Children or the Planet?

Generally, when critiquing the ideas of an ideology you're suspicious of it's a good principle to deal with the best, most convincing arguments from sensible people and ignore the lunatic fringe, this makes for good debate. Sometimes though, it just becomes to tempting!

Here we have an article, in the Metro (that in itself means a convincing, sensible argument is about as unlikely to be found as in the Guardian) about young environmental activists being willingly neutered so that they don't "bring another consumer into the world".

Mark Fish, a 35 year old environmental activist says "I had a vasectomy two years ago because I didn't want to add to the deteriorating environmental situation by bringing another person into the world".

Katy Black, a 26 year old who works for an environmental organisation adds "I'm definitely never going to have children. If we're serious about cutting levels of consumption in industrialised countries then we've imply got to stop making new consumers".

Catherine Budgett-Meakin from the Population and Sustainability Network says "Their decision is admirable".

On one level you could acknowledge their actions will certainly help improve the human gene pool but this kind of infantile thinking might make you angry.

On stopping to think about it, I realised that deciding to not have children was totally consistent with their (faulty) worldview that says the 'environment' is paramount. So you couldn't even begin to argue with them about their decision until you'd convinced them that people (aka 'consumers') are more important than trees.

So there you have it - don't have children.......for the sake of your grandchildren!

P.S. My disclaimer here is that I do care about the environment, it's just that I despise this new strain of environment fundamentalism.