THE UNKINDEST CARBON CUT OF ALL

CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION

 " This guy got a vasectomy because he was worried a kid would cause climate change and then he and his wife took a 4-year traveling honeymoon around Asia running a travel writing gig and racking up about 4-12x a normal person's emissions all in one go."

I got a vasectomy due to climate grief. 

Now, I'm compelled to let go of my backup plan

I got a vasectomy due to climate grief. Now, I'm compelled to let go of my backup planI’m not sure I would have volunteered for the snip without the option to freeze my sperm "Darryl," my then-partner called out from a few rows back on a crowded flight. We'd originally been seated together, but I'd relocated so a mom could sit with her kids. When I looked back over the packed seats, amidst the roar of burning engines, she smiled at me and mimed a scissor-cut with two fingers. "Yes," she finally said, in a gesture understandable only to me.

For about a year and a half, I'd been offering to get a vasectomy, to do more than just talk about how the world didn't need any more humans. In and around our old Nova Scotia house, I'd periodically make that horizontal scissor mime to reiterate my offer. News of rising temperatures on the kitchen radio? Finger snip. Atlantic Ocean looking more and more disturbed? Finger snip. Even back then in 2007, the North Atlantic hurricane season was intensifying due to climate change. Snip-snip.

A planet worrier since my early teens, I told each successive romantic partner that I wanted love but not children. How can we bring a child into a world we know doesn't want it, will have trouble feeding it, and will lose more plant and animal life because we added yet another needy human? 

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