These People Are Going On “Birth Strike” Due To Climate Change

Climate change is changing the environment so fast that a growing group of women has decided not to just sit, do nothing, and patiently wait to see what consequences our planet will have to suffer due to climate change but to actively wield a weapon in the war against this grave issue.

Blythe Pepino, a 33-year-old, British musician, is so scared about what climate change can do to the environment that she’s made a decision not to have biological kids.  To her, raising children in a world that is so seriously affected by climate change doesn’t seem like a good idea.

At the end of 2019, Pepino founded BirthStrike, a movement consisting of more than 330 people, of which 80% are women. The BirthStrikers are openly declaring their difficult decision not to bear kids due to the severe environmental crisis.

The BirthStrikers are refusing to raise children in a world where climate change will cause more droughts, shortages of food, and bigger wildfires as scientists predict.

Lori Day, a member of the group, says: “When climate change gets worse, it multiplies other things. It’s like dominoes that are falling. It goes beyond sea level rise and storms. It affects food production, migration, resources and war.”

It’s interesting to note that BirthStrike is not the only movement in the world which is questioning the ethics of raising children in a warming world. Conceivable Future, a women-led network, is another group founded in 2015 so as to increase people’s awareness of “the threat climate change poses to reproductive justice,” even though the members of the group haven’t made the same decision about not having children as the members of BirthStrike.

The reason why the BirthStrikers are refusing to have children is that they fear the quality of life that future generations will have. Additionally, they don’t want to have kids due to the extra carbon emissions that their children and all future generations will produce.

It’s worth mentioning, too, that neither BirthStrike nor Conceivable Future seeks to judge those people intending to have children and they’re against any enforced population control measures.

Lori Day even wondered if a child who is due to be born could actually be the person that resolves the climate crisis. Day remarked: “Sometimes I wonder, what if Greta Thunberg’s mother had not wanted to have children because of climate change?” – referring to the Swedish, 16-year-old, outspoken climate activist that inspired climate protests all around the world.