> The reason we care about climate change is for the sake of children Is it? And if so, whose? If we should plan for disaster by 2040, I'm going to see it.

> The reason we care about climate change is for the sake of children Is it? And if so, whose? If we should plan for disaster by 2040, I'm going to see it. I stand a good chance of living 30-40 years past it (unless modern medicine collapses, which isn't unlikely). Given the timespan involved, everyone who can intellectually contribute to fixing the problem in the article must already have been born. Voluntarily going childless absolutely deserves to be on that list. The children I choose to benefit may not be my own, and that's fine. I'd hope that the false equivalence with killing homeless people would be obvious, but just in case: there is a real difference between stopping a life that is already in progress, and deciding not to start one in the first place. > If the present is any indication That's a hell of an assumption. The safer stance is to assume that the West will shrink in significance, and for Asia and Africa to grow. Your comment about the "great mass of impoverished third-worlders" is not consistent with reality: the number of people in this state is less than a billion; you're leaving out the vast numbers of educated and capable folk in China, India, and Africa, who not only outnumber Western tech folk, but also many of whom have a far higher incentive to solve the problem because they directly risk their home locations becoming uninhabitable.