The Ethics of Having Kids in the 6th Mass Extinction

Pope Francis recently made the statement that adopting pets was "selfish" and people should instead be having children.  Obviously the Catholic Church has a disgusting history of anti-choice, anti-birth control views that are almost single-handedly responsible for the overpopulation & crowding in South America, Haiti & the Philippines, so this comment is not entirely shocking to anyone paying attention, but it's still offensive in the face of humanity's current status.  Religious types are thinking only of tithing when making such comments--dogs and cats can't put coins in the collection plate--and Jesus certainly wouldn't have made such a hateful comment.  He was more of a "bless the beasts & children" type.  

But this article is not a religious theology debate, it's a discussion about the very survival of the human race & every other living thing on Earth.  And sadly, the Pope is far from the only entity pressuring people to have kids in the 21st Century.  It's a common argument by governments who worry about keeping their economies, markets, militaries, elder care systems & prisons propped up (again, it comes down to profit).  Economists also seem curiously invested in what's supposed to be a personal reproductive decision between 2 people.  Various assholes ranging from religious fundamentalists, misogynistic men who want to keep their women barefoot & pregnant, and of course our government which subsidizes irresponsible breeding by giving tax refunds, child tax credits, TANF & other kickbacks to parents who often can't afford to feed their own kids also push the idea that those of us who abstain from having kids are somehow less than.

Ethical Considerations

While the number of childfree-by-choice are growing, we're still a minority.  It's a hardwired human drive to reproduce and that's not ever going to change.  The future of the species depends on it.  That's all well and good, but that doesn't mean it should be an automatic behavior that's done without serious consideration for the ethical implications to the child & society.  Especially with the current state of the world and America in particular.

So let's start with the child:  just how considerate is it to bring a baby into the world during a pandemic that's killed [checks notes] 5.48 million people worldwide in under 2 years?  Hospitals are overrun with infectious COVID patients & exhausted healthcare workers, so let's add another human to the pile.  That'll help.  /s

Even if the pandemic were to magically vanish tomorrow, the effects will be felt for years to come in the form of burnout, nurse/doctor shortages, patient backlogs & so much more.  What if your child develops cancer or another serious childhood illness?  The healthcare they receive will most certainly be subpar compared to what they would've gotten before the pandemic.  Even when they just need the basics like vaccines or checkups it will not be quick or easy.  God forbid this is still going on once they reach daycare or school age, then you'll have to navigate the horrors of distance learning or (gasp) "babysitting" your own kid.  

Injured Amazon worker lies on factory floor

And that's just the pandemic.  You'll also be birthing your baby into an economy unlike any this country has ever seen.  One in which wealth inequality is so extreme the top 1% own more wealth than the bottom 92%.  Deaths of despair--suicide, overdose, obesity & alcoholic liver disease--are a veritable pandemic unto themselves & predate the COVID outbreak by decades.  Wages have not kept pace with productivity or the cost of living; if they had, full-time workers would be making between $92,000 and $102,000 per year.  Yes, even lowly fast food workers.  Corporations are buying up rental properties in cities across the country, driving up prices & pushing lifelong residents out of their neighborhoods.  There's not a segment of the population that's not affected by these corporate coup activities, and it'll only get worse as time goes on.  

Young healthy workers in their prime are being forced to take 2nd or 3rd jobs, sleep in their cars, go on welfare or sell their bodies on OnlyFans to make ends meet--people with college degrees & experience in their chosen field.  A "gig economy" it's being called.  Neither The Great Resignation nor the strikes across multiple industries have done much to change working conditions or laws in a meaningful way.  We still can't get the $15 minimum wage we were promised by Biden during his presidential campaign nor full student loan forgiveness nor universal healthcare.  Billionaires keep getting richer while we all die and there's no end in sight.  

The Real Existential Threat

The Poster Child for Climate Change

But all of that is small potatoes compared to what's coming:  the climate crisis.  In fact it's already here in the form of unstoppable wildfires, floods, deadly heatwaves, sinking islands, locust plagues, droughts & more. The average temperature globally in 2021 was 1.1 to 1.2°C warmer than it was before the Industrial Revolution, which is perilously close to the 1.5°C "tipping point" climatologists have warned about.

Canada smashed records when a town in British Columbia recorded a temperature of more than 121°F, and the Greenland ice sheet experienced rain for the first time ever. In the U.S, it’s estimated that 1 in 4 people experienced a climate-related disaster in 2021. On the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ida traveled from Cuba to Port Fourchon, Louisiana, where it made landfall as a Category 4 & did not stop its path of destruction, winding through Mississippi & bringing heavy rains to Ohio & Tennessee before spawning flash floods and tornadoes in Pennsylvania, New York & New Jersey.  This massive storm was unique in the distance traveled overland & both the amount and type of damage caused.  News reports commented that cities like NYC were not structurally prepared for climate change as subways flooded & people in New Jersey scrambled to find shelter from tornadoes, which are next to nonexistent in that part of the country.  

In addition to the weather disaster aspect, the next stage of climate crisis will bring water shortages which will force cities & townships to ration the precious resource.  In my farming state this will look like fewer private lawns, public pools & farm/ranch crops that require watering.  In one Mexico town, Coca-Cola has taken over the only clean water source to make Coke products, leaving the residents to drink nothing but Coke or dirty, E. Coli-laced sewer water.  The rates of diabetes & related diseases in the town are sky-high as a result.  These people are the canary in the coalmine for what's to come when water is restricted elsewhere.  Corporations and the wealthy will always win in the resource wars.

Climate refugees fleeing to America & other wealthy countries will make the "illegal immigrant crisis" look like a Republican wet dream.  It's already happening as Guatemalans migrate here in droves due to crop failure from drought & flooding.  Jakarta, the former capital of Indonesia, is sinking so bad they had to move the capital to Borneo.  Ditto the Marshall Islands.  Once coastal U.S. cities start sinking, everyone will start fighting over land at higher elevations which could get ugly.  What do you think it'll be like here when major cities on the East & West coast start going under?  Here's a terrifying website that lets you see what your city will look like under water.  

Remnants of Jakarta, Indonesia

All the while, our leaders are snoring at COP25 & holding dinner parties where only the help wear masks.  Their only purpose is to aid in the upward transfer of wealth as quickly as possible as America makes its last death rattle before collapsing Soviet Union-style.  Soon our few remaining social safety nets (Social Security, public housing, etc) will be cashed in to pay off our country's debts & the oligarchs will flee with their spoils, leaving us standing knee-deep in flood water to watch as their rockets take off for a more promising planet.  They've been gradually desensitizing us to this reality for years by threatening to "cut entitlement programs" & such.  Members of both parties have said or attempted these things:  Trump, Biden, Neera Tanden, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton.  Yet we continue to vote for them every 4 years like clockwork.

And Americans are too busy with their faces planted in their iPhones to revolt or do much of anything.  It's the perfect mix of 1984 and Brave New World: a surveillance state dystopia combined with so much distraction and pacification that everyone is too dumb and docile to care.  Eat, shop, work, shit, piss, repeat.

Biden catches Zzzz's at COP25

To bring it back to the original topic.  More of my friends have had kids in the last 2 years than any other 2-year period of my adult life.  I can't help but wonder what they're thinking.  Are they doing it because they think they can give the child the best life possible, or are they doing it for themselves?  Because they wanted to make a baby?  Are they even thinking of the child's future and quality of life (let alone the future of the planet)?  Has COVID lowered their IQ?  

Maybe some of the other issues I've brought up are too "meta," so let me put it plainly:  Would YOU want to be born, helpless & innocent, into today's world exactly as it is now?  Everyone's face planted firmly in their iGadget, TVs tuned to their partisan news entertainment channel of choice, bickering with their neighbor about which political party is the lesser evil while we all slowly fry & work ourselves to death?  Social safety nets steadily disintegrating by the day, America's best days firmly behind it?  Is this the life you would've wanted for yourself?  

The days of crapping out a kid and hoping for the best should be well behind us.  You're sending innocent lambs to the slaughter while helping kill off the other precious endangered species on the planet.  It's irresponsible & cruel to add to the human suffering inherent in existence without first making some major changes to the way things are done.  We're in the 6th Mass Extinction--one entirely of our own making--and it's still unknown whether humans will survive it, not because there aren't enough of us (on the contrary, there are far too many) but because of the way we operate.  Ironically, having kids without thinking of the consequences is one of the main drivers of said extinction event.  

If you agree with all this, it probably doesn't apply to you.  But if it's got your knickers in a twist you might need to do some introspection.