Vogue Gone Rogue
By Hope Harvard
British Vogue recently published an article titled “Is Having A Baby In 2021 Pure Environmental Vandalism?”
To answer Vogue’s question, no.
In the article, pregnant author Nell Frizell shares the concerns she had about the potential environmental impact of having a baby, insisting that “scientifically-engaged” people should factor the “declining health of the planet” into their childbearing decision.
“Before I got pregnant, I worried feverishly about the strain on the earth’s resources that another Western child would add. The food he ate, the nappies he wore, the electricity he would use; before he’d even started sitting up, my child would have already contributed far more to climate change than his counterpart in, say, Kerala or South Sudan,” Frizell wrote.
Frizell laments the economic prosperity of the western world, claiming that it's killing the planet and quickly making it inhabitable. She doesn’t seem all that alarmed by the abject poverty in third world countries, though. Afterall, poor people impose less environmental strain. Parents in underdeveloped nations are too destitute to afford disposable diapers and other modern luxuries that might create waste. On the other hand, developed nations are not strapped for resources for childcare thanks to capitalism and the incredible economic progress of the last two centuries.
Frizell’s climate dogma, I’m sure, would deny poor countries the chance to see astronomical improvements in living standards that only industrial power can deliver. By Frizell’s logic, it’s better that struggling mothers on the African continent keep raising their children in primitive, abhorrent living conditions. Mother Earth will thank them for it.
She condemns the western lifestyle, but doesn’t stop to wonder whether the underprivileged of the globe wish they could live it. Her words come off as insensitive and tone-deaf, knowing millions of people dream of proper nourishment, reliable energy grids, and goods and services that Americans deem essential. They’re preoccupied with figuring out how to get their next meal, not whether childbirth could increase atmospheric temperature by a fraction of a degree.
Rather than relish in the joy of raising children, photographing their milestone moments and admiring their little footprints in the sand, Frizell seems more interested in her future baby’s carbon footprint. She ends with, “I hope that my son might contribute to future humanity, rather than destroy it.” Can you imagine? The pregnant columnist is running mental calculations to determine whether the child she brings into the world will contribute to the Earth’s demise.
As if the article couldn’t get more bizarre, Frizelle says she believes there are only 60 years of farming left on Earth. She is terrified that her child will spend adulthood “living on a dry and barren earth,” even though Human Progress has already debunked this claim. According to the Simon Abundance Index 2021, “Children do not strain the world’s resources. In fact, the opposite is true: each new child is correlated with an increase in resource abundance.”
Frizell’s article is sadly not the first of its kind. Vogue published “Fear Over The Climate Crisis Has Made Me Reconsider Having Children” in March of 2021. Author Emma Harding cites a study which found that of the 607 Americans between the ages of 27 and 45 surveyed, 96.5% responded that they were “very or extremely concerned about the well-being of their existing, expected, or hypothetical children in a climate-changed world.” Harding says her irrational fear of climate change led her to not have children.
What’s also off-putting about Frizell’s piece is not just the central claim that first world children are exacerbating climate change. It’s that she, like other pro abortion proponents and environmental activists, has no problem objectifying babies. Without Frizell even stating it, the conservative reader can already guess her ideology and lack of respect for human life.
She uses the familiar rhetorical gymnastics that justify abortion on demand as healthcare and a public good. Children are causing problems! While Frizell never references abortion, she seems to feel an awful lot of compassion and empathy for the planet - not so much for the human beings that call it home. Environmental fanatics like Frizell think the plight of the arctic polar bears is an urgent existential crisis, but they turn a blind eye to the thousands of babies aborted in the womb every day and the starving children across the globe.
I’m sure Frizell would be saddened if she learned her parents considered her a destructive item with a high environmental cost. If a woman decides not to have children due to concerns with “ecological inequality” or climate change, that is her prerogative. But conservatives and Christians will continue to be fruitful and multiply with the mission of raising good people to cultivate the planet.
Photo via Always Melania
