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I suppose it depends on your mental model for how climate change will be solved. If you believe that a small number of people will have an outsized impact, eac
by xyzzy123 5y ago
I suppose it depends on your mental model for how climate change will be solved.
If you believe that a small number of people will have an outsized impact, each person is a "lottery ticket".
If you believe in incremental progress then adding more people is likely to be "slightly positive".
If you believe that little progress will be made on per capita emissions (or that they may even grow) then each additional person is a carbon burden.
- 1_player 5y agoIt's not a matter of "belief". If a new person on the planet is born and goes their whole life without contributing to the cause and carrying on the current status quo of resource exploitation and fossil fuel usage, they will have made the crisis worse.
- xyzzy123 5y agoThat is true if you believe that humanity will not meet climate goals over the next century. On the other hand, if within a generation or two each person is net carbon negative (through labour, taxes, innovation or other support towards climate efforts) then children born today will be helping to mitigate the crisis. This is the "incremental" scenario. The plausibility of this depends on how you think system change happens and your assessment of what is possible or likely.