THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT:

Study after study has found that younger adults in particular are cagey about procreating because they think that life as we know it is fast approaching its final act. They think climate change is propelling us towards the heat death of our planet, or at least into situation where vast swathes of the Earth will be uninhabitable, where floods and hurricanes and other forms of 'weather of mass destruction' will be more frequent, and where life could become harder, more parched and altogether more unpleasant. And who would want to bring a child into such dystopia? Who would want to risk worsening this dystopic nightmare by creating yet another carbon-producing lifeform?

This worldview, this supposedly environmentalist turn against the propagation of our species, of ourselves, should concern us all. Because it points to an incredibly worrying development in the early 21st century: the internalisation of Malthusian thinking; the mental embrace by growing numbers of people of the kind of anti-humanism that was once loudly pushed by population doom-mongers. Where once the admonition to have fewer children, to stop polluting society and the environment with your pesky, ungrateful offspring, was made from the pulpit by the likes of the Reverend Thomas Malthus in the late 1700s, or from the pages of eugenicist magazines in the interwar period, now people are doing it to themselves. Now people have their very own Malthus in their minds, always, instructing them not to inflict any more humanity on poor Mother Earth.

Earlier this month, a global survey found that growing numbers of young people fear having children. Described as 'the biggest scientific study yet on climate anxiety and young people', it found that four in 10 people between the ages of 16 and 25 are concerned about procreation in an era of so-called climate catastrophe. The study, which questioned 10,000 young people in various countries around the world, including the UK, uncovered just how fearful the young now feel about climate change. Three-quarters of respondents agreed with the statement 'the future is frightening'. Almost six in 10 said they were very worried or extremely worried about climate change. And four in 10, as one headline summed it up, 'fear having children due to climate crisis'.

The eco-fuelled anxiety about procreation has been gathering pace for years. 'A growing contingent of young people are refusing to have kids - or are considering having fewer kids - because of climate change', Vox magazine reports. A movement of British women called Birthstrike is encouraging women not to procreate until our governments get their act together on climate change. These women, many of whom are influenced by the regressive ideologies of Extinction Rebellion, have decided to publicly articulate their decision 'not to bear children due to the severity of the ecological crisis'.

The left's favourite icon, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has raised questions about how moral it is to have children in an era of climate madness. 'It is basically a scientific consensus that the lives of our children are going to be very difficult, and it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: is it okay to still have children?', she asked her millions of followers on Instagram. Green anti-natalism was given a further boost by the left's favourite royals, too. Harry and Meghan told British Vogue they would have 'maximum' two children, partly for environmental reasons. For saying this, they were named as green 'role models' by Population Matters, formerly known as the Optimum Population Trust. This is an organisation that has been campaigning for population-control measures for decades. When old-style Malthusians cheer on the internalisation of Malthusian thinking by today's influencers, it becomes clear that there's a close relationship between past demands for top-down curbs on procreation and today's eco-fear of having children.

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