Don't Stop Having Children Because of 'Climate Change' (2024)

There is a growing chorus of voices that argue America's declining birth rate is actually a good thing because the fewer people we have on the planet, the better we can fight climate change. But this argument is just another attempt to attack the roots of American greatness by attacking the American family—and this has been the left's strategy for decades.

These are the same people who are trying to force us to abandon meat and switch to eating bugs and lab-grown alternatives; forgo homeownership and live in a pod; abandon gas stoves; and switch to all-electric vehicles. Every single thing they propose is a promise to make our lives worse.

Of course, they never mention that only about 15 percent of carbon emissions come from the United States (with China as the top polluter), and an estimated 81 percent of ocean plastic waste comes from East Asia. Instead, they call for policies that would cripple our industry, put our future public programs in jeopardy, and restrict our family formation for a goal that would barely reduce the total pollution happening on the world stage.

When people wonder who will fund our government operations in the future, the answer is often immigrants—despite the fact that immigrants generally strain our welfare system, and immigration to the U.S. significantly increases carbon emissions by as much as four-fold per immigrant.

Their movement is anti-human, anti-family, and anti-life—and Americans should wholeheartedly reject this ideological denigration of the nuclear family and instead cherish the beauties of family life.

In my view, strong families are the building blocks of strong communities, and strong communities lay the foundation for a strong nation. As goes the family, so goes the country. That is the major theme of my recent book, The Perilous Fight, in which I discuss the pivotal role the family plays in a country and the dangers that our society faces as the family falls into decline.

In my book, I note that our country posted our lowest birth rate in a century, and our fertility rate has fallen to 1.6 births per woman, which is well below the 2.1 births that a nation needs to sustain itself into the future. I talk about our culture's shifting attitude from valuing the family to instead valuing luxurious and indulgent child-free lifestyles, and the tragic fact that 43 percent of first marriages end in divorce—for the fewer and fewer couples who even bother getting married at all. For those who do decide to have children, about one in four of those children is raised in a single-parent household, which is the highest rate of any country in the world.

We don't have to look very hard to see what happens when the family breaks down. For instance, children in single-parent homes are more likely to develop behavioral disorders and depression, attempt suicide, abuse drugs and alcohol, drop out of high school, and engage in criminal activity than their counterparts raised in two-parent households. Another study even shows that fatherless children are a full 20 times more likely to be incarcerated than children who come from intact homes.

These disastrous consequences are all symptoms of a deeper societal rot, and it all stems from the cultural attacks on the family as an institution.

Today's voices calling upon Americans to reject the nuclear family and sacrifice having children to stave off climate change are eerily reminiscent of the ancient practice of child sacrifices to please the weather gods and ensure a bountiful harvest. This isn't science, it's superstition—and anyone calling upon you to give up your most sacred calling to parenthood is attempting to lead you astray.

As Americans, it is our duty to support families, build communities, and prepare our nation for the future by cultivating the civic values of the next generation. If we want to compete on the world stage with nations like China and India—both of which have over 1 billion people—we need to encourage family formation, strengthen communities, and develop our educational systems for our own children here at home.

Our cultural crisis will only continue if we do not confront these attacks on the family head-on. Our country long relied on the family unit to strengthen the bonds of community that guided us through some of our greatest struggles. Today, we all must do our part to restore those vibrant bonds of community, and that all starts with restoring the family to its rightful place as the fundamental building block of American society.

Dr. Ben Carson serves as Founder and Chairman of the American Cornerstone Institute.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.