One of the greatest blessings God gives to humanity is the nuclear family, wherein a man and a woman marry and have children. Literally, the history of the world would not be possible without this most fundamental building block of society.

Thus, when various cultural leaders have attacked this social foundation, the result has always been great suffering and cultural degradation. Before a village can even begin to exist, it takes a true family: father, mother, and children.

Yet, sadly, a significant number of people have bought into the pernicious lie peddled by the climate cult that humanity is effectively a blight upon planet Earth. Humans, we are repeatedly told, are the primary driver of climate change, causing all kinds of environmental destruction.

The scientific reality on the ground does not back up this alarmism. Far from it, for while it does appear that the climate is changing ever so gradually, it is also true that it has always been in flux. The primary cause of this change is likely not man, even if mankind’s activities may contribute to global warming.

Furthermore, it’s not even certain that the current warming is a bad thing, despite all the demagoguery from the climate alarmists. Meanwhile, climate alarmism has more negatively impacted humanity than have rising CO₂ levels.

The New York Times recently pushed an op-ed titled, “Why So Few Babies? We Might Have Overlooked the Biggest Reason of All.” The article, written by opinion writer Anna Louie Sussman, noted that over the past two decades, while prosperity has been rising across the West, an interesting and confounding trend has emerged: Those who can most afford to have kids and build a nuclear family are doing so less and less.

This has led to a concerning problem for aging Western societies because the younger generations will not be able to offset the demographic losses.

Far from the flawed overpopulation myth popularized by Paul Ehrlich in his book The Population Bomb, what is really going to wreak havoc throughout societies is population decline, or the so-called population cliff.

Interestingly, what Sussman identifies as a leading driver of population decline in the West is not affordability. Rather, it’s the nihilistic belief that the future is too uncertain to bring children into the world.

One of the leading issues contributing to this fear that the future will be nothing but doom and gloom is ecofascist alarmism. With both Millennials and Gen Z growing up effectively brainwashed in this alarmism, it’s not hard to see why a significant number have embraced the attitude that bringing children into this world would only cause more harm and greater suffering to the planet.

A case in point is climate activist Greta Thunberg, whose fear of climate catastrophe motivated her extremism and radically misled her activism.

To these generations, the world feels on edge and out of control. Yet the truth is that this has always been the case for every generation. Instability and uncertainty about the future are nothing new. However, past generations — which suffered far more than today’s young have — did not see abandoning the development of the nuclear family as an appropriate response. Rather, they did the opposite: they invested in the family even more heavily.

Note how after fighting the bloodiest war the world had ever seen, the Greatest Generation came home and got busy — real busy — procreating and birthing the Baby Boomers rather than becoming disillusioned with the state of humanity. More than anything else, after all the death and suffering they witnessed during World War II, they leaned into family even harder.

What Gen Z especially needs is encouragement to see the nuclear family as the truly great blessing that it is. Family matters, and younger generations should be encouraged to rise up and meet the new challenges of their era. As history has repeatedly shown, nobody knows who will be the next great leader, inventor, physician, military general, or artist. But what is certain is that they won’t arise from couples who decide not to have children out of fear of what the future may or may not hold.