what it is like to raise a child because I was really engaging in that as well.

Welcome to crowdscience from the BBC World Service. I'm Geoff Marsh. And this week we're

trying to find an answer to one of life's most common quandaries.

My name is Philine, I live in Salzburg in Austria. My question for crowdscience is,

is it responsible for me to have children?

You want that for yourself. I really would like to have children. But when I look at

the news, I get quite pessimistic and unsure of the future.

The United Nations estimates that drought brought on by the effects of climate change

could displace as many as 700 million people by the end of the decade. Thousands of people

in the Western United States are spending the weekend in evacuation.

We start with these catastrophic floods in western German states.

Right now, I'm 24 years old, and I don't want to have to right now, but I might have someday,

and what will their future look like? And how will the world be when they are my age

or even 50, 60 years old? So I thought about that a bit. And I haven't come to a solution.

Because I don't think not having children is the solution. Yeah, so that's why I wrote

to crowdscience.

Presumably, then if you decided not to have children, that would be a really difficult

decision for you.

Yeah. And I'm not sure I could make the decision honestly. I might be in the position to think

about it right now. But maybe in a few years, I'll be like, yeah, doesn't matter anymore.

I want to fool myself.

Because as far as biological impulses go, this is the big one, isn't it? Yeah, I know,

I know. I can’t promise anything.

In some ways, the fact that you're young, and you have no immediate desire to have children,

makes you a really great person to ask this question, doesn't it? Because it, you can

look at it almost dispassionately.

Yeah, yeah, I can just lean back and think about that and think about all the possibilities

I have. That's, I think why I am having the courage to ask this question right now.

And obviously, the question, is it responsible for you to bring a child onto the planet?

It's a very personal question. And only really, you can answer that.

I'm not looking for a definitive answer. I'm looking for maybe an approach on the question

in an ethical way, and in the scientific way, as well, and maybe some hints how I can tackle

that question for myself.

So you want a philosophical and scientific toolbox. that will be great. I will do my

best. Philine’s question really resonates with me. I am a decade older, but I'm still

struggling with the same predicament because, look, it's hard not to notice that the world's

becoming increasingly scary. I'm almost becoming desensitised to seeing huge tracts of forest

burning, ice sheets disappearing, livelihoods being swept away in floods. Unsurprisingly,

lots of young people are starting to ask whether having children is just wrong. And this isn't

just anecdotal. Researchers have started to document this worrying trend.

So my research through the University of Bath for the past 10 years has been talking primarily

with children and young people about how they feel and what they think about the climate

and biodiversity crisis.

This is Caroline Hickman. She’s a lecturer at the University of Bath in the UK.

And I'm also a psychotherapist and a member of the climate psychology Alliance, who have

been working for 10 years to bring the psychological understanding of climate change into the frame.

Caroline and her colleagues decided recently that they wanted to measure the psychological

impacts from as many young people as possible and from across the globe. Just a few months

ago, they published the results of a massive study into how young people were thinking

and feeling about climate change.

We conducted this research with 10,000 children covering 10 different countries in Australia,

Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, the UK and the US. So we wanted

a range of countries, some of whom were in the Global South, and some of whom were facing

the immediate impacts of climate change. So the first thing we asked them was how they

felt about climate change. We knew that young people were afraid, sad, anxious and angry.

There's been previous research done into this over the last few years. What we didn't know

was how scared young people were. And two thirds of children were afraid. Four out of

10 young people told us they were hesitant to have children because of the threat of

climate change. And over half of our respondents told us they felt that humanity was doomed.

Eight out of 10 told us that they thought people were failing to take care of the planet.

48% of young people said they felt ignored and dismissed when they tried to talk about

climate change.

Caroline gave me the full results in all their bleakness and we don't have time here. But

in essence, a huge proportion of young people from across the world are worried about climate

change, they felt ignored and failed by their leaders, and they thought they were being

lied to. And I feel for them, they saw how rapid action based on science was possible

during the pandemic. So why was so little seemingly being done to hold the destruction

of the climate and environment that they could see happening around them? But it was one

of those statistics you might have heard that alarmed me the most, four out of 10 young

people that's 40% said they felt reluctant to have children.

Yes, that's right. Wow. Yeah, I think that number is much bigger than we ever anticipated.

So although I wasn't hugely surprised about the emotions and the feelings and people were

telling us, I was really surprised, by the way that the feelings impacted on their thinking.

And did you notice any kind of patterns in where anxiety about having children was focused

around the globe?

Yes. And because climate change is not impacting equally across the globe, it's not surprising

that we can see variation by country. So for example, the Philippines 47%, were hesitant

to have children. Maybe unsurprising. Not surprising. Exactly. But it's very variable

by country, Nigeria, only 23% were hesitant to have children. If we look at India, it

is 41%. So it's not an exact correlation with the way that climate change is impacting on

the country.

So you're not surprised that we got a question from a young lady Philine asking whether it

was the right thing to do for her to have children that doesn't presumably surprise

you.

It doesn't surprise me at all, because I've been hearing this from young people for many

years. So I've got young people coming to me for therapy, talking about this. I've got

adults, young adults coming for therapy and couples and singularly saying, We don't know

whether we should have children or not. Because we're concerned about the climate. We also

want children, and we don't know how to deal with this dilemma. So I think that's the most

important thing is to always recognise that this is a dilemma. And there isn't a perfect

right and wrong answer to this question.

Well, bleak as those figures are, I think there's at least some comfort in knowing that

you're not alone Philine, in feeling conflicted by this dilemma, as Caroline puts it, and

actually perhaps those numbers are somewhat reassuring, in the sense that that's a lot

of young people who obviously care about the planet. They are after all her future custodians.

But what about Philine’s question on the climate, the impact of having a child for

that we're going to need some numbers, and I know just a man for the job.

I'm Mike Berners-Lee, I'm a professor at Lancaster University. I'm the author of ‘How bad are

bananas? the carbon footprint of everything’ and ‘There is no planet B’. I think some

people frame up the population growth as you know, the single issue that we need to face

if we want a sustainable world. It is an important part of the equation. But it's not the only

thing. 12 billion careful people could live really well and sustainably on this planet.

On the other hand, 1 billion careless people would trash the place in no time.

Can we get some numbers on the climate footprint of a child born, you know around now?

Well, I don't have the figures for Austria, but I do have some estimates for the UK, for

example, and I think that will be pretty similar. So if you make the basic assumption that a

child born in the UK will start off with a typical average UK person's carbon footprint

and then that that will fall in line with the way that a typical UK person's carbon

footprint is going to fall over time - assuming that the UK meets its carbon commitments to

be net zero by 2050. Then the carbon footprint of that child over its lifetime will come

out at something like 210 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over its lifetime. Of course,

if it were to be born in average person and not cut its emissions, then it will come out,

maybe twice that or three times that are higher. And if you give birth to a child who ends

up not caring at all about climate change, either because you don't bring it up to care

about it, or it makes its own bad decisions, and it goes off to become both rich and careless,

then it could easily end up with a footprint of 5000 tonnes. On the other hand, if there

are any people in Malawi average typical Malawians listening to this, then their carbon footprint

per year at the moment is not 13 tonnes per year. It's about 0.2 tonnes per year. Although

another sort of dimension in the equation is that I hope going forwards that the economy

of Malawi will improve and the and the quality of life of Malawians and the life expectancy

of Malawians will improve. And of course, unless we're careful, that will also go with

somewhat increased carbon footprint.

So assuming Philine’s child is born, and lives in Austria, and assuming that an Austrians

carbon footprints roughly similar to a Brit, and assuming the global community sticks to

its climate goals of reducing carbon emissions to zero by 2050. And assuming, well, that's

a lot of assuming. More interesting for Philine I reckon, is where those 210 tonnes of carbon

equivalent actually come from, and where someone might actually be able to reduce their own

impact.

While the average person in the UK day to day their carbon footprints about 13 tonnes

a year. And about a quarter of that is the food that they eat. And I'm hoping that will

go down a lot as we come to eat less meat and dairy. That's the biggest thing in that.

And then a quarter is about the travel that we do and there's no getting around it, we're

going to need to reduce by quite a bit, the amount of flying we do. And then also in travel

is driving and we need to drive less, but also that will come down as we electrify our

vehicles that will help as well. And then the third quarter is our home energy. And

that will improve especially as our grid electricity decarbonizes and our homes improve. And then

the fourth quarter is everything else. And that specifically, that includes the stuff

that we buy. And we're going to get good at dematerialising, having less stuff, making

our stuff last longer, getting into the habit of having things repaired, buying secondhand,

all those things that are going to dematerialise the economy and help our carbon footprint.

So between all those things, we expecting the carbon footprint to come right down. And

actually the world will reach we hope, net zero by 2050.

You sound quite optimistic about the future. So you've got to think one of two things is

going to happen. Either humanity is going to get on top of the climate crisis, in which

case, if we're clever about it, you know, we can live better than ever before, we can

use this as an opportunity to improve our quality of lives. Like if we're smart about

how we do it as bit of habit changing, but you know what we can, it can be better than

ever. If we don't get on top of the climate crisis, let's just be very clear. Humanity

is heading for a very dark place. So am I hopeful? Well, I think, you know, if we push

hard, and we all try hard and encourage everybody else to be trying hard too, then there's no

reason why we can't do this.

You could argue that the easiest things for Philine to do if she does care about the future

of society and life on Earth is to just not have children. If a couple decide that they're

just not going to have kids for a mixture of lifestyle and environmental reasons, then

I think that is now regarded increasingly as a totally normal lifestyle choice that

people make. Whereas I think when I think the day when I was born, it was more often

seen as well ‘Oh, dear, how sad for them’. I don't think it seemed like that anymore.

And that's, that's really, really good.

Agreed. And when you think about the numbers, a few people deciding not to have children,

especially in the carbon spewing Global North does seem like it could be an impactful and

noble cause. But it is such a tricky one because you never know whether these unborn people

would have gone on to become a persuasive environmentalist president or just a conscientious

person who grew up in a decarbonised world. Mike left me thinking that it certainly could

matter more how you raise a child than whether or not you do and this is actually something

that Philine and I had discussed.

Yeah, actually, I thought about that as well. Instead of not having children it’s maybe

my responsibility to have children and to raise them to be able to check make a change

someday and to educate them to the best of my ability. Make sure they listen to crowdscience.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, no, exactly. Because the one thing you do have control over if

you have children, is how you try to raise them. You don't have control over who else

is going to have children, and they might not care about the environment, and they might

just be consumers. So in some ways, maybe you have more control over the future. By

having children. That could be true. And I think that's where it is really hard to predict.

Because sometimes parents really want their children to go a certain way, and they give

exactly the opposite. We don’t know what the hypothetical child would turn out to be