06/02/2018

No Children Because Of Climate Change? Some People Are Considering It

New York Times - Maggie Astor

The Tengger Desert in China is growing because of climate change. Around the world, many would-be parents are looking at effects like this and hesitating. Josh Haner/The New York Times
Add this to the list of decisions affected by climate change: Should I have children?
It is not an easy time for people to feel hopeful, with the effects of global warming no longer theoretical, projections becoming more dire and governmental action lagging. And while few, if any, studies have examined how large a role climate change plays in people’s childbearing decisions, it loomed large in interviews with more than a dozen people ages 18 to 43.
A 32-year-old who always thought she would have children can no longer justify it to herself. A Mormon has bucked the expectations of her religion by resolving to adopt rather than give birth. An Ohio woman had her first child after an unplanned pregnancy — and then had a second because she did not want her daughter to face an environmental collapse alone.
Among them, there is a sense of being saddled with painful ethical questions that previous generations did not have to confront. Some worry about the quality of life children born today will have as shorelines flood, wildfires rage and extreme weather becomes more common. Others are acutely aware that having a child is one of the costliest actions they can take environmentally.
Rising waters are threatening low-lying areas like South Tarawa in Kiribati, a Pacific island nation. Josh Haner/The New York Times
The birthrate in the United States, which has been falling for a decade, reached a new low in 2016. Economic insecurity has been a major factor, but even as the economy recovers, the decline in births continues.
And the discussions about the role of climate change are only intensifying.
“When we first started this project, I didn’t know anybody who had had any conversations about this,” said Meghan Kallman, a co-founder of Conceivable Future, an organization that highlights how climate change is limiting reproductive choices.
That has changed, she said — either because more people are having doubts, or because it has become less taboo to talk about them.

Facing an uncertain future
If it weren’t for climate change, Allison Guy said, she would go off birth control tomorrow.
But scientists’ projections, if rapid action isn’t taken, are not “congruent with a stable society,” said Ms. Guy, 32, who works at a marine conservation nonprofit in Washington. “I don’t want to give birth to a kid wondering if it’s going to live in some kind of ‘Mad Max’ dystopia.”
Parents like Amanda PerryMiller, a Christian youth leader and mother of two in Independence, Ohio, share her fears.
“Animals are disappearing. The oceans are full of plastic. The human population is so numerous, the planet may not be able to support it indefinitely,” said Ms. PerryMiller, 29. “This doesn’t paint a very pretty picture for people bringing home a brand-new baby from the hospital.”
The people thinking about these issues fit no single profile. They are women and men, liberal and conservative. They come from many regions and religions.
A house party in Chicago organized by the group Conceivable Future. Marya Spont-Lemus
Cate Mumford, 28, is a Mormon, and Mormons believe God has commanded them to “multiply and replenish the earth.” But even in her teens, she said, she could not get another point of doctrine out of her head: “We are stewards of the earth.”
Ms. Mumford, a graduate student in a joint-degree program at Johns Hopkins and Brigham Young Universities, plans to adopt a child with her husband. Some members of her church have responded aggressively, accusing her of going against God’s plan. But she said she felt vindicated by the worsening projections.
Smog shrouding Mexico City. When Cate Mumford, 28, saw similar pollution in China, she thought, “I’m so glad I’m not going to bring a brand-new baby into this world to suffer like these kids suffer.” Josh Haner/The New York Times<
A few years ago, she traveled to China, where air pollution is a national crisis. And all she could think was, “I’m so glad I’m not going to bring a brand-new baby into this world to suffer like these kids suffer.”

‘Some pretty strong cognitive dissonance’
For many, the drive to reproduce is not easily put aside.
“If a family is what you want, you’re not just going to be able to make that disappear entirely,” said Jody Mullen, 36, a mother of two in Gillette, N.J. “You’re not just going to be able to say, ‘It’s not really good for the environment for humans to keep reproducing, so I’ll just scratch that idea.’”
And so compromises emerge. Some parents resolve to raise conscientious citizens who can help tackle climate change. Some who want multiple children decide to have only one.
For Sara Jackson Shumate, 37, who has a young daughter, having a second child would mean moving to a house farther from her job as a lecturer at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. She is not sure she can justify the environmental impact of a larger home and a longer commute.
But for Ms. PerryMiller, the Ohio youth leader, the thinking went the opposite way: Once she had her first child, climate change made a second feel more urgent.
“Someday, my husband and I will be gone,” she said. “If my daughter has to face the end of the world as we know it, I want her to have her brother there.”
Laura Cornish, 32, a mother of two near Vancouver, said she felt “some pretty strong cognitive dissonance around knowing that the science is really bad but still thinking that their future will be O.K.”
“I don’t read the science updates anymore because they’re too awful,” she said. “I just don’t engage with that, because it’s hard to reconcile with my choices.”

‘The thing that’s broken is bigger than us’
People who choose not to have children are used to being called “selfish.” But many of them see their decision as a sacrifice.
Parenthood is “something that I want,” said Elizabeth Bogard, 18, a freshman at Northern Illinois University. “But it’s hard for me to justify my wants over what matters and what’s important for everyone.”
This attitude seems particularly common among people who have seen the effects of climate change firsthand.
Hemanth Kolla is from Hyderabad, in India, where drought and scorching heat waves have been deadly. He lives in California, where the threat of wildfires is increasing and a six-year drought only recently ended. Mr. Kolla, 36, said it felt wrong to have a child when he did not believe the world would be better for him or her.
And Maram Kaff, who lives in Cairo, said she had been deeply affected by reports that parts of the Middle East may be too hot for human habitation by 2100.
“I’ve seen how Syrian refugees, who are running from a devastating war, are being treated,” Ms. Kaff, 33, said in an email. “Imagine how my children will be treated if they have to flee their country due to extreme weather, drought, lack of resources, flooding.”
“I know that humans are hard-wired to procreate,” she said, “but my instinct now is to shield my children from the horrors of the future by not bringing them to the world.”
Ms. Kallman and Josephine Ferorelli, the founders of Conceivable Future, said that the predominant emotion at their gatherings was grief — and that the very existence of these conversations should spur political action.
“These stories tell you that the thing that’s broken is bigger than us,” Ms. Ferorelli said. “The fact that people are seriously considering not having children because of climate change is all the reason you need to make the demands.”
Most of the people interviewed, parents and non-parents alike, lamented having to factor climate change into their decisions at all.
“What kind of nightmare question is that?” asked Ms. Guy, the Washington nonprofit worker. “That we have to consider that?”

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Climate Change Impact On Antarctica Becomes Clearer As Scientists Make Progress

ABC News - Kate Doyle

Antarctica is thought to hold enough water to increase sea levels by more than 50 metres. (Supplied: Australian Antarctic Division)
Understanding exactly what is going on in Antarctica has long been fraught for climate scientists, but what is happening on the continent could soon be felt around the world.
On the 60th birthday of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), there has been a call to arms from top researchers to combat global warming and associated sea level rise before the world's cities are inundated.
According to modern records, Antarctic ice was on average expanding slightly up until 2016, when there was a dramatic decline and levels fell to less than those initially recorded in 1979.
Explaining this expansion and drop has been the work of many scientists who focus on Antarctica.
Steven Phipps, a paleo ice sheet modeller from the University of Tasmania, knows all about the challenges of understanding the great southern continent.
"There is so much uncertainty because we know so little about the Antarctic ice sheet," Dr Phipps said.
"Antarctica is very remote. It is a very extreme environment. We have observations from satellites, but observations on the ground, there are very few."
And there is a lot to not be able to observed.
"The ice sheet is 3 or 4 kilometres of solid ice sitting on rock," Dr Phipps said.
"Actually working out what's happening in terms of the flow processes within the ice, or the melting processes that happen around the edge, they are very hard to observe."

Ice sheet not as stable as first thought
But despite these challenges, Antarctic researchers are making progress.
"One thing we have learnt is the East Antarctic ice sheet, which is where most of the ice is located, is potentially very vulnerable to human-induced climate change, whereas previously we thought it was stable," Dr Phipps said.
By studying past changes, observing the present and using improved modelling, things are becoming clearer.
A new theory published in 2016 by Robert M. DeConto and David Pollard opened the floodgates on the potential sea level rise of the Antarctic.
Matthew England speaks at the 12th International Conference for Southern Hemisphere Meteorology and Oceanography in Sydney on Monday. (Supplied: Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research)
University of New South Wales researcher Matthew England, who was today presented with the $US100,000 Tinker-Muse prize for contributions to enhancing the preservation and understanding of Antarctica, said there was still debate about whether the warming atmosphere or the warming oceans were most responsible for the melt.
"My gut feeling is that the ocean has been the primary reason for the warming. But chat to the atmospheric scientist and they will tell you it's the atmosphere," he said.

Sea level rises will be costly for coastal cities
What produces less debate is that the melt has begun.
On the time scale of this century, which will be in the lifetime of young adults texting away today, sea level rise attributed to just the Antarctic is projected to be about 1 metre.
"Which is already a disastrous level of sea level rise. A metre is enough to be extremely costly," Dr England said.
With the continuing-as-usual emissions scenario, the projected sea level rise from the Antarctic is forecast to be about 15 metres by 2500.
"Which is staggering, because Sydney is not viable at 15 metres of sea level rise," Dr England said.
The ice sheet in Antarctica is 3–4 kilometres of solid ice sitting on rock. (News Video)
The researcher acknowledges we have 200 to 300 years to work up to that, but it will be drastic nonetheless.
"Basically all of the cities we have today, all of them were around 300 years ago," he said.
"We don't build cities and expect to move from them a few hundred years later.
"We need to think about how much of the infrastructure we have tied up on the coast."

'We're not asking people to change much'
Fifteen metres is not even as bad as it could get in the even longer term — the total amount of sea level rise held in Antarctica is thought to be more than 50 metres.
A total melt is not a completely unprecedented scenario — it has all melted before, a long, long time ago.
In the Eocene, lasting from 56 million to 33.9 million years ago, CO2 levels were about four times what they are today and there was no ice over the Antarctic continent.
What can we do?
"It's a call to arms, but we are not asking people to change much. It is just getting behind the renewable sector, getting completely away from fossil fuels because they are the cause of this melt," Dr England said.
"Without action on reducing greenhouse gases … we are going to lock in metres and metres of sea level rise and trillions of dollars of damage."
Dr England describes Antarctic sea level rise as one of the greatest threats to the modern world.
It is hoped his Tinker-Muse prize will help him and his colleagues to better understand what is going on in the mysterious continent to our south.

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Many Of The World’s Coasts Would Become Unviable If Antarctic Ice Continues To Melt Into Sea

NEWS.com.au - AAP

ABOUT eight islands in the Pacific Ocean have already disappeared due to rising sea-levels and this Sydney professor is warning Australia’s coastline could become unviable.
Sydney professor warns of the hidden threat contained in Antarctica if climate change persists.
MELTING ice poses one of the greatest threats to the modern world, a top Australian climate change professor has warned.
UNSW Sydney professor Matthew England is one of six keynote speakers at an international conference which kicked off in Sydney yesterday. The international gathering is seeking to address climate change and in particular is intent on looking for solutions to problems in the Southern Hemisphere.
Prof England says up to 15 metres of Antarctica ice could melt into the oceans if the Earth gets hot enough over the next several centuries. “And that’s enough to make many of the world’s coasts unviable if we do nothing to limit atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.”
“Tens of millions of people could be displaced.”
Melting ice poses one of the greatest threats to the modern world. Source: Supplied
It comes after 2017 research showed about eight islands in the Pacific Ocean have disappeared due to rising sea-levels, with many others being drastically reduced in size as their shorelines are swallowed by creeping oceans.
Past meetings of scientists at the national forum have led to global policies to ban the use of ozone-depleting chemicals, managing commercial activity to protect Southern Ocean ecosystems and have informed international discussions on climate change.
The other five keynote speakers have expertise in subjects ranging from space studies, atmospheric research, coral reef studies, climate science and weather extremes.


Curious Antarctic Penguin Leaps Onto Dingy. Credit - Australian Antarctic Division via Storyful

The 25th AMOS-ICSHMO 2018 will be the largest ever meeting of meteorologists, oceanographers and climate scientists in the Southern Hemisphere involving 35 countries.
Prof England received the Tinker-Muse Prize for Science and Policy in Antarctica for his research, leadership and advocacy in Antarctic science on Monday.
The conference runs until Friday at the University of NSW.

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