I feel for Laurie Penny, who is caught between pressure to have children and pressing reasons not to have them (‘Women shouldn’t apologise for the pitter-patter of tiny carbon footprints’, Review, 29 July). However, a solution is staring her in the face: respond to the pressure by citing the pressing reasons. Various global disasters are plausibly likely to occur in a few decades – see The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells. Even if Wallace-Wells’ article overestimates and only half of those disasters really occur, humans will be in for a rough time starting around mid-century. Thus, any man or woman who thinks of having children now should ask perself whether it is right to condemn them to go through that. Each baby not made is a step away from those disasters.
Richard Stallman
Cambridge, Massachusetts
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