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It may seem counterintuitive, but if you care about the environment, you should have children. I wrote a whole blog post on this, but the gist is that people ar
by toasterlovin 8y ago
It may seem counterintuitive, but if you care about the environment, you should have children. I wrote a whole blog post on this, but the gist is that people are going to have children whatever you decide to do. If people like you, who are thoughtful and conscientious about the future of our species, decide not to have children, then the world will just be filled with the offspring of people who don't really care about the future of our species. And those children will share both the nature and nurture of their parents.
My blog post: http://www.richardjones.org/kids-are-good-for-the-environment/ http://www.richardjones.org/kids-are-good-for-the-environmen...
- skh 8y agoWhat you write makes sense but I don't feel right about having children. The world sucks and it will suck much more in the coming decades. I have no desire to put my progeny through that mess.
- ForHackernews 8y agoThis only makes sense if you assume "caring about the environment" is highly heritable and that individuals "caring about the environment" in the abstract somehow translates into large-scale public policy that's better for the environment (I would suggest available evidence shows that it does not).
- toasterlovin 8y agoAs I pointed out, children get their nature and their nurture from their parents. And I don't know how you can reconcile the success of the environmental movement in the developed world in the past 5 decades with your position that somehow people caring about the environment doesn't have any real world effects.
- ForHackernews 8y agoCO2 emissions are not just rising but rising faster. We haven't even gotten the second derivative pointed in the necessary direction.
- toasterlovin 8y agoBut you and your significant other are not the only players in the game. There are other people who will have children, regardless of what you do. So your choice is between a future that contains your children, who share your disposition and are indoctrinated by you into a specific worldview, or a world that does not contain them. How does your side win if it promotes a strategy of not even showing up to the game?
- ForHackernews 8y agoMy "side" "wins" in that my [non-existent] children and grandchildren will not suffer and starve on a famine-stricken planet burning itself to death.
- toasterlovin 8y agoI don’t get your position. You’re evidently not concerned with the greater good, only with what your own descendants will experience. But then you’re completely willing to ensure that you will leave no descendants.
- ForHackernews 8y agoI think you're poorly informed, or perhaps in denial about how far down the road we already are: [0] [1] [2] It's essentially too late for your or my hypothetical descendants to have any effect on "the greater good". The IPCC says either we cut _worldwide_ CO2 emissions by 50% in the next 11 years, or it's game over for +1.5C scenarios: all coral reefs die, along with most of the fish, crop yields down 40% in some places, mass migration and resource wars are likely. So basically I think it's too late for any "greater good" to come from my having kids, and I believe it's immoral to bring a life into a doomed world just to suffer. [0] - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/rcp-85-the-climate-change-disaster-scenario/579700/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/rcp-85-t... [1] - https://hbr.org/2018/12/the-story-of-sustainability-in-2018-we-have-about-12-years-left https://hbr.org/2018/12/the-story-of-sustainability-in-2018-... [2] - https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433 https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433
- aoeusnth1 8y agoAgreed. Raising vegan/vegetarian children and trying to steer them toward effective-altruistic careers around environmental benefit probably has positive expected outcomes for the environmental and political future.