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Can we stop with the don't have children advice. It's one step away from telling people to go kill themselves. People can choose to have children or not but it

Can we stop with the don't have children advice. It's one step away from telling people to go kill themselves. People can choose to have children or not but it is not constructive to tell people to have or not have children. For most of us not having children will render saving the planet (as in making it habitable for humans) a meaningless exercise.

devdas 6y ago
The impact of having a child in the first world is huge. You could live as close to a third world lower middle class lifestyle as possible and have one child.
- DontTellAnyone 6y ago
  The impact of immigration is even bigger. All first world nations have declining birth rates now and would reduce their population numbers substantially without immigration. Yet in many countries reach record population numbers on a yearly basis - because millions of immigrants keep pouring in. I'd rather stop immigration before further driving our birth rates down and leaving world of the future to the low intelligence populations that are currently driving population growth on a global scale. The only ones following this "don't have children because of the climate" advice are those intelligent enough to do so. The whole thing is completely dysgenic in its nature.
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    I think you word you’re looking for is educated. Small but significant difference.
bigiain 6y ago
I do not have any children, by choice - out of selfishness more than environmental concerns if I’m being brutally honest with myself. But I care deeply about the mess we’re leaving for my nieces and nephew, and for many of my friend’s children. And, quite frankly, saying “not fucking up a planet is a meaningless exercise” if it doesn’t happen to allow _your_ precious DNA to survive? That’s not the sort of awful person I’d admit to being in public...
- antepodius 6y ago
  That's fine. They who breed will inherit the earth!
antisthenes 6y ago
It's about having less children, not "not having children". The world isn't black and white. Having more children than we need is why we're in this whole mess to begin with. If people stuck to having 2-3 kids instead of 4-5, we'd have a much longer runway to transition to renewables, including building up storage capacity. Instead, we're scrambling and calling transitioning from coal to natural gas a success, when it's just changing 1 fossil fuel for another, while the world is burning (quite literally, in some parts) around us.

devdas 6y ago

The impact of having a child in the first world is huge. You could live as close to a third world lower middle class lifestyle as possible and have one child.

DontTellAnyone 6y ago
The impact of immigration is even bigger. All first world nations have declining birth rates now and would reduce their population numbers substantially without immigration. Yet in many countries reach record population numbers on a yearly basis - because millions of immigrants keep pouring in. I'd rather stop immigration before further driving our birth rates down and leaving world of the future to the low intelligence populations that are currently driving population growth on a global scale. The only ones following this "don't have children because of the climate" advice are those intelligent enough to do so. The whole thing is completely dysgenic in its nature.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  I think you word you’re looking for is educated. Small but significant difference.

bigiain 6y ago

I do not have any children, by choice - out of selfishness more than environmental concerns if I’m being brutally honest with myself. But I care deeply about the mess we’re leaving for my nieces and nephew, and for many of my friend’s children. And, quite frankly, saying “not fucking up a planet is a meaningless exercise” if it doesn’t happen to allow _your_ precious DNA to survive? That’s not the sort of awful person I’d admit to being in public...

antepodius 6y ago
That's fine. They who breed will inherit the earth!

antisthenes 6y ago

It's about having less children, not "not having children". The world isn't black and white. Having more children than we need is why we're in this whole mess to begin with. If people stuck to having 2-3 kids instead of 4-5, we'd have a much longer runway to transition to renewables, including building up storage capacity. Instead, we're scrambling and calling transitioning from coal to natural gas a success, when it's just changing 1 fossil fuel for another, while the world is burning (quite literally, in some parts) around us.