Elon Musk thinks falling birthrates are a bigger risk to civilisation than global heating. There’s a burgeoning movement of pronatalists wanting to have “tons of kids” to save the world.
It’s fairly clear that, when women are more educated, more liberated, and m.