7 ms·

The way I see it is that you don't bring child into the world to "increase" your own personal happiness. They are (at least in my personal case) the result of m

The way I see it is that you don't bring child into the world to "increase" your own personal happiness. They are (at least in my personal case) the result of my own happiness. And yes they require a lot of work, but all the hard work is totally worth it every time your children look at smile at you.

jniedrauer 7y ago
My point is not that they require a lot of work. My point is that they have a massive impact on climate change. You could spend your entire life flying to conferences, living on a cruise ship, dumping trash in the ocean, and none of it would even hold a candle to the environmental impact of having a child.
- residentfoam 7y ago
  So you are saying that children "have a massive impact on climate change" ? I don't have any statistics that can either confirm or dispute that assertion. But I will gladly ban SUV and Cruise s in favor of whatever climate impact children can have.
  - ecoled_ame 7y ago
    Are you crazy? Increasing the number of humans on the planet is the number one thing you can do to worsen climate change. You forget that we are nothing but an organism, we all produce waste and contribute hardly nothing beneficial to the environment.
    - Robotbeat 7y ago
      If that is true of organisms, then life of all types is a net negative. What a sad perspective. I know many people who contribute massively to the environment. Maybe you need to choose a different, pro-environment lifestyle? Plant some trees. It's possible to live carbon negative and pass on those values to your children.
      - sk5t 7y ago
        You should acquaint yourself with trees and fungus, if you think negative environmental impact is the case with all organisms.
        Robotbeat 7y ago
        Indeed.
        joyeuse6701 7y ago
        Oh, I'm sure an overgrowth of trees or fungus would lead to a net negative for some living thing somewhere.
    - ardy42 7y ago
      > You forget that we are nothing but an organism, we all produce waste and contribute hardly nothing beneficial to the environment. So in your view, humans are weeds. Do you think it's time to get out the weedkiller?
    - taysic 7y ago
      Why not just raise your kids with a low eco footprint? The whole argument is silly to me. If you want to find the best action you and your children can do about climate change - it’s going vegan.
      - jniedrauer 7y ago
        The impact of changing your diet is not all that large. You can wipe out a year of eating vegan with a single transatlantic flight.
        taysic 7y ago
        There’s a ton of info out there that says it better than I can but the consensus is the vegan diet is the biggest thing you can do. “A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions. “Agriculture is a sector that spans all the multitude of environmental problems,” he said. “Really it is animal products that are responsible for so much of this. Avoiding consumption of animal products delivers far better environmental benefits than trying to purchase sustainable meat and dairy.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...
- gautamdivgi 7y ago
  Any data to cite on this claim?
  - jniedrauer 7y ago
    I can type "environmental impact of having a child" into google[0] [0]: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
    - Robotbeat 7y ago
      That's taking the average of all humanity. If pro-environment people do not have children to pass their values to but anti-environment people do, then clearly there won't be much support for climate action in the future. Climate action is still a very long road. Yes, we probably already have nearly 1.5C baked in, but our children and grandchildren will still have a massive role in the future of the environment.
      - AlexandrB 7y ago
        > Yes, we probably already have nearly 1.5C baked in, but our children and grandchildren will still have a massive role in the future of the environment. Another great reason not to have kids. They are going to be left to deal with the consequences of the 1.5C. Including war, famine, and the likely re-emergence of various fascist and totalitarian ideologies due to the crisis. Why would you choose to put people you love through that?
        Robotbeat 7y ago
        Because they can do immense good as well. The future has not been written yet. They have agency to do well, and I think that those who are able have a responsibility to pass on their values to ensure there are people in the future who will do good. If only the fascists and pro-totalitarians pass on their values to future generations, then you're right there is little hope. But that's what we're discussing! I believe we have a responsibility to ensure that ISN'T the future.
- mrmonkeyman 7y ago
  Nothing would hold a candle to what it means to have one though. No kids? You will not understand. None of this matters anyway. Enjoy life.
- nwalker85 7y ago
  This type of attitude is pretty common these days. It's this postmodern view of the world where humanity is somehow separate from nature and must be controlled to protect nature. This is such an arrogant attitude. Sure, you may be right, that having a child has a high carbon footprint, but your decision to not have children doesn't improve anything. Not being actively bad isn't the same as being good.
  - jniedrauer 7y ago
    What's your point? That we should collectively bury our heads in the sand and keep living the two-kids-and-a-minivan suburb life right up until the end?
    - nwalker85 7y ago
      That's quite the extrapolation from what I actually said. My point is that the choice to not have children is not the same as actively helping. Not making things worse is not "good". And demonizing all of humanity as though we are somehow a virus to be eliminated is arrogant. We can be mindful of our impact on the environment without assuming that we're a problem.
      - manfredo 7y ago
        > Not making things worse is not "good". If you have Choice A which actively makes things worse and Choice B which doesn't make things worse then Choice A is the "good" choice as it is the one that causes the least harm. Driving a 50cc scooter instead of a car doesn't actively help carbon emissions, in fact it still puts out carbon, but it any reasonable person would say that switching from a car to a scooter helps the environment. Splitting hairs over whether doing less harm counts as "helping" isn't very productive.
    - spookthesunset 7y ago
      > That we should collectively bury our heads in the sand and keep living the two-kids-and-a-minivan suburb life right up until the end? Have kids and don't do that. If the "good guys" aren't having kids then we'll be fucked. I assure you the "bad guys" are having loads of kids and they don't care one iota about climate change....
- ardy42 7y ago
  > My point is not that they require a lot of work. My point is that they have a massive impact on climate change. You could spend your entire life flying to conferences, living on a cruise ship, dumping trash in the ocean, and none of it would even hold a candle to the environmental impact of having a child. Your argument applies equally to "having a child" and "letting some person live."
  - jniedrauer 7y ago
    That's a pretty big jump. In one case, I create a human where one does not currently exist. In the other case, I choose to impose my will on a human that currently exists and has a will of their own.
    - ardy42 7y ago
      > That's a pretty big jump. It's not as big of a jump as you think. If climate change is such an urgent issue that anti-natalism should be on the agenda, perhaps it's a big enough crisis to motivate a re-evaluation of some old ideas about the sanctity of individual human lives.
      - AlexandrB 7y ago
        This is like the bartender telling you that "maybe you've had enough" and, instead of just not drinking anymore, you immediately calling an ambulance to take you to the hospital and get your stomach pumped. Seems like all-or-nothing thinking to me.
      - iamnothere 7y ago
        > perhaps it's a big enough crisis to motivate a re-evaluation of some old ideas about the sanctity of individual human lives You say this flippantly, but if we don't eventually reverse the trends, this will happen. It will be camouflaged in the garb of warfare against the "enemy", as it always is.
  - paulmd 7y ago
    You're delusional if you think climate change isn't going to play out without human deaths on a massive scale, regardless of whether that's wars for habitable land and water or explicit murders of "surplus" populations. We're on a path that is going to significantly lessen the carrying capacity of the planet (on the human timescales we care about). It's implicit and unavoidable barring a wholescale change in power structures and probably human attitudes in general. It's not a good thing but it is inevitable at this point.
- jerkstate 7y ago
  It really, really sounds like you haven’t done the math. The average per-capita CO2 emissions in the USA is about 15 tons (among the highest in the world) and a round-trip flight between SF and NY is about 1.5 tons, 10% of that. So if you flew to conferences 10 times per year, you would be using the entire carbon footprint of an average US citizen, which is among the highest in the world.
  - jniedrauer 7y ago
    You're disregarding future procreation in those calculations[0]: [0]: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
    - jerkstate 7y ago
      Your original statement - that a carbon-hedonistic lifestyle of frequent flying and cruise ships would still be lower CO2 output than having children - is flatly wrong, and your source does not bolster your argument.
      - manfredo 7y ago
        Sure, but who's to say whether or not those children will fly on planes or go on cruises? Or their grandchildren? Or their great-grandchildren? This strikes me as a fallacious argument that simply not going on cruises or plane rides can offset the environmental footprint of having children. At least not unless there's some mechanism to forbid those children from every flying on a plane or taking a cruise - and not aware of any such mechanism.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    I assume you think the child would stay put? :)
- cpursley 7y ago
  And what about your environmental impact? How do you justify that?
  - jniedrauer 7y ago
    That's a hard question. Some days I don't have an answer.
    - chr1 7y ago
      In a book i've read the hero was saying that if you believe the end of the world is imminent, and you are contemplating suicide, then most likely you are in a cult. Unfortunately modern environmentalism is a cult with its own armageddon. And WWF actively displacing native hunter gatherer people to "save the wildlife". What is the point of preserving environment if there are no people in it? In fact shrinking population is the worst thing for the environment that can happen now, because at this point we have already activated the natural process of arctic melting and releasing CO2, and even if half of people were magically removed there wouldn't be a huge difference. On the other hand the new science and technology depend on large number of people ready to pay for them. Things like starlink, new CPUs, would be impossible with smaller population. But if the population was larger, we would already have floating cities increasing carbon capture in sea, desalination plants irrigating large parts of sahara, system of balloons, solar updraft towers and satellites controlling the local climate. If you are from a rich country, not having children is doubly bad, because you have all the resources to give these kids better education. The world would have been a much better place if people from western countries were immigrating to the rest of the world bringing their money and their knowledge of how to build a better society, but instead of that the rich countries are making easy for smart and entrepreneurial people to immigrate there leaving us perpetually underdeveloped. (When most of the people who were exposed to western values, and had good education immigrate, there is not enough power remaining to fight with those who want to build medieval dictatorship).
- tracker1 7y ago
  What have you personally done to change that? To reduce your ecological impact? To improve the world. There's an old saying that if you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem. You don't think raising a child under the auspices of being environmentally aware, and that their influence would extend beyond yours is a good thing? That if you and your partner only have one child, you are generationally reducing the population while allowing your views to seed and grow. There is so much negativity in the world... kind of lines up with the article title itself, and is more of the same problem than the solution. Even then, you aren't helping the world by actively not having children.
- jriot 7y ago
  This is the biggest load of bull.... being pushed these days, reaming of a selfish, entitlement attitude.
ecoled_ame 7y ago
Forget your feelings and stick to the key question - does the world need more people, less people, or do we have exactly the right amount? I think we have too many, practically every day I see people in my own city that I will never see again in the future. It's chaotic.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Your measure of "too many people" is that you see people in your city and never see them again? That's an amazingly self-centered metric for deciding how many people there should be. And it's very easy to fix your problem. Just move to a small town.
- BeetleB 7y ago
  >Forget your feelings and stick to the key question - does the world need more people, less people, or do we have exactly the right amount? HN doesn't have an unwritten rule about expressing emotions, and the person you're responding to didn't dodge any question. Given that the submission is about happiness, it's very much on topic to discuss children and happiness.
- ryandrake 7y ago
  Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Instead, assume that unlimited human population growth is inevitable, and ask what technology or social systems do we need to develop in order to sustain that growth. What do we need to develop/implement in order to support a population of 10B? 100B? 1T?? At some point, routine space travel needs to come into play. 100x-to-100000x improvement in the efficiency of our energy capture/storage/distribution technology. Terraforming or other world-modification technology. At 10-100 trillion population, interstellar travel and communication. At 100+ trillion population, we need to invent stuff that isn’t even in science fiction yet. I find all this agonizing over how to keep this tiny ball of mud habitable to be... less than ambitious.
  - JoeSamoa 7y ago
    If we can't figure how to keep this mud ball habitable longer, we wont make it to any of the other marvels!

jniedrauer 7y ago

My point is not that they require a lot of work. My point is that they have a massive impact on climate change. You could spend your entire life flying to conferences, living on a cruise ship, dumping trash in the ocean, and none of it would even hold a candle to the environmental impact of having a child.

residentfoam 7y ago
So you are saying that children "have a massive impact on climate change" ? I don't have any statistics that can either confirm or dispute that assertion. But I will gladly ban SUV and Cruise s in favor of whatever climate impact children can have.
- ecoled_ame 7y ago
  Are you crazy? Increasing the number of humans on the planet is the number one thing you can do to worsen climate change. You forget that we are nothing but an organism, we all produce waste and contribute hardly nothing beneficial to the environment.
  - Robotbeat 7y ago
    If that is true of organisms, then life of all types is a net negative. What a sad perspective. I know many people who contribute massively to the environment. Maybe you need to choose a different, pro-environment lifestyle? Plant some trees. It's possible to live carbon negative and pass on those values to your children.
    - sk5t 7y ago
      You should acquaint yourself with trees and fungus, if you think negative environmental impact is the case with all organisms.
      - Robotbeat 7y ago
        Indeed.
      - joyeuse6701 7y ago
        Oh, I'm sure an overgrowth of trees or fungus would lead to a net negative for some living thing somewhere.
  - ardy42 7y ago
    > You forget that we are nothing but an organism, we all produce waste and contribute hardly nothing beneficial to the environment. So in your view, humans are weeds. Do you think it's time to get out the weedkiller?
  - taysic 7y ago
    Why not just raise your kids with a low eco footprint? The whole argument is silly to me. If you want to find the best action you and your children can do about climate change - it’s going vegan.
    - jniedrauer 7y ago
      The impact of changing your diet is not all that large. You can wipe out a year of eating vegan with a single transatlantic flight.
      - taysic 7y ago
        There’s a ton of info out there that says it better than I can but the consensus is the vegan diet is the biggest thing you can do. “A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions. “Agriculture is a sector that spans all the multitude of environmental problems,” he said. “Really it is animal products that are responsible for so much of this. Avoiding consumption of animal products delivers far better environmental benefits than trying to purchase sustainable meat and dairy.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...
gautamdivgi 7y ago
Any data to cite on this claim?
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  I can type "environmental impact of having a child" into google[0] [0]: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
  - Robotbeat 7y ago
    That's taking the average of all humanity. If pro-environment people do not have children to pass their values to but anti-environment people do, then clearly there won't be much support for climate action in the future. Climate action is still a very long road. Yes, we probably already have nearly 1.5C baked in, but our children and grandchildren will still have a massive role in the future of the environment.
    - AlexandrB 7y ago
      > Yes, we probably already have nearly 1.5C baked in, but our children and grandchildren will still have a massive role in the future of the environment. Another great reason not to have kids. They are going to be left to deal with the consequences of the 1.5C. Including war, famine, and the likely re-emergence of various fascist and totalitarian ideologies due to the crisis. Why would you choose to put people you love through that?
      - Robotbeat 7y ago
        Because they can do immense good as well. The future has not been written yet. They have agency to do well, and I think that those who are able have a responsibility to pass on their values to ensure there are people in the future who will do good. If only the fascists and pro-totalitarians pass on their values to future generations, then you're right there is little hope. But that's what we're discussing! I believe we have a responsibility to ensure that ISN'T the future.
mrmonkeyman 7y ago
Nothing would hold a candle to what it means to have one though. No kids? You will not understand. None of this matters anyway. Enjoy life.
nwalker85 7y ago
This type of attitude is pretty common these days. It's this postmodern view of the world where humanity is somehow separate from nature and must be controlled to protect nature. This is such an arrogant attitude. Sure, you may be right, that having a child has a high carbon footprint, but your decision to not have children doesn't improve anything. Not being actively bad isn't the same as being good.
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  What's your point? That we should collectively bury our heads in the sand and keep living the two-kids-and-a-minivan suburb life right up until the end?
  - nwalker85 7y ago
    That's quite the extrapolation from what I actually said. My point is that the choice to not have children is not the same as actively helping. Not making things worse is not "good". And demonizing all of humanity as though we are somehow a virus to be eliminated is arrogant. We can be mindful of our impact on the environment without assuming that we're a problem.
    - manfredo 7y ago
      > Not making things worse is not "good". If you have Choice A which actively makes things worse and Choice B which doesn't make things worse then Choice A is the "good" choice as it is the one that causes the least harm. Driving a 50cc scooter instead of a car doesn't actively help carbon emissions, in fact it still puts out carbon, but it any reasonable person would say that switching from a car to a scooter helps the environment. Splitting hairs over whether doing less harm counts as "helping" isn't very productive.
  - spookthesunset 7y ago
    > That we should collectively bury our heads in the sand and keep living the two-kids-and-a-minivan suburb life right up until the end? Have kids and don't do that. If the "good guys" aren't having kids then we'll be fucked. I assure you the "bad guys" are having loads of kids and they don't care one iota about climate change....
ardy42 7y ago
> My point is not that they require a lot of work. My point is that they have a massive impact on climate change. You could spend your entire life flying to conferences, living on a cruise ship, dumping trash in the ocean, and none of it would even hold a candle to the environmental impact of having a child. Your argument applies equally to "having a child" and "letting some person live."
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  That's a pretty big jump. In one case, I create a human where one does not currently exist. In the other case, I choose to impose my will on a human that currently exists and has a will of their own.
  - ardy42 7y ago
    > That's a pretty big jump. It's not as big of a jump as you think. If climate change is such an urgent issue that anti-natalism should be on the agenda, perhaps it's a big enough crisis to motivate a re-evaluation of some old ideas about the sanctity of individual human lives.
    - AlexandrB 7y ago
      This is like the bartender telling you that "maybe you've had enough" and, instead of just not drinking anymore, you immediately calling an ambulance to take you to the hospital and get your stomach pumped. Seems like all-or-nothing thinking to me.
    - iamnothere 7y ago
      > perhaps it's a big enough crisis to motivate a re-evaluation of some old ideas about the sanctity of individual human lives You say this flippantly, but if we don't eventually reverse the trends, this will happen. It will be camouflaged in the garb of warfare against the "enemy", as it always is.
- paulmd 7y ago
  You're delusional if you think climate change isn't going to play out without human deaths on a massive scale, regardless of whether that's wars for habitable land and water or explicit murders of "surplus" populations. We're on a path that is going to significantly lessen the carrying capacity of the planet (on the human timescales we care about). It's implicit and unavoidable barring a wholescale change in power structures and probably human attitudes in general. It's not a good thing but it is inevitable at this point.
jerkstate 7y ago
It really, really sounds like you haven’t done the math. The average per-capita CO2 emissions in the USA is about 15 tons (among the highest in the world) and a round-trip flight between SF and NY is about 1.5 tons, 10% of that. So if you flew to conferences 10 times per year, you would be using the entire carbon footprint of an average US citizen, which is among the highest in the world.
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  You're disregarding future procreation in those calculations[0]: [0]: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
  - jerkstate 7y ago
    Your original statement - that a carbon-hedonistic lifestyle of frequent flying and cruise ships would still be lower CO2 output than having children - is flatly wrong, and your source does not bolster your argument.
    - manfredo 7y ago
      Sure, but who's to say whether or not those children will fly on planes or go on cruises? Or their grandchildren? Or their great-grandchildren? This strikes me as a fallacious argument that simply not going on cruises or plane rides can offset the environmental footprint of having children. At least not unless there's some mechanism to forbid those children from every flying on a plane or taking a cruise - and not aware of any such mechanism.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  I assume you think the child would stay put? :)
cpursley 7y ago
And what about your environmental impact? How do you justify that?
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  That's a hard question. Some days I don't have an answer.
  - chr1 7y ago
    In a book i've read the hero was saying that if you believe the end of the world is imminent, and you are contemplating suicide, then most likely you are in a cult. Unfortunately modern environmentalism is a cult with its own armageddon. And WWF actively displacing native hunter gatherer people to "save the wildlife". What is the point of preserving environment if there are no people in it? In fact shrinking population is the worst thing for the environment that can happen now, because at this point we have already activated the natural process of arctic melting and releasing CO2, and even if half of people were magically removed there wouldn't be a huge difference. On the other hand the new science and technology depend on large number of people ready to pay for them. Things like starlink, new CPUs, would be impossible with smaller population. But if the population was larger, we would already have floating cities increasing carbon capture in sea, desalination plants irrigating large parts of sahara, system of balloons, solar updraft towers and satellites controlling the local climate. If you are from a rich country, not having children is doubly bad, because you have all the resources to give these kids better education. The world would have been a much better place if people from western countries were immigrating to the rest of the world bringing their money and their knowledge of how to build a better society, but instead of that the rich countries are making easy for smart and entrepreneurial people to immigrate there leaving us perpetually underdeveloped. (When most of the people who were exposed to western values, and had good education immigrate, there is not enough power remaining to fight with those who want to build medieval dictatorship).
tracker1 7y ago
What have you personally done to change that? To reduce your ecological impact? To improve the world. There's an old saying that if you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem. You don't think raising a child under the auspices of being environmentally aware, and that their influence would extend beyond yours is a good thing? That if you and your partner only have one child, you are generationally reducing the population while allowing your views to seed and grow. There is so much negativity in the world... kind of lines up with the article title itself, and is more of the same problem than the solution. Even then, you aren't helping the world by actively not having children.
jriot 7y ago
This is the biggest load of bull.... being pushed these days, reaming of a selfish, entitlement attitude.

ecoled_ame 7y ago

Forget your feelings and stick to the key question - does the world need more people, less people, or do we have exactly the right amount? I think we have too many, practically every day I see people in my own city that I will never see again in the future. It's chaotic.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Your measure of "too many people" is that you see people in your city and never see them again? That's an amazingly self-centered metric for deciding how many people there should be. And it's very easy to fix your problem. Just move to a small town.
BeetleB 7y ago
>Forget your feelings and stick to the key question - does the world need more people, less people, or do we have exactly the right amount? HN doesn't have an unwritten rule about expressing emotions, and the person you're responding to didn't dodge any question. Given that the submission is about happiness, it's very much on topic to discuss children and happiness.
ryandrake 7y ago
Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Instead, assume that unlimited human population growth is inevitable, and ask what technology or social systems do we need to develop in order to sustain that growth. What do we need to develop/implement in order to support a population of 10B? 100B? 1T?? At some point, routine space travel needs to come into play. 100x-to-100000x improvement in the efficiency of our energy capture/storage/distribution technology. Terraforming or other world-modification technology. At 10-100 trillion population, interstellar travel and communication. At 100+ trillion population, we need to invent stuff that isn’t even in science fiction yet. I find all this agonizing over how to keep this tiny ball of mud habitable to be... less than ambitious.
- JoeSamoa 7y ago
  If we can't figure how to keep this mud ball habitable longer, we wont make it to any of the other marvels!