Extreme weather events ravaged Australia last summer, and we're currently in the middle of pandemic.
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With our future still so uncertain without fast global action, on World Fertility Day (November 2) we ask, is it ethical to bring children into a dying world?
Infertility has been identified by the WHO as a global public health issue, and affects about one in six couples.
For a large number of people, sometimes the choice not to have children is unfortunately made for them.
As a reproductive scientist, I spend my days trying to understand the causes of, and provide solutions to infertility.
People often ask me why I have devoted my career to bringing more babies into this world.
Google searches for "should I have children" have been increasing since 2016, we've also seen the rise Antinatalism (the belief that life is painful so new life should not be created).
Not to mention widespread fears of overpopulation, food supply, and the size of our carbon footprint.
These concerns are justified, but there may be more to hope for than you realise.
Understanding fertility and improving reproductive health will go a long way towards reducing the burden on our healthcare system.
Firstly, the world population boom is over.
Birth rates from half the global population, made (more than 80 countries, including Australia), are below replacement levels.
Replacement level is the fertility rate required to keep the population numbers stable.
If our population remains below replacement levels for too long, this will have flow-on effects to our economy as the ageing population grows and social welfare and health care systems try to keep up.
That's not to say we should bring back Peter Costello's adage "one for mum, one for dad and one for the country".
In the reproductive scientist's idealistic future where infertility is not a problem, we'd also have highly available contraception and exceptional support for working families.
We'd like to see a shift from people asking "when should I have children before it's too late?" to "is having children right for me?"
When considering whether or not you want to have children, it is worth noting that there are some impacts to our climate in these decisions.
In developed countries such as Australia, having a child will contribute around 58.6 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.
It's important to acknowledge that in countries where the replacement right is higher, the carbon footprint of the residents is generally much lower, so advocating for fewer children becomes much more complex when we consider things in a global perspective.
In fact, the highest global emitters of greenhouse gas are the energy and agriculture industries.
Scientific innovation has led to the creation of more productive harvests that have helped dispel concerns from the early 2000s over global food supply, with solutions to wide-scale sustainable farming not too far in our future.
Additionally, one third of all food produced, or 1.3 billion tonnes, is lost or wasted. If this were stopped, 4.4 million tonnes of CO2 would be prevented from being released into the atmosphere.
While, there is still cause for concern about a future threatened by climate change, we have the knowledge and the skills to overcome this; the good news is hidden there among the existential dread.
While I continue trying to unlock the mysteries of the birds and bees, there is much more work we all can do.
End the taboo around sexual health discussions, we withhold so much information from each other and our health professionals; everything from miscarriage and sperm counts to discharge - it's hard to know what "normal" is.
Youth education in school stops at safe sex and STD prevention, but my team are introducing expanded reproductive health education options to schools next year.
The foundation of my work is that a healthy reproductive system will create a healthy life.
Understanding fertility and improving reproductive health will go a long way towards reducing the burden on our healthcare system.
Our future in the face of climate change may indeed be uncertain, but there's no cause for losing hope.
There are real changes we can make to prevent bringing children into an unfair world.
We need these children, whose new ideas will go on to create the solutions to future global challenges.
Emmalee Ford is a researcher at the University of Newcastle's Priority Research Centre for Reproductive Science. Find more about her research here.
