While the milestone of 8 billion human beings will soon be crossed, “we are already too many compared to what the planet can take”, estimates Alice Rallier, 44, member of “Responsible Demography”.
This small “ecological and decreasing” French association campaigns for “the stabilization and then the slow reduction of the human population”.
“I don’t want to feel the guilt of having given birth to a child in this mess,” said AFP Ms. Rallier, who was in a relationship with two men “who didn’t want a child either”, and who chose to undergo permanent surgical sterilization.
“Every child born today is part of the problem” because of the pressure exerted by population growth on natural resources, according to this activist who says she is aware of coming up against a “taboo” and the “populationist myth that says that the more of us the better”.
For these activists, it is not a question of forcing but of proposing a “voluntary incentive”, for example by capping family allowances from the second child, argues Denis Garnier, president of “Responsible Demography”.
According to a survey published in 2021 by The Lancet, conducted among 10,000 people in ten countries from all continents, 39% of young people aged 16 to 25 “are hesitant to have children” because they are worried about climate change.
The idea was relayed in the United Kingdom in 2018 by supporters of a “birthstrike” (“birthstrike”), and in Canada by students who pledged not to have children until the government would not do more against climate change. In Germany, an anti-natalist author, Verena Brunschweiger, caused controversy by describing parenthood as a “selfish” approach.
– Demographic inertia –
“Many people are wondering” but the phenomenon remains difficult to quantify, nuance the French consultant Emmanuel Pont, author of the recent book “Should we stop having children to save the planet?” (Payot editions).
Especially since the environment is not the only motivation for those who refuse to become a parent and some end up changing their minds.
At 35, Sébastien Verdier – known on social networks under his militant pseudonym Sereb – “put his actions in line with his ideas”, by undergoing permanent sterilization.
It is for him both to avoid the unborn child “an unpleasant future that I do not wish on anyone” and “not to add another consumer to the system”.
“Sereb” agrees, however, that his commitment is more “symbolic” than really effective in the fight against global warming, due to the “enormous inertia” of demographic changes which only make their effects felt after several decades.
according to a study published in 2014 by two Australian researchers, “even with one-child policies imposed around the world and events resulting in catastrophic mortality, there would still probably be between 5 and 10 billion human beings in 2100 “.
Moreover, beyond this question of “demographic inertia”, there is no consensus on the link between demography and climate protection.
A study published in 2017 by two North American climate change specialists concluded that having “one less child” was much more efficient in terms of carbon footprint than giving up the car, air travel or consumption of food. meat.
But other scientists have challenged these results, on the grounds that the authors had considered that future generations would necessarily have a level of consumption as harmful to the environment as their elders.
But “our children are not condemned to drive in SUVs and fly away every weekend to Ibiza”, quips Emmanuel Pont. However, limiting fertility to fight against global warming is “nothing absurd”, according to him… in the same way as having your home insulated or limiting your air travel.
