Scientists are torn on the issue of whether having will help in the fight against climate change. While it is easy to pinpoint that fewer carbon emissions from vehicles, livestock, and the like can help with that fight, showing a correlation between  and how the climate will change can be a bit trickier. But according to one scientist, having children amid climate change for those who want children is not only okay but "irrelevant" to climate change as a whole.

In 2017, Kimberly Nichols co-authored a that stated one of the ways the planet could be saved from a climate change perspective was to have one fewer child than desired. Since that time, Nichols has walked back her stance on the matter significantly.

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In her book, Under the Sky We Make, according to , the scientist states that for those who want children, go ahead and have them. Having fewer children at this point in the climate change crisis will not make an impact in enough time to right the planet.

During a recent episode of the podcast, host, Sigal Samuel, spoke to Nichols and asked her how she came to do an about-face when it came to her stance on .

For Nichols, the answer was simple. Future generations of children are not going to make an impact on the climate given the fact that change needs to happen in this decade to sustain life for future generations. While putting more people on the planet does add to the greenhouse gases that are emitted, banking on eliminating future generations' greenhouse gases to change the current climate crisis is not feasible, according to Vox.

According to the , it is human activities over the last 50 years that have caused the climate to change as it has. And the main culprit, according to WHO, is the burning of fossil fuels.

The global climate has been changed as a result of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas levels rising, which has trapped "additional heat in the lower atmosphere," according to the publication. As a result, the , the amount of catastrophic flooding has increased, hurricanes have become more violent, and food production has been slowly decreasing.

According to Vox, Nichols stated that "we have this decade to cut emissions in half." And according to the author, fewer children are not going to make that happen. What it will take is governments need to reduce emissions at a greater amount than they are currently.

"Right now, governments are reducing emissions 10 times too slowly to meet our Paris agreement goals," Nichols stated on the podcast. She added, "We are not doing nearly enough and we are really in danger of completely missing those goals."

With all of this information, Samuel wondered if it was wrong for people to begin now knowing that there is a potential for them to have a "bleak future," according to Vox.

Nichols said that that was a conversation she had been having "more and more."

"I can provide some context and information on what climate predictions look like," Nichols said during the podcast, "but people have to go within themselves and look at their own priorities and values." And according to Nichols, if having children will make life "more meaningful" then it makes sense for people to have children.

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