VICE’s French website has celebrated the young people of France who have opted to get themselves permanently sterilised to “save the world.”
The website, whose English version recently published articles written by a convicted child molester and one anti-gun rights piece that claimed there are no “good guys with a gun”, sought out French men and women in their twenties and thirties who are deciding to go “child-free” in response to the “ecological emergency.”
Florence, 24, who was sterilised last year, told the author that “to have children has become an egoistic choice,” and warned that “the simple fact of living pollutes” the Earth.
As well as having a vasectomy, Sylvan, 34, has opted to live below the poverty line and foretells that people in the West must adopt certain requirements to stop climate change, including a “return to pre-industrial standards of living” and a “demographic decline”.
VICE also noted that some of the young, conscious-driven French they spoke to are worried about “animal exploitation” as a result of having children, while for the men, a vasectomy is a gesture of “feminist activism”.
“Children are forced to drink milk, finish their meat to be strong and adhere to norms,” David, 33, said. “This quality of life that we offer them is absolutely not worth living,” he added.
Some said that if they change their minds, they would consider adopting; however, Sereb, 31, said he was not entirely convinced, implying that opting to import a “procreate” from a poorer country would result in their carbon footprint being bigger than if they stayed in the Third World.
“Adoption is less irresponsible than pure procreation. But that means importing a procreate from poor countries to embrace the lifestyle of rich countries.
“But ecologically, as I conceive it, it reduces the impact of everyone, starting with that of the wealthiest people,” he said.
The concept of reducing the impact of the “wealthiest” people by having fewer children to make way for migrants was floated by Yves Cochet, co-founder of the French Green party and elected Member of the European Parliament, at the beginning of January.
Cochet said, in comments reported by Marianne, that the French should have fewer children for the sake of the environment and to make it easier to welcome mass migration from the Global South.
“The rich countries are the first to have to decrease demographically. They are the ones who have the most polluting lifestyle, and limiting our births would allow us to better accommodate migrants who knock on our doors,” Cochet said.
The French politician also recommended reversing the policy of encouraging French couples to have children, saying: “The more children you have, the more your allowances [should] decrease until they disappear from the third birth!”
France, like the rest of Western Europe, is experiencing a demographic decline, with statistics showing births have been in decline for three consecutive years with 1.88 children born per French woman in 2017 — below replacement level.
While Western European countries, like Sweden and Germany, have sought to address demographic decline by accepting waves of economic migrants from Africa and the Middle East, southern and eastern European nations like Italy and Hungary have introduced family-friendly government policies aimed at encouraging native men and women to make their own citizens.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.