Raising children on a warming planet

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Another round of global climate talks is taking place at the COP30 summit, but some are questioning whether there is much point to these gatherings. We bring people together who have decided to take their own action. One guest, Gwynn, suggests the best way to save the planet is to not have children. She has even had surgery so she cannot get pregnant. “Forests and oceans and prairies are being destroyed so I can exist, so I can have my life,” Gwynn tells us. “I decided that I didn’t want to do that, I didn’t want to continue that, and I realised that the most impactful thing I could do is to not make more people.” Gwynn, who is in the US, is joined in conversation with another environmental campaigner, Maja in Sweden. She has three children. We also explore what happens when families disagree about the environment. And, we hear from an airline pilot, Rich, and his son, Finn, a climate activist. Can they find common ground?

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:08.5	Hello, I'm Luke Jones, and welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.
0:13.4	In BBC OS Conversations, we bring people together to share their experiences.
0:18.5	This time, is climate change a reason not to have kids?
0:23.5	The COP 30 climate talks have been taking place in Brazil, notable perhaps less for what was
0:29.0	being discussed than who wasn't there, including the leaders of China, the US, and India,
0:35.4	the world's three largest emitters of greenhouse gases.
0:38.4	As the temperature of the atmosphere continues to rise, some are questioning whether there's any point to having these global gatherings.
0:45.1	So in our conversations, we wanted to hear from people who have decided to take their own action,
0:50.0	and will bring together a family grappling with the reality of reducing emissions
0:54.7	when their own livelihood is at stake.
0:57.7	Our first guests are Maya, who is in Sweden.
1:00.5	She has three children and tries to lead what she calls a sustainable life.
1:04.9	And Gwynn lives on the east coast of the United States.
1:07.9	She's decided that the best way to save the planet is to not have children
1:11.6	and has even had surgery so she can't get pregnant. When they spoke to my colleague Rob Young,
1:16.9	Gwynne explained how she came to make such a radical decision. When I was a kid in my
1:22.6	neighborhood, I would go for walks every night with my mom and my sister and we would see bulldozers tearing down the forest in our neighborhood to build houses.
1:32.8	A lot of the animals that live in the forest would come and run into our yard.
1:36.3	We'd find snakes and that type of thing because their habitat was destroyed.
1:40.8	And when I got to be a little bit older, maybe eight, I got a book on like 50 simple
1:46.4	things kids can do to save the world and kind of started thinking more about the environment.
	...

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