At my age, the end is closer than the beginning; what will be is but a whisper while what has been is a circus using all three rings. And so I know my fear won't likely be realized in my lifetime, but more and more I think it will happen--that one day, what few people are left will look around and ask where all the children went. When will humanity get to the point where procreation engenders more fear for the future of one’s progeny than the joy in having them, leaving that generation to be the last, after which there will be...what?...monster cockroaches with large brains who take over and accomplish what we could not--a livable world?
My wife and I have no children, but it doesn't matter because I care about children all the same. I feel a responsibility to leave a world in which they can, indeed, exist, let alone thrive. About a year ago, we were in France and met this couple at a wonderful B&B just outside Perpignan in the south of France. These were two of their kids--the cutest one could imagine. We have a video of the little girl feeding her younger brother. It was both funny and very touching.
So...imagine a world in which they don't exist. They never existed and never will. Will it be the previous generation that finally gives up the effort to keep going in the face of a climate hostile beyond imagination?
I don't understand how someone with half a brain could be a climate change denier. I'm sure most of them who have children love their children, their grandchildren...so what's going on? It's not like the evidence is all that hard to come by even if there still is a reasonable debate about how much of the problem is caused by human behavior and how much by natural climate change.
I've tried the following thought experiment to little effect, but I like it. Imagine that 5 percent of all planes crashed, killing all their passengers. That means that 95 percent are perfectly safe. Would you ever fly on an airplane again? Not many people have said yes, and those were pretty much non compos mentis if you catch my drift. So let's say that there's only a 5 percent chance that virtually every climate scientist is right--that we're drastically and irrevocably changing the climate for the worse. You still do nothing? You challenge by asking how much fixing the damn planet is going to cost in order to do a cost/benefit analysis?
What a pitiful end to a species that had such promise.
Alas. I'll never know (I hope) if my worst fears come true. And I hope no one else does either.