Vegan musician, actor, and activist Miley Cyrus refuses to have children until the planet is saved.
In a recent interview, the “Black Mirror” star — who is often vocal about environmental issues and animal rights — spoke out about humanity’s exploitation of the earth’s resources. She also spoke about her feelings on society’s treatment of women and her thoughts on how the two issues can be compared.
“We’ve been doing the same thing to the earth that we do to women,” she told Elle magazine. “We just take and take and expect it to keep producing. And it’s exhausted. It can’t produce. We’re getting handed a piece-of-[expletive] planet, and I refuse to hand that down to my child.”
She continued, “until I feel like my kid would live on an earth with fish in the water, I’m not bringing in another person to deal with that.”
Cyrus also spoke about the pressure she feels from society to have children, despite the current state of the environment. She explained, “we’re expected to keep the planet populated. And when that isn’t a part of our plan or our purpose, there is so much judgment and anger that they have to make and change laws to force it upon you — even if you become pregnant in a violent situation.”
“If you don’t want children, people feel sorry for you,” she added. “Like you’re a cold, heartless bitch who’s not capable of love.”
Going Child-Free for the Environment
But Cyrus isn’t alone in her decision to live child-free. More and more people are deciding not to have children for environmental reasons. According to Population Matters — an organization campaigning for a more sustainable population –, it noticed an upsurge in support last year, primarily from young people.
“You can measure it in our online traffic,” Robin Maynard, the director of Population Matters, told the Guardian. “Our Twitter followers are up by 60% from 2016 and a recent Facebook post on being child-free reached more than 4 million people.”
Vegan race car driver Leilani Münter has also chosen to live child-free for environmental reasons, but she understands that some people do have an overwhelming desire to have children.
“My ask is that you consider adopting one of the 153m orphan children that are already on the planet and need a home,” she requested. “Or, if you are dead set on having your own, my hope would be that you just have one and then if you want more, adopt.”
