Mr Craig Stanbury1
1Monash University, , Australia
Biography:
I am a current PhD Candidate at the Monash Bioethics Centre. My research is at the intersection of procreation ethics, population ethics and environmental ethics, and is specifically investigating to what extent procreative practices need to change in light of overpopulation and climate change concerns.
Abstract:
Population size is a significant variable that can be addressed to help combat climate change. If global fertility rates dropped by only 0.5 births per woman, almost a third of the emissions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change could be saved. This is equivalent to the annual emissions that would be saved from doubling the fuel efficiency of cars, increasing wind energy 50-fold or improving nuclear energy three times over. It accounts for over half of the Earth’s yearly emissions. Yet, is there a way to address population size without violating human rights? To what extent should individual reproductive practices change? These are live questions. However, various ethicists claim that procreators should limit themselves to having no more than one child. Doing so, they say, strikes the most appropriate balance between protecting reproductive justice for people who want to have children and achieving a sustainable future.
This paper pushes back on this claim. There are plausibly too many sexist, racist, classist and eugenic outcomes in demanding people limit their procreation to one child. Therefore, ethicists should relax their messaging about permissibility limits and be more concerned with helping people cultivate the right character to think through procreation and overpopulation.