Ferorelli,
33, and Kallman, 32, are both in committed relationships, and in the
throes of this problem. Ferorelli recently helped her widowed mother
pack up her house, saving cherished items with the unspoken assumption
that they are for a next generation.
And yet, when she imagines raising a child, Ferorelli says she can't
help but envision the nightmare scenarios that have dogged her since
she first heard the term "global warming" in elementary school.
"Knowing that I gave that future to somebody is something that just
doesn't sit very well," she says.
At the New Hampshire meeting, 67-year-old Nancy Nolan tells two younger
women that people didn't know about climate change in the 1980s when
she had her kids. Once her children were grown, "I said to them, 'I
hope you never have children,' which is an awful thing to say," Nolan
says, her voice wavering. "It can bring me to tears easily."
She adds that of course people are driven to procreate, and you can't
really tell them not to.
One woman looks a little stunned. She's not a climate activist — just
tagged along with a friend — and says she had no idea that deciding not
to have kids because of the climate was even a thing.
These aren't the first would-be parents to ask whether it's fair to
bring a child into the world. U.S. birth rates plummeted during the
Great Depression. Many also must have thought twice amid warnings of
overpopulation in the 1960s and '70s, and under the threat of nuclear
holocaust.
[NPR
BABBLE CONT]
