By Madeleine Kearns
Thursday, November 11, 2021
Imagine being so monomaniacally obsessed with climate and
so cynical about life in general as to reduce all the potential of a child to
its carbon footprint. As I have written here before, couples in the First World choosing not to have
children because of climate change makes no sense. Still, the message continues to
be spread.
I can’t help but think here of the Christmas
classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. In the movie, the protagonist
George Bailey is rescued from despair by his guardian angel, Clarence. When
Bailey says it would be better for everyone if he’d never been born, Clarence
responds by showing him what the world would have been like without him. What
follows is an incredibly moving illustration of how “each man’s life touches so
many other lives,” and how “when he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole.”
Imagine instead — at the brink of suicide — George Bailey
had been given the opportunity to see how much carbon the world might have been
spared if he’d never existed. What a terrible movie! And what a terrible
argument.
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