Kamala Harris Blames ‘Climate Anxiety’ for Gen Z’s Declining Birth Rates — But Her Party Helped Cause It

Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ failed 2024 presidential candidate and a long-time promoter of climate panic, now says young Americans are too scared to have children — because of climate change.

Speaking at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Gala at the Washington National Cathedral, Harris said her goddaughter broke down crying about the idea of starting a family, supposedly overwhelmed by “climate anxiety.”

“She said, ‘What is the world gonna be for me, auntie, when I want to have kids? Should I even be thinking about having children?’” Harris recalled. “That’s on top of unaffordable — not for her but for so many in that generation, they don’t aspire to own a home. They don’t believe it’s within their reach.”

This wasn’t the first time Harris promoted this narrative. She made nearly identical comments back in 2020 during an appearance in Pennsylvania, where she said young people were creating new language — like “climate anxiety” — to express their dread over the environment and their future.

Now, years later, that fear has become a hallmark of the far-left movement Harris helped shape. Even her own stepdaughter took to TikTok in August to complain she felt “disgust” with the world and admitted she was suffering from intense “climate anxiety.”

But critics argue this supposed wave of “climate dread” among Gen Z isn’t organic — it’s manufactured. For over a decade, Democrats and their allies in the media and academia have pushed doomsday predictions, wild environmental theories, and apocalyptic rhetoric. Now that young people are growing up paralyzed by fear, Harris is pointing to it as if it were some natural development.

According to Pew Research, 78% of Democrats view climate change as a “major threat,” and a 2023 poll found that 55% of Democrats believe people having fewer children is actually good for the environment. That belief seems to have taken root: Americans in their 20s and 30s are putting off marriage and children in growing numbers. The U.S. birth rate now sits at 1.6 births per woman — below replacement level and the lowest in history.

Yet even with that drop, Americans still say they want larger families. A 2023 Gallup poll found that the average preferred number of children is 2.7, and the number of Americans who want three or more kids reached its highest level since 1971. The desire for big families is alive — but it’s being smothered by cultural and economic pressure.

Gallup pointed to many factors holding people back from having kids: high housing and childcare costs, rising healthcare and tuition bills, declining religious belief, and delayed marriage. In other words, the very policies and priorities embraced by Harris and her party.

And when you break it down, the divide is political. Men, Republicans, people of color, religious Americans, and those who attend church regularly are far more likely to say they want large families. Meanwhile, Democrats, white liberals, women under 50, and secular young adults overwhelmingly say one or two children is ideal — if they want children at all.

The climate panic that Harris helped sell is now turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy. After decades of telling Americans that the planet is dying and the future is doomed, the left is suddenly shocked that young people are choosing not to build families. Rather than offering hope or solutions, Harris continues to double down on despair.

And the American family continues to shrink.