There’s an increasingly popular argument being made among left-wing environmentalists and those on a crusade to reduce other people’s carbon footprint: have fewer children and help reduce the population.
The latest to advocate this drastic step in human behaviour is none other than Canada’s state broadcaster, the CBC, who listed having fewer children as the number one thing Canadians can do to mitigate climate change.
According to the brain trust over at Canada’s taxpayer-funded media giant, quoting researchers at the University of British Columbia, having one fewer child will reduce your annual C02 emissions by 58.6 tonnes.
That’s a C02 reduction twenty-five times greater than living “car free,” thirty-six times more than avoiding air travel and thirty-seven times better than buying green energy.
When they’re being honest, many on the left will admit their belief that human beings are the problem, and that the most effective way to save the planet from the abstract problem of anthropological climate change is by reducing the number of human being in our midst.
Who is to decide how to reduce the world’s population? Well activists on the left, of course. Hence why they’re advocating that Canadians have fewer kids.
Lower population but higher immigration?
This argument runs in the face of another favourite theory pushed by activists on the left, often advocated through the CBC: that due to Canada’s declining fertility rates, we need to take advantage of mass migration to boost our economy and grow the population. Without immigration-fuelled population growth, Canada’s lucrative social welfare programs would be unsustainable.
There’s some truth to this last claim. According to the student advocacy group Generation Screwed, which I helped to create and wrote a book with the same title, Canadian governments have over $1 trillion in unfunded liabilities—that is, pension, healthcare, and welfare promises that have not been pre-funded and will drive the country further into debt as governments dole out their financial obligations to retired citizens.