Leaving the planet better than when we found it for the sake of our children is a classic concept.
Gen Zers around the globe, however, are taking it a step further — by pledging to stop having children altogether to combat climate change.
Emma Lim, an 18-year-old freshman at McGill University in Montreal, is spearheading an environmental movement called #NoFutureNoChildren.
Her campaign urges fellow teens to forgo having kids in an effort to motivate the government to take serious action against global warming. The initiative officially kicked off Monday on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada.
“I have always, always wanted to be a mom, for as long as I can remember,” Lim told Insider. “But I will not bring a child into a world where they will not be safe.
Her ultimate goal: “I would like to see the government develop a comprehensive plan to stay below 1.5 degrees [Celsius] of warming,” she said, referencing the 2018 United Nations report that found the planet has warmed 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1800s.
As a result, Lim started a website where people can pledge to abstain from having children until “the government can ensure a safe future for them.” The site has garnered almost 1,000 pledges as of Thursday morning.
“It breaks my heart, but I created this pledge because I know I am not alone,” Lim writes on the site. “I am not the only young person giving up lifelong dreams because they are unsure of what the future will hold. We’ve read the science, and now we’re pleading with our government.”
Her fellow pledges echoed her sentiment with one environmental abstainer from Germany saying “I see it as irresponsible to bring children into such dangers.”
The #NoFutureNoChildren tag is gaining traction on Twitter where it has elicited mixed responses. Some loved that “young people are stepping up to fight climate change” while others called the teens “brainwashed.” However, Lim won’t be discouraged, saying her aim is to look to the future with hope instead of fear.
Lim attributes her passion for the movement, in part, to coming from a family of Holocaust survivors who experienced firsthand the damage wrought by mass migration, CBC reported. She said that the idea that her children may have to again face the worst of humanity terrifies her.
Lim is not the only teen stumping for environmental survival. Last week, Sweden’s Greta Thurnberg, 16, ruffled feathers after she led 1,500 demonstrators on a climate change march near the White House, chanting “you can’t breathe money, you can’t drink oil.”
The YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project, which surveyed the 23 largest countries in the world, found that 13% of Americans believe that the climate is changing — but humans are not to blame.
Still, a global survey recently revealed that an increasing number of young Republicans are concerned about “human behavior damaging the planet.”
However, Lim said some older generations are proving harder to reach — something she chalks up to “climate change being a matter of opinion and not survival for her parents and grandparents.”
It appears Lim has at least swayed her mom, Catherine Cartman, who went to Ottawa to support her daughter. She told the CBC that, despite wanting Lim to become a mother at some point, “it would be selfish on my part to encourage her to have children under those circumstances.”