CBC contributor Darryl Whetter revealed he did not want to chop off his relationship with his former partner, so he had a vasectomy to mitigate climate change. For one-and-a-half years, Whetter had been thinking about a vasectomy, as he wanted to do more than talk about how the world did not need any more humans. “A planet worrier since my early teens, I told each successive romantic partner that I wanted love but not children,” said Whetter in a Wednesday op-ed.“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?”He would not have had the vasectomy if he could not freeze some sperm at a private clinic. Since it would be a hard decision to go back on, he gave himself a cryogenic backup plan. When his wife Gisele Theriault mentioned not wanting to have children on their first date, he said he knew it would work out. Three years later, he and Gisele got married and moved to Singapore for a working honeymoon. Their next four years of travel around Asia made them more part of climate change's problem than the solution. For example, every part of the Bei Trao Beach in Vietnam had a high-water mark of plastic litter. While they hung loose for four years, they returned home to Nova Scotia worried about wildfires. After 15 years of having a family freeze, he said they agreed “to cease the payments to store my sperm samples and also any more false hopes or delusions.”Since many couples stick to tradition and have children, he said they can experience grief if they cannot give birth. He called his climate grief “sewn inside my body — more intimate and more indelible than a Greenpeace tattoo.” While not having children might make certain people stiff, Whetter said this idea provides him with freedom from one set of worries and an appraisal of others. Many couples rise to the occasion to create children because of love. “For birth-strikers like me and the women I have loved, not having children is a way to love the world and the life already on it,” he said.
