UK activist Blythe Pepino, BirthStrike’s founder, invited people to declare they would not have children in the belief that climate change and other environmental and social ills were leading to civilizational breakdown. Pepino’s March 2019 media appearances, including on major U.S. television, amplified the idea that bringing new life into the world was too risky.

Birthstrike’s reasons to eschew children included:

• Food shortages and resource scarcity for millions.

• Worsening extreme weather (bigger wildfires, more droughts, flooding).

• Broader cascading effects such as resource wars, mass displacement, violence, and rising authoritarianism.
• Children inheriting a world significantly worse than the present one.

This crystallized an everyday resignation: ordinary young adults treating the future as too bleak for parenthood rather than acting as if progress and adaptation remained possible.

In a 2024 Pew poll of those under 50 who say they’re unlikely to ever have children,

• 38% named “concerns about the state of the world, other than the environment” as a major reason.

• 26% named “concerns about the environment, including climate change” as a major reason.
• 36% named inability to afford raising a child as a major reason (often linked to economic pessimism about the future).

Pew surveyed adults under 50 without children who say they are unlikely to ever have kids (this group rose to 47% of childless under-50 adults, up from 37% in 2018). Among them:

These figures are higher among the youngest adults (ages 18–39): about 43% for state-of-the-world concerns and 30% for environmental concerns.

Among the youngest adults (ages 18-39), lack of faith in the future was higher:

• about 43% cited state-of-the-world concerns and 30% environmental concerns.