Send in the assmonkeys (latest environmentalist fad: going childless)

Send in the assmonkeys (latest environmentalist fad: going childless)

Send in the assmonkeys
Behold the latest environmentalist fad: going childless

Jonathan Kay, National Post
Published: Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Last Tuesday, I wrote a column for this space entitled "At a restaurant near you, the war between Daters and Breeders." It was one of those airy, self-indulgent pieces of cultural commentary that otherwise self-important op-ed pundits publish every few months to "show their human side." (See: I eat in restaurants with my kids --just like you!)

My basic point was that restaurant diners shouldn't go hard on parents whose kids emit the odd yelp at dinner time. I know, I know -- not exactly Pulitzer material. But I can't solve the Middle East conflict every week.

Besides, vapid as it was, the column hit a nerve: In the days following publication, I got a flood of e-mail feedback. The messages came in two flavours: (1) Brief, appreciative comments from fellow parents, often punctuated with smiley-faced emoticons; and (2) searing, cuckoo-pants rants like this one from a certain Gaby Kaplan:

"Mr. Kay, I hope we never have the misfortune to have your family ruin a nice restaurant near us, because I could hardly resist the compulsion to empty ice water into the faces of both you and your broodsow of a partner. Attention, Mr. Look-My-Sperm-Works, your job as a parent does not end at ejaculation: Would you please show the rest of us the Get Out of Courtesy card that they gave you when your wife grunted out your first replicant? Polite parents do not assault diners with their loud brood of assmonkeys."

I got so many eccentric messages of this type that I suspected an outside writing campaign: The Post's rank-and-file readership couldn't be this weird.

Sure enough, after a little ego-surfing, I found my column had been posted as flame-fodder on selfishheathens.com, Reprodcutive Ruckus and other Web sites catering to the "Childfree" lifestyle. (Whatever you do, don't call them "childless." As one site puts it, "'Childless' implies that we're missing something we want -- and we aren't. We consider ourselves Childfree -- free of the loss of personal freedom, money, time and energy that having children requires.")

This is apparently a vibrant niche on the Internet. And skewering "pathetic, self-congratulatory, over-entitled asses" (to quote the above-cited Welcome Back, Cotter name-alike) is the favored pastime. Masochist that I am, I spent much of the weekend surfing their many complaints about broodsows, replicants and the travails of living in a "kidcentric" society. (Sadly, none were as well-written and amusing as Mr. Kaplan's.)

For now, Childfree remains something of an obscure movement. But as environmentalism gradually becomes the West's secular religion, that may change. Indeed, if Stephane Dion and other Kyoto fanatics get into power, a sanitized version of Gaby Kaplan's complaint that I've "burden[ed] our humanity- clogged planet with [my] obnoxious seed" may become the stuff of public-service campaigns.

Here in Canada, the most militant enemy of human fecundity is environmental activist Paul Watson, president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Earlier this month, he declared that the world's human population -- "the AIDS of the earth," as he puts it -- should be cut by 85%. Humans would revert to a car-free "primitive lifestyle" and, under the creepiest part of his plan, only "a very small percentage of humans" would be permitted to reproduce.

In Britain, the more polite face of this movement is represented by the respected Optimum Population Trust, which last week put out a briefing statement exhorting the world's parents to have fewer children. Noting that a British baby born today can be expected to produce about 744 tons of planet-warming CO2 (the equivalent of 620 return flights from London to New York) over the course of a lifetime, the trust concluded that "Population limitation should therefore be seen as the most cost-effective carbon offsetting strategy available to individuals and nations." (Penny-pinching paramours take note: Given the expected cost of global warming, the Trust calculates that the use of a 35-pence condom produces a "9,000,000% potential return on investment." How's that for safesex pillow talk?)

On an intellectual level, I have a certain amount of respect for anyone who truly would forsake reproduction in the furtherance of "carbon offsets": Unlike the hypocrite yuppy who drives his Hummer to three different malls so he can pick the right kind of "carbonneutral shampoo" (yes, the product exists), the Paul Watsons of the world are at least trying to make good on their convictions.

But in my gut, I am well and truly weirded out. As George Orwell wrote, the surest sign of dangerous extremism is the willingness to pursue ideological purity and societal perfection at the expense of fundamental human imperatives. All things considered, I would much rather live in an overheated world teeming with assmonkeys than a Kyotofied utopia in which human life was measured against carbon credits.

And thankfully, my broodsow feels the same way.

Jkay@nationalpost.com