About 25 years ago when the environment movement was becoming a thing, we heard the strangest idea: that people were opting out of having children to save the planet.
We spent a few days with an editor at Grist magazine in Helsinki who told us she is child-free and proud –– here is her essay. And it’s been a topic of shame and ridicule in the eco movement if you do have kids.
Environmental concerns and climate change has been a top reason for at least 5% of Americans to remain childless, data from the Pew Research Center shows.
A relatively obscure movement believes there is a more radical way for us to save the planet: by depopulating to the point that people go extinct.
The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) is an environmental movement, led by Les Knight that calls for all people to abstain from reproduction in order to cause the gradual voluntary extinction of humankind. VHEMT supports human extinction primarily because it would prevent environmental degradation.
It’s voluntary head Les Knight advocates: “May we live long and die out.” He posts material on X that support women’s rights in Iran but which denies that rapes by Hamas in Israel were committed, not linking to the fact that the dehumanization of women in Iran is directly caused by the Iranian jihadists who are funding Hamas terror.
Some gene lines should be discontinued.
The Shakers, a now defunct sect of Christianity practiced celibacy, communal living, confession of sin, egalitarianism, and pacifism. According to material from the Alfred Shaker Museum in the US, the Shaker population started to decline slowly in the 1860’s not because people were dying off: one of the reasons the Shaker population started declining was because of the fact that many people didn’t believe in the Shaker’s religious views.
Shakers were minimalist designers and are admired for that in today’s design world.
As time went on, more and more people practiced other religions instead, such as Catholicism.
You also needed to be celibate to be a Shaker.
