What does climate change mean for having children? Nothing.

To live in a world where it's half a degree warmer or where the oceans are filled with garbage and the rivers are overrun with toxic plastic is better than never being born

Kids.
(Image credit: Illustrated | H. Armstrong Roberts/Retrofile/Getty Images)

What amateur logicians call "guilt by association" might be bad logic, but it is an excellent rhetorical strategy. The endless public calls by X for Y to disavow Z after Z is discovered to have endorsed A in order to prove that Y is not a proponent of A prove this. Still, I would prefer not to judge the Green New Deal and its proponents on the basis of their evident comfort with what sounds like the environmentalist fear-mongering about overpopulation that has and will always be fundamentally eugenicist.

Which is why I have to assume that when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told some of her followers recently that "young people" are asking themselves whether it is "okay to still have children," she was speaking off the cuff as a non-parent politician rather than endorsing a popular '70s conspiracy theory. But it's still worth addressing.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.