When Lloyd Williamson lay on his back in a physician’s clinic in November last year, it was for the surgical culmination of years of soul searching. Williamson, who is 30 and from Essex north of London, remembers wanting a family as a child, but something changed in his early 20s.
“I thought: You know what? I don’t want to bring a life into this world, because it’s pretty shitty as it is and it’s only going to get worse,” he said two weeks after his vasectomy.
Williamson was largely motivated to sterilize himself by the climate crisis. Given the link between
With the climate crisis becoming ever more urgent, a growing number of young, childless men are taking the drastic decision of being sterilised for environmental reasons<br>
The fate of male reproductive organs is not a traditional concern in debates about the environment. But this is the most significant change Australian surgeon Dr Nick Demediuk, aka “Dr Snip,” has seen in the past decade.
“There is the rise of the hardline vegan brigade. They just get it done.”
Dr Demediuk says he performs a greater proportion of vasectomies upon younger people in their 20s and 30s who are concerned about overpopulation. They have no desire to ever have children for ideological reasons.
Research group Chef’s Pencil found Australia was the second most popular place in the world for vegans in 2020, beaten only by Britain. They also found skyrocketing interest over the last five years, accelerated even further since coronavirus.