Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez takes her friends’ worries seriously that it’s immoral to have children because of climate change. The freshman congresswoman, however, had only insults for a Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, when he suggested that having more babies would be good for the planet.
The gentlelady from New York is doubtlessly serious in her concern about climate change, and so we’d urge her and her party to drop the reflexive animosity and instead consider the argument Lee made, which has its roots in serious economics. If you believe we face serious threat from climate change and that mankind’s current trajectory is a disastrous one, you shouldn’t discourage people from having children. You should encourage them to be fruitful and multiply.
“There’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult,” AOC said in a recent video message. “And it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: Is it OK to still have children?”
This was a “basic moral question,” she said.
The congresswoman is joining the Malthusian tradition, which has been wrong for hundreds of years. Thomas Malthus warned two centuries ago that people were ruining the planet. Paul Ehrlich, another fearmongerer, wrote in 1968 that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.”
Why were Ehrlich and Malthus so spectacularly wrong? In part it is because of the innovative research of the late Norman Borlaug, whose 105th birthday was earlier this week. Borlaug’s genetic experiments helped him develop disease-resistant strains of wheat that provided much higher yields.
Had Borlaug not been born, had his parents succumbed to Malthusian dread, life on Earth would be much worse today, unless some other innovative mind discovered what he discovered. And that is the point; individual people, all of whom begin as babies, are what enable us to come up with new solutions to our problems and better ways of living.
Life is better today than it was 200 years ago. It was better then than the 200 years before that, and the 2,000 years before that. Human history, in general, is an upward slope in the length and quality of life. Unfortunate events and bad people frequently disrupt or even temporarily reverse the trajectory, but improvement is the norm. The trend is generally up.
What has caused this improvement in human life over the centuries? It hasn’t been aliens. It hasn’t been reptiles. It hasn’t been the sun or the moon or the stars. Human life has been improved by humans. The net effect of humans on Earth has been to make human life better. Another way to put it is that the expected value of a person is positive.
“The solution to so many of our problems,” as Lee put it in the speech AOC disliked so much, “at all times and in all places, is to fall in love, get married and have some kids … Problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, they’re solved by more humans.”
Lee’s remarks were grounded in the Nobel Prize-winning work of economist Paul Romer. Romer wrote that “an economy with a larger total stock of human capital will experience faster growth.” More people, as long as they have education and formation, means more technological progress. Romer called it the “endogenous growth theory.” Prosperity comes from inside the population!
Some members of Congress believe they know which technologies will save us from evil fossil fuels. They point to wind and solar power. If those are to make any noticeable difference, the technologies behind them will need to improve immensely. It’s just as likely, though, that some other technology will provide more value in reducing greenhouse gas concentrations. Maybe it will be the capture of carbon dioxide. Maybe it will involve a breakthrough in forestry. Maybe it will involve a clean energy technology that doesn’t exist yet, because the person who will invent it is not yet born.
So if you are considering the morality of having more children because you care about the planet, don’t let Ehrlich, Malthus, or Ocasio-Cortez scare you. Go home tonight and make a positive difference in this world.
