On Giving Life a Chance

A refusal of defeat in an age of uncertainty.

The argument that humans should abstain from reproduction for environmental reasons often rests on the assumption that the future will be so degraded that life itself becomes ethically questionable. While this concern is understandable, it risks collapsing into a quiet form of defeatism. It assumes that uncertainty negates value, and that hardship makes existence less worth choosing. History and lived human experience suggest otherwise.

Humans have always lived under conditions of instability, scarcity, and threat. For most of our existence, life expectancy was short, infant mortality was high, and suffering was routine rather than exceptional. Yet people continued to choose life. They built families, created culture, and found meaning not because conditions were ideal, but because existence itself carried weight. Even today, people living in poverty, displacement, or conflict overwhelmingly choose to go on living. If given the choice, most would not retroactively opt out of being born.

This matters ethically. To refuse to bring children into the world on the grounds that the future will be difficult assumes that difficulty nullifies the value of life. It also assumes the authority to decide on someone else’s behalf that non-existence would have been preferable. That is a certainty we do not possess. Choosing to create life does not deny uncertainty. It acknowledges it and proceeds anyway, which is how every previous generation has acted, often under far harsher conditions than our own.

There is also a question of responsibility. Humans will continue to reproduce regardless of whether the most reflective and ethically minded individuals opt out. Abstention does not stop reproduction. It simply removes intention from it. If those capable of raising thoughtful, restrained, and compassionate humans withdraw entirely, the future is not spared. It is left to chance and to less considered forms of continuation.

Acknowledging planetary constraint does not require treating life itself as an error. It requires recognising that the conditions under which life continues will likely involve limits, trade-offs, and restraint. The ethical question is not simply whether life should continue, but how consciously it is lived and passed on. A child enters the world within systems they did not choose, but the values they inherit shape how heavily they move through it.

Raising children who can think critically, live within limits, and care for systems beyond themselves is not meaningless reproduction. It is a long-term ethical project. Culture, ethics, and environmental stewardship do not emerge spontaneously. They are taught, modelled, and inherited. A child raised with an understanding of interdependence and responsibility is not environmentally neutral, but they are not environmentally trivial either.

This position does not require blind optimism. It accepts that the future may not resemble the present. Comfort may contract. Assumptions may fall away. Adaptation may be necessary. But adaptation is something humans are historically very good at. We are living longer, more educated, and more informed lives than at any previous point. Progress has never been linear or guaranteed, but resignation is not realism. It is a posture, not a conclusion.

Giving one’s children a chance at life is not a promise of ease. It is a commitment to guide them through whatever world they inherit. It is an affirmation that life, even under constraint, is still worth living. Refusing defeat is not claiming certainty. It is choosing participation, responsibility, and hope over withdrawal.