The increasing onslaught of hurricanes, wildfires, and other tempestuous weather conditions should be enough to convince everyone that climate change is very, very real. And yet it feels like we’re going backward when it comes to tackling what’s very likely one of the most important issues of our lifetimes.
The science of climate change is clear, and there are, in fact, many solutions that are already in the works. And one of them happens to be very close to our heart: condoms. Well, to be more specific, contraception as a whole. One of the greatest contributors to global warming is overpopulation, which puts a significant strain on our already dwindling resources. And, in many cases, the heart of that problem is that many people across the world don’t have adequate access to birth control.
According to The Atlantic, a 2010 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences predicted that lower population growth could provide benefits equivalent to between 16 to 29-percent of the emissions reduction needed to avoid a 2ºC warming by 2050.
Frustratingly, there are still very few public policies across the world that focus on voluntary family planning, and a lot of this has to do with global education access. According to the climate change research institution Draw Down, when education improves (particularly education for women and girls), access to birth control and family planning services increases, and birth rates fall.
This isn’t to say that the solution to rising temperatures and sea levels is a global enforcement of birth limits: Rather, a widening of the availability of resources that empower families, and women in particular, to make their own decisions about reproduction. In the United Nations’ 2019 report on world population prospects, it emphasized this point, and also noted that if families in current high-fertility zones, such as sub-Saharan Africa, do not obtain access to such resources, global population is likely to slow little over the next 50 years.
Admittedly, some have pushed back against this “solution” to climate change, suggesting that it edges a bit too close to comfort to a woman’s right to choose if and how to have children. Others have pointed out that it’s the world’s richest 10% of people who emit the most carbon emissions—not those who live in poverty without access to family planning resources.
But the truth is that the issue is complicated, and there are many solutions to climate change already in the works—but there isn’t a single one that can end this global-scale problem alone. Lots of changes have to be made to prevent further large scale environmental devastation—and population growth is just one facet that can be improved. In 2019, experts wrote in the journal BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health that many men and women would choose to use contraception if it were made more easily available to them, and that slower future population growth could reduce emissions in the long run by 40-percent.
