In a recent Deseret News article, “Prioritizing money over marriage, today’s parents are making a big mistake,” Brad Wilcox and Alysse ElHage say that money is stopping some from having kids.
Climate change, too, is discouraging people my age from starting families.
For the rising generation, climate doom is an epidemic. Environmentalists talk as if humanity were nearing extinction or as if human reproduction were “a plague on the Earth.”
Climate change is a problem, but this way of talking isn’t helpful.
The world is not ending, and having kids is not harming the environment. Policy — not population — is what we should focus on. We should stop entertaining extreme climate schemes and instead focus on pro-growth climate policies (like Sen. Mitt Romney has recently done).
Specifically, a carbon dividend would dramatically decrease emissions while helping families financially through quarterly dividends. In fact, a carbon dividends law, much like the Family Security Act, would deliver impressive benefits to young families like mine.
I urge our leaders to push policies like this at a federal level. In doing so, they will pave the way for young people to have more children, and they will ensure those children grow up in a clean, prosperous America.
Porter Casdorph
Twin Falls, Idaho