Why the baby doomers are wrong

Rarely does a piece of journalism bring a tear to my normally cynical eye, but I did find this happening when I read Tom Woodman’s piece (‘You must be kidding’) in last week’s edition. He and his wife would not have children, he wrote, because climate collapse means that ‘I can’t give them a future’. What made me weepy was his combination of obvious decency and utter mistakenness. How tragic that what he called ‘the facts and figures’ — in reality, contentious projections — have persuaded this couple that no little Woodman must come into the world. ‘Tree,’ I felt like shouting, in reversal of the Green order of priorities, ‘spare that Woodman!’ Tom, the non-father, complains ‘Humans are swiftly making the planet uninhabitable’, yet goes on to quote figures of population increase which prove that it has become more habitable than ever (5.2 billion 35 years ago; 7.8 billion today).