Is climate change a reason not to have kids?

0:00The birth rate is declining across most of the world, but would fewer people mean a healthier planet? That's a question many young couples are asking as they think about having a family like Annie Platt and Ryan Hawley in South Carolina. It's daunting. If we're in a climate crisis that is only going to accelerate, and that's something that that child would have to deal with long after I don't have to deal with it. It's like, well, there's... Yeah, and then their children would have to deal with it, and their children after that. And in Maryland, Emma Brennan and Lauren Wright wonder if future generations would even be able to live in their city.

0:39I feel like that's the thing we talk about a lot, just because Baltimore will be underwater, potentially. For Sarah and Ben Brewington in Los Angeles, talk of overpopulation and environmental disaster are two of the many reasons they're not having kids. It's the world we built, and I don't think that I fault people for making the decision to have less kids in that world, right? Were we not just panicking about not having enough food, and now we're panicking about not having enough children? Like, did you have food to feed those children? But here's the thing. The consequences of having fewer people on the planet may be a bit more complicated.

1:14Melissa Carney studies population trends at the University of Notre Dame. We're actually really facing the question of depopulation. Typically people say, well, isn't that good for the environment? So then we explain or I explain, well, not really, but it also has a lot of other potential negative consequences for the economy and society. And she isn't alone.

1:37Dean Spears:Global depopulation won't solve our important climate challenges or other environmental challenges because the timing is too slow and too late. Consider this. A growing number of economists think a shrinking population might not help the climate all that much, and it might create other problems.

1:59From NPR, I'm Sarah McCammon.

2:10It's Consider This from NPR. Some environmentalists and climate scientists have argued that potential parents should consider smaller families to help take the pressure off the environment. But other researchers say depopulating the planet won't actually do much to solve those challenges. One of them is Dean Spears. He's an economist at the University of Texas, Austin, and the co-author of the new book, After the Spike, Population, Progress, and the Case for People. He says having fewer children isn't the solution to the climate crisis, and birth rates have been declining for years.

2:46Dean Spears:All along, even when we were hearing these overpopulation stories, global birth rates were falling from a worldwide average around 5 in 1950 to 2.3 today. And in fact, 1968 was the year when the world population grew its fastest. The speed has been slowing since then. And the basic reason why is that people are having fewer children. The number that matters is whether there's an average of two children in the next generation to replace two people in the last. Two-thirds of people worldwide now live in a country where the birth rate is below this two-for-two that would stabilize the population.

3:26Dean Spears:And the U.S. is at 1.6. So pretty soon after the whole world crosses that two-for-two threshold, global depopulation will start. But it's a path we've been on for not just decades, but centuries as birth rates have been falling. Now, you and your co-author argue that, quote, falling birth rates are not the answer to our world's problems, including what experts agree is the biggest environmental problem of our time, which is climate change. Why not? I mean, doesn't fewer people mean fewer carbon emissions? Well, yes, humans pollute, destroy, and cause environmental harm. But global depopulation, starting in a few decades, won't solve our important climate challenges or other environmental challenges because the timing is too slow and too late.

4:16Dean Spears:The population is a large ship slow to turn. The UN doesn't expect depopulation to begin until the 2080s, and that's long after urgent climate deadlines. No matter what changes in near-term birth rates, the size of the population over the coming few decades is unlikely to deviate much from this most likely course. So we shouldn't really hope for depopulation starting six decades from now to get us off the hook for decarbonization or to let it distract us from the environmental progress we need to make today. There's no serious option other than confronting and reducing per-person environmental harms, emitting less carbon per person, implementing the technologies and policy changes that will continue progress against our environmental challenges.

5:04Dean Spears:And we need to do that long before the peak in the size of the world population. On that note about technology and finding solutions, finding ways to pollute less and emit less, you've pointed to China as an example of a place where the population has grown and some solutions have still been found to environmental problems like air pollution. But even with cleaner technology and regulation, carbon production in China continues to rise and the country still faces some really significant environmental problems like industrial contamination of drinking water. Is China a success story? China is a story in progress.

5:44Dean Spears:The climate challenge and environmental challenges for the world is a story in progress. But in China, in 2013, China had terrible particulate air pollution. It was known around the world as the airpocalypse on a 700 on a scale of air pollution from zero to 500, the U.S. embassy reported. And over the decade after 2013, the size of the Chinese population grew by 50 million people. And so if more people were always worse for the environment, you might think that particle air pollution in China would have gotten worse. But in fact, particle air pollution in China fell by half, even while the population grew.

6:21Dean Spears:And for the world as a whole, particulate air pollution has been falling even as the population grew. Not everywhere, not for example in India, but importantly in China. And how did it do it? Well, by enforcing regulation, by implementing new technologies and shutting down coal plants, by deciding to clear the air by changing what people do. But don't more people arguably also mean, to put it sort of crassly, more potential problems? I I mean, you have more brilliant thinkers, but also more consumers of resources and more people producing pollution. Explain why more people necessarily equals a net gain when it comes to solving big problems.

7:01Dean Spears:A surprising part of this, just as you ask, is that other people are good for us even when they're wanting and needing things, even when they're on the demand side of the economy. because other people wanting and needing what you want and need is part of how and why you get it. That's why rare diseases are less likely to have good medical treatments, for example. It's not feasible to do this sort of research to find cures if there aren't enough people who need it. And that's why something like public radio has important scale effects. So public radio, like new vaccine recipes or like cures for new diseases, has this important property where once you have something, many, many people can use it.

7:51Dean Spears:But if there aren't enough people who need it or want it or demand it, then it might never exist in the first place. So in a depopulating future, less public goods, innovation, health care will be feasible, and it'll be harder to continue to make progress against poverty and disease and towards better living standards. And I just feel like I need to say that we did not put you up to using that example. I feel like I hear in some of your comments almost a worry that we have collectively become too negative about children and about the future. Is that fair? Well, one of the things that we've definitely done is haven't done a good enough job sharing the burdens and costs of creating the next generation.

8:38Dean Spears:We've created a society where some people do important work and some people do care work. And frankly, we've put a lot of the burden of parenting on women. And so it's no surprise when a lot of people choose not to do it. We're not here to say, I'm not here to say that anybody's making a mistake when they look at the world as it is and decide not to or decide to have children. But we might all be making a mistake together if we're not looking ahead to building a future where parenting is fairer and more feasible. And so more people who want to be parents can choose to be. Dean Spears is an economist at the University of Texas, Austin and the co-author of the new book, After the Spike, Population, Progress and the Case for People.

9:27This episode was produced by Megan Lim, Henry Larson and Michael Levitt. Thanks also to NPR correspondent Brian Mann. It was edited by Megan Pratz and Tenbeat Ermias. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. And a message to our Consider This Plus listeners. Thank you for supporting the work of NPR journalists and helping keep public radio strong. Supporters also hear every episode without messages from sponsors. Learn more at plus.npr.org.

10:05It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Sarah McCammon.