Wow, if you have any love for humanity, you might not want to renew your subscription to The Washington Post. On Monday, Karol Markowicz at Foxnews.com wrote about Post "climate zeitgeist reporter" Shannon Osaka and her December 2 article on how having children is an irresponsible act when climate change threatens us all. Osaka has this article as her "pinned tweet" at the top of her Twitter page.
Ms. Zeitgeist does suggest this is still an individual decision, but the only debate in this was between climate extremists who are debating whether to have one child or zero. The lefties have also discovered another way to feel highly moral about themselves about having abortions and lobbying for abortions.
Osaka didn't quote "scientists" as much as English professors and left-wing ethicists:
Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, a professor of English at Colby College who is writing a book about reproduction and climate change, interviewed many Americans concerned about having children in an age of climate change. He found that a majority of his participants were “very” or “extremely” concerned about the carbon footprint aspect of having another child. “Adding another American to the mix is not a morally neutral act,” one respondent said.
“Any children we have in the developed parts of the world will be incredibly environmentally expensive,” said Travis Rieder, a bioethicist at Johns Hopkins University who has argued for a shift toward smaller families. “And they might go on to have kids who also consume more than their fair share.”
Markowicz pointed out that Rieder penned a NBC "Think" piece in 2017 on how environmentally irresponsible it is to have children.
Rieder wrote "Having a child imposes high emissions on the world, while the parents get the benefit. So like with any high-cost luxury, we should limit our indulgence."
Rieder, of course, has a child. He didn’t decide not to have any children but simply to "limit" his "indulgence" as if kids are a naughty chocolate bar before dinner.
Osaka quotes Rieder as saying "’You have a good moral reason to be part of the solution, not part of the problem — even when your part is infinitesimally small.’"
Rieder bizarrely compared having a baby to releasing a murderer from prison!
Markowicz summarized the zeitgeist: "Overall this line of thinking continues to be an attack on the idea of children and family. It’s part and parcel of the environmental movement that we need to absolutely uproot all the ideas that have held civilization together so far."
You can smell the hypocrisy in this output. The Washington Post is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, who jets to Davos to chat with the other leftist billionaires and has four kids of his own (one adopted). He's got a superyacht and is heating and cooling a $500 million real-estate portfolio. These people indulge in all the finery of Western civilization and then advocate for climate extremes to make everyone else feel guilty and miserable.
Last month, CNN Business reported that Bezos plans to “devote the bulk of his wealth to fighting climate change and supporting people who can unify humanity in the face of deep social and political divisions.” Obviously, the "climate reporting" at the Washington Post is part of his "unifying humanity"....to create a lot less humanity.
