The CBC, Canada’s state broadcaster ran a glowing self-profile by a guy who “got a vasectomy due to climate grief”. A failing media company with a collapsing audience share going through Christmas layoffs of hundreds of staff, despite its $1.4 billion subsidy, probably shouldn’t be celebrating the further shrinkage of its remaining woke audience.

The author doesn’t want you to think he’s a sterile nitwit who panicked. He starts by cheerfully recounting his “then-partner” making scissor motions with her hands at him from across the airplane, apparently meant to trigger waves of sentimental sympathy rather than creeping us out and asking if we can change seats to get further away from these people. It seems:

“A planet worrier since my early teens, I told each successive romantic partner that I wanted love but not children. 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?”

Boo. Down with people. Though how anyone knows the “world” doesn’t “want” your delightful rosy baby to appear is unclear; usually what matters is whether mom and dad want it.

Maybe the world blew in his ear or something, since one of the arguments for his decision is:

“Even back then in 2007, the North Atlantic hurricane season was intensifying due to climate change. Snip-snip.”

Don’t tell him it hasn’t. However to return to the sympathy-inducing profile of this prudent chap:

“to be honest, I may not have volunteered for the procedure in my 30s if I hadn’t first confirmed that I could pre-emptively freeze some sperm at a private clinic. I gave us – or maybe just me – a cryogenic backup plan.”

To be honest, we may not care. TMI. But back to wine and roses:

“it was so thrilling when my now-wife Gisèle voluntarily mentioned not wanting kids on our first date. Three years later, we got married and moved, in a kind of working honeymoon, to sweaty, equatorial Singapore. Admittedly, our next four years of travel around Asia made us more part of the climate crisis problem than the solution.”

So technically the world doesn’t want sweaty you either. But you’re hanging around consuming resources and spewing sanctimony. You’re just not wasting time and affection on some bratty kid. But don’t think badly of him, he asks in conclusion:

“Many couples learn that grief can be for the unborn, not just the dead. My climate grief is sewn inside my body, more intimate and more indelible than a Greenpeace tattoo. The titanium clips of my child-free vasectomy are both shackles and their opposite – freedom from one set of worries and yet a frank appraisal of others. For so many couples, co-creating children is part 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.”

Like mine. So special. More indelible than a Greenpeace tattoo. Which isn’t indelible.

Your Canadian tax dollars at work, folks.

P.S. Then the CBC says “Do you have a compelling personal story that can bring understanding or help others? We want to hear from you.” Oh no we don’t.