Is that why I'm not an environmentalist?

Jerry Steinberg of Vancouver is sick and tired of breeders neighbours who are rearing offspring.

Jerry Steinberg lives with his wife on a leafy family-friendly street in Vancouver. All very nice — except on garbage day, when the 62-year-old says he's disgusted by what he sees. "These families with children put out four or five cans of garbage and no recycling bin," he complains.

As for parents who are environmentally conscious? The "founding non-father" of No Kidding — an international organization for people who choose to be childless — says he believes that once you're a breeder, the damage is done. "I think environmentalists with children are hypocrites," he says. "It's like saying, 'I don't smoke but bring me another cigarette.' "

"Every living being on this planet consumes resources and creates pollution, whether it's a worm, rabbit or a human being. And no one consumes and pollutes as well as humans do," Mr. Steinberg says. "Rabbits don't drive cars. Worms don't throw garbage in the landfill. The fewer humans, the more we're doing to save the planet."

So, Jerry, what’s the logical conclusion of that line of reasoning?  Come on, spit it out.

The neighbourly and charitable Mr Steinberg sounds like he agrees 100% with Charles Schulz’s saying, “I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand”.

Leah McLaren devotes an entire feature-length column in today’s Globe and Mail to a sympathetic look at the tiny set of individuals who have chosen not to have children.  She takes at face value their motivation as self-proclaimed Earth-lovers, but one doesn’t have to dig too far beneath the surface to find either fear of losing control or outright misanthropy.  Mr Steinberg exemplifies the misanthropy.  For the other, consider Vincent and Laura Ciaccio.

"There are a lot of reasons to be vegetarian and a lot of those translate into reasons to be child-free — choices like not supporting clear-cutting the rain forests to raise cattle," says Mr. Ciaccio, who currently lives in Boston, where his wife is at law school. "Being child-free means we don't run the risk of having children who won't be vegetarians and undo all the good choices we've made."

Every mother and father assumes risks by the mere fact of becoming parents.  Every child causes some degree of inconvenience, disappointment, and pain for his or her parents.  Nevertheless, in almost all families, the rewards far outweigh the costs.  But if you’re absolutely and irrevocably convinced that your choices are the right ones for all people at all times and in all places, then, yeah, maybe you shouldn’t have kids.

Still, Mr and Mrs Ciaccio, you might want to ask yourself: Who will be watching over the environment in the next generation?  Someone else’s kids, who haven’t had the benefit of learning what "the good choices" are.  One could well argue that those who care about the long-term health of the environment should have many children and teach them carefully how to treat the planet.

Mr. Ciaccio conducted a study of "child freedom" (or the choice to remain childless) for his master's thesis in psychology at Iona College, N.Y., a couple of years ago. He found that 12 per cent of the child-free people he surveyed named overpopulation and concern for the environment as the biggest motivators for skipping parenthood.

That means that 88% cited motives other than environmental protection as the reason for deciding not to have children.  The vast majority of childless adults cited personal reasons, such as maintaining an acceptable standard of living and desire to avoid the hassle of raising an initially helpless, and soon rebellious, human being.

In Mr Ciaccio's opinion, self-proclaimed environmentalists with “two or three children” are dishonest.

If you think Steinberg and Ciaccio are extremists, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.  Mathis Wackernagel, executive director of the Global Footprint Network, believes that overlooking the demographic aspect of human environmental impact “is essentially a crime against humanity."  Bring on the forced abortions.

The phenomenon of married adults who remain childless by choice provides additional support for the view of James Burnham who, in his prophetic 1964 book The Suicide of the West, argued that liberalism is a pathology, “an ideology of suicide”,  arising from failure of “the will to survive”.

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UPDATE (24 Apr.):  Jerry Steinberg has left a mini-manifesto in the comment box.  He says he does not advocate the annihilation of the human race.  I am so glad to hear that.