FACT CHECK: Was This Commercial Showing A Mother Being Chastised For Having Children Created By The World Economic Forum?
A video shared on Facebook over 1,400 times purportedly shows a commercial from the World Economic Forum (WEF) in which a mother is chastised for the environmental impact of having children.
Verdict: False
The clip originates from a British TV series. No such commercial was released by the WEF.
Fact Check:
The Facebook video shows a man talking to a woman at a public transportation center. He asks the woman, who is holding a small child, why she would have a kid if she values protecting the environment.
“Nothing uses carbon like a first-world human, yet you created one,” says the man, who then refers to having a child as a “selfish act” and suggests the woman kill the child. (RELATED: Did The World Economic Forum Publish This Tweet Calling For The Internet To Be ‘Reformed’?)
The end of the video shows a link to a page on the WEF’s website about “The Great Reset,” a real initiative that calls for “global stakeholders to cooperate in simultaneously managing the direct consequences of the COVID-19 crisis.”
“This video is so disturbing and UNNECESSARY that you would not believe it’s an actual commercial done by the WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM… smh,” reads the video’s caption.
The video is not an advertisement from the WEF and the ending credit has been digitally edited into the clip. The original video is from a scene in the second season of the British TV series “Utopia.” The episode in question, the series finale, revolves around a group of people seeking to stop the controlled release of influenza to prevent “global disaster,” according to its description.
“This is not a World Economic Forum ad,” said a WEF spokesperson in an email to Check Your Fact. “We never created any such content.”
There is nothing on the WEF’s website to indicate the organization supports an anti-natalist stance or suggests children should be killed to prevent an increase in carbon emissions. The purported ad could not be found on the organization’s YouTube channel or website.
UPDATE: This post has been updated to include the statement from the WEF spokesperson.
