News/Commentary

Media promoting idea for humans to stop having kids, self-extinction; ‘To breed or not to breed?’

December 21, 2022 | | Print Article

The proliferation of climate change alarmism is paving the way for a recalibration of western society in order to stave off the doomsday predictions of a warming planet and the media has been doing its part by promoting the idea that humans should consider not procreating for the greater good.

Media outlets and assorted talking heads have increasingly focused on stories encouraging prospective parents to limit the size of their families or not have children at all because of the risk of contributing to the supposed crisis, even featuring advocates of human extinction.

Such stories pre-dated COVID with one 2017 headline from NBC News citing ‘the science” to suggest that it is immoral to have children and that each kid is a black mark on the parents’ “personal carbon ledger” in a article entitled “Science proves kids are bad for the earth. Morality suggests we stop having them.”

According to the author, a prominent bioethicist, “If I release a murderer from prison, knowing full well that he intends to kill innocent people, then I bear some responsibility for those deaths — even though the killer is also fully responsible. My having released him doesn’t make him less responsible (he did it!). But his doing it doesn’t eliminate my responsibility either.”

Another headline from a story by the Guardian that year was “Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children,” with a 2021 New York Times piece on coronavirus and climate change anxiety among a number of prospective parents entitled  “To Breed or Not to Breed?”

 

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In a more recent article published earlier this month by The Washington Post entitled “Should you not have kids because of climate change? It’s complicated,” the growing movement to limit having children is burnished by the climate guilt of those whose views are highlighted such as one woman who is quoted saying, “I wanted to have a child, but I was also looking at the planet and thinking: ‘Well, what kind of future will we have if there’s more of the same?’”.

The woman, Sanghani-Jorgensen said that “she and her husband decided that having a child — a single child — could fulfill their desires without putting undue burden on an overheating world. ‘I was very particular about only having one.’”

In a segment on ABC’s “Good Morning America” earlier this month, meteorologist Ginger Zee was interviewed about having children, saying that the issue was personal while telling of an uncomfortable conversation with her sister over her choice to have a second baby, “When I was pregnant with my second child, [my sister] said in disappointment, ‘I didn’t think you were gonna do that again for the planet.’ She thought I would adopt,” she said.

The segment also featured celebrity input from pop star Miley Cyrus and emasculated Brit royal Prince Harry on limiting the number of offspring.

“Two, maximum!” the Duke of Sussex exclaimed with Cyrus saying, “until I feel like my kid would live on an earth with fish in the water, I’m not bringing in another person to deal with that.”

Last month, The New York Times published a fawning profile of an actual advocate for human extinction, Les Knight who is the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction movement, describing the 75-year-old activist as “tall and gentle” and coming across as “clear-eyed and thoughtful, like a mash-up of Bill Nye and Fred Rogers,” likening a man who wants to see the end of human life to the beloved children’s television personality and the “science guy.”

According to Knight – who never had kids and underwent a vasectomy in 1973 when he was 25 – human beings are detrimental to the planet.

“Look what we did to this planet,” he told the outlet during a chat in his backyard this fall. “We’re not a good species.”

“His beliefs were rooted in deep ecology, which challenges assumptions of human dominance and argues that other species are just as significant. Mr. Knight came to see humans as the most destructive of invasive species, and as super predators,” the Times writes of the man who it notes once “organized a long-running game of nude croquet in his backyard, which, it should be mentioned, is ringed by 20-foot-tall laurel hedges.”

“We came to be and then ran amok,” he said. “And because we’re smart enough, we should know enough to end it.”

“People mention music and art and literature and the great things that we have done — it’s funny they don’t ever mention the bad things we’ve done,” Knight continued. “I don’t think the whales will miss our songs.”

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Chris Donaldson
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