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53% of parents say climate change affects their decision to have more kids
- 0zemp3c 3y ago[dead]
- maerF0x0 3y agoWith being climate change friendly turned into a social more, survey style research like this is going to be fraught with issues. Of course they self identify as good little citizens who aren't anti-science, and without a decent rubric of what that means, their self identification is meaningless. > It is largely the responsibility of corporations to make good climate decisions, parents say. Just more than half, 51%, of parents say companies have “a lot” of responsibility to hold themselves accountable to do the right thing for the climate, and only 36% of parents say the responsibility to push companies to act sustainably lies with the customer. This is telling. Though they say they're willing to act, ultimately they're pushing more of the responsibility onto amorphous others. A better design would be to longitudinally follow those who initially self identify as climate change conscious and then follow behaviors more quantitatively like do they have fewer children than outgroup cohort, does their annual travel * average MPG of their vehicle result in less CO2 (having a hybrid and driving 30K miles/yr is just as offensive than driving a hummer 5K miles per year) etc.
- Buttons840 3y agoWe can regulate 100 companies, or ask 8 billion people to individually change their behavior. Which of the two pushes responsibility onto amorphous others again? Which do you think is more likely to succeed if attempted?
- maerF0x0 3y agoI'm actually in favor of what you're saying, but would attribute that contribution to putting the onus on government (not businesses). To me businesses taking responsibility looks more like 1% for climate change and social responsiblity, which I think companies do poorly due to (seemingly) conflicts of interest. I think we agree in principal on a good path forward, but I disagree that the study says people think the government should regulate more. btw here's a lead for those wondering "why 100 companies?" - https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...
- Spinnaker_ 3y agoAre you sure those are two different things? Those 100 companies provide energy, food, transportation, consumer goods etc to many of those 8 billion people. By regulating them you are pushing change on their customers as well.
- emodendroket 3y agoTrue but it's also true that Saudi Aramco isn't drilling just for the thrill of it.
- mrguyorama 3y agoAh yes, because for the last hundred years in america, using oil was a choice, instead of a nearly required part of daily life
- emodendroket 3y agoIt's simplistic to say "choice!" or "no choice!" like we can boil the whole thing down to one or the other. Yes, you pretty much need to have a car. But plenty of people resisted any effort to, say, build transportation, or even build stuff like HOV lanes, tooth and nail, and that continues to be the case.
- mrguyorama 3y agoThose are largely not the same people who have been warning about climate change.
- emodendroket 3y agoOK… that seems like a different conversation than we were just having.
- revelio 3y agoYou're arguing something different. maerF0x0 is saying that survey respondents are saying what they think they're supposed to say, but they don't really care, which is why they think other people should be the ones to do something. You are saying it's easier to make a small number of powerful people do things than make lots of people do things. In other words, that's the best way to force 8 billion people to do things they don't want to do. That may be so but isn't really related. In particular, if most people don't actually care because they don't think a lot of the claims are true but are afraid of being cancelled for saying so, then there's no moral basis for controlling those 8 billion people by manipulating 100 companies.
- CommitSyn 3y agoIt's easy to worry about the tiger and think the village warriors will take care of it. It's much harder to fight the tiger yourself, especially when the tiger is an amorphous slow-burn.
- mrguyorama 3y agoMeanwhile half the tribe is sure that the tiger is their friend, would never eat THEM, and actually you are the enemy for wanting to prevent the tiger from eating other people. Tigers have been eating people for a million years, how dare you try and pervert the natural order!
- seydor 3y agoHow many of them did have (more) kids? Caring for climate change is a social triviality now. Everyone has been trained to be concerned. It s even easier to be concerned after having kids.
- yunusabd 3y agoHow many of the 5000 interviewed parents did have kids?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jseliger 3y agoI wonder how many of them are putting money into various kinds of Direct Air Capture (DAC) efforts: https://austinvernon.site/blog/carboncapture.html https://austinvernon.site/blog/carboncapture.html and how many realize that climate mitigations are possible. I subscribe to Climeworks, but that is only one company in the space. In the meantime, too, https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-did-solar-power-get-cheap-part https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-did-solar-power-g.... Not having kids due to "climate change" seems like cope.
- PretzelPirate 3y agoLet's say I'm avoiding having more children due to the risk of climate change making the world a bad place to live. If I put money into fixing climate change, why would that make me more likely to have children? My contribution doesn't guarantee or noticeably change the liklihood of climate change being solved. The reasonable thing to do would be to still not have children, and if the world doesn't end up horrible, know let the next generation have kids knowing that climate change won't be an issue.
- Mordisquitos 3y ago>The reasonable thing to do would be to still not have children, and if the world doesn't end up horrible, know let the next generation have kids knowing that climate change won't be an issue. What next generation?
- filoleg 3y ago> Let's say I'm avoiding having more children due to the risk of climate change making the world a bad place to live. If I put money into fixing climate change, why would that make me more likely to have children? They did not claim that putting money into fixing climate change would make you more likely to have children, you missed the point made by the comment you were replying to. The "cope" part they were referencing was that the people surveyed simply used climate change as an excuse for not having children, and it wasn't their real reason (with the real reason being one of bajillion possibilities, just probably a less "socially cool" sounding one, but that's irrelevant). The grandparent comment reasoning was that if those people actually cared that much about climate change and wanted to have children if it wasn't for climate change, are they doing anything to address that problem (with the primary method being funding climate change reversal initiatives)? Mind you, I do not necessarily agree with that reasoning entirely, but you are attacking a strawman here.
- m3kw9 3y agoYou can also say people watching tv news too much would have this issue.
- gred 3y agoThis gives me and my descendants a competitive advantage!
- sourcecodeplz 3y ago[flagged]
- cm2012 3y agoWe live in absolute best time in human history to expect your kids to have a good life. Climate change is tiny compared to the technical and medical revolutions humanity has experienced.
- notahacker 3y agoA lot of the technical and medical revolutions have meant you can focus on the one kid having a good life rather than needing another five to be confident enough of them will be around to providing for you in later life...
- slackfan 3y agoSingle points of failure lead to inherently unstable systems.
- notahacker 3y agosure, but our system doesn't involve parents depending solely on their offspring in later life any more.
- caeril 3y agoIt still does, but it's indirect and not as visible. 1. Social Security and Medicare benefits are being paid for by currently working (read: younger) people. 2. Retirement funds invested in equities and bonds require continued productivity by younger generations to retain value. Maybe parents don't rely on their specific offspring, but they definitely rely on society's offspring as a whole.
- slackfan 3y agoSo, uh, who pays for social security and medicare/medicaid?
- cm2012 3y agoStandards are way higher now for new kids than even in the 90s.
- willio58 3y agoI posted about this before and one commenter said something that stayed with me. Something along the lines of if all the people that feared having children due to climate change didn't have children, the only people having children would be those who had no fear of climate change. This would obviously affect the overall perspective of those in our society and skew them toward non-believers who don't push toward action on climate change. Kurzgesagt has a great video that touches on this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw
- Konnstann 3y agoThat's been the trend regardless of what metric you choose, people with higher income have fewer children, more educated people have fewer children, etc.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoRich Americans have more kids than average Americans. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ecoj.12148 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ecoj.12148
- Konnstann 3y agoThe data reported by that study doesn't even support the hypothesis, both the hybrid and adjusted fertility rates of women with <12 and 12 years of schooling are shown to still be higher than those of women with college and advanced degrees. Unless I'm misinterpreting something all this suggests is that there's a partial reversal, not an upheaval, of one of the most widely studied trends in fertility worldwide. The study does point out that childcare costs have outstripped wages of women with a high school diploma or less education though, which is alarming.
- biomcgary 3y agoIf idiocracy (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/) ever happens (or has already happened ;-), it is primarily because of the "smart" set doing exactly this. I was shocked at how few of the students in my evolutionary biology graduate program were planning to have kids. Having two kids or less is the definition of unfit parents (unless you are propagating clonally).
- cuttysnark 3y agoI understand the sentiment, to an extent, but I find myself simultaneously wondering how our great/grandparents didn't become similarly disillusioned by World Wars, Great Depressions. To them, it could have very well been the end of the world more than once or twice. I'm sure there were certainly those who saw that and thought "nope, not bringing life into this mess" — but us being here proves at least some people thought otherwise.
- abeppu 3y agoThe baby boomers are commonly defined as being born from 1946-1964. Griswold v Connecticut which affirmed the rights of _married people_ to use contraceptives, was decided in 1965. Unmarried people didn't get the right to use contraception until 1972. Roe v. Wade wasn't until 1973. Even after those were decided, my understanding is that in a lot of places there was a strong stigma against family planning (i.e. just because you had a legal right to use contraceptives didn't mean your doctor would prescribe birth control). So for the generation you're talking about, the choice was often effectively not "should we not have (more) kids?" but "should we, a married couple, not have sex for a period of decades?" which is a lot tougher to choose.
- jimbob45 3y ago53% of parents in India, Mexico, Singapore, the United States and the United Kingdom say climate change impacts their decision to have more kids. No cherry picking here at all.
- Proven 3y ago[dead]
- donohoe 3y agoI would guess that the majority of people playing this down in the comments are not themselves parents, or can't see what makes climate change different from everything else humans have faced in the last few hundred years. I have two children, and knowing what I know now, I carry a certain level of guilt for bringing them into this world. I consider myself a fairly moderate and regular person, and I would absolutely not have any more children.
- willio58 3y agoTo predicate, it's totally fair to feel how you feel. I don't have children and I've gone back and forth on if I ever will. I have seemed to land on having children though, in part because of the technological advancements that we have seen in the past decade and how I can only assume based on historical evidence that those advancements will continue at a feverish pace. The price of solar electricity has decreased 89% in the last 10 years. That's only going to continue to drop, and as long as we can figure out cost-effective ways of storing green energy I don't see how companies (and governments) can justify not entirely switching to carbon-neutral or eventually carbon-negative ways of doing business.
- massysett 3y agoI have two children. I carry absolutely no guilt for bringing them into this world. They are happy to be alive, and I am confident they will improve the world. Climate change is overhyped in my view. War, weapons, and disease pose a far greater threat to humanity in my view.
- donohoe 3y agoWell... yes... and climate change is going to be responsible for more and more of that as it affects food scarcity, habitable land, drives refugees (which has political ramifications with xenophobia and nationalism), and conflict over finite resources.
- adamrezich 3y ago> I have two children, and knowing what I know now, I carry a certain level of guilt for bringing them into this world. could you elaborate on this a bit more? what do you know now that causes you to feel guilt for perpetuating your genetic lineage—which is the most natural, low-level thing that living organisms could have an inclination to do? and if you don't mind my asking, how old is your eldest child, so as to establish the time period in which your views were changed and your feelings of guilt began?
- yodsanklai 3y agoAt least, if you're unsure, that's one argument for not having kids. I'm pretty convinced that today's kids will have it more difficult than us (assuming us = middle class in developed countries). Resource scarcity more than just climate change.
- justapassenger 3y agoAffects to what levels? 0.01% of decision? I maybe living in a bubble, but none of my friends, including ones freaked out by climate change, didn't base their decision to have kids based on that.
- hotpotamus 3y agoIf your friends are deciding to have children, then I think you are indeed in a bubble given that fertility is falling in most places in the world now.
- justapassenger 3y agoFertility is lower in developed countries and people have in general kids later. But it’s BS to claim that having friends with children is a bubble. We’d fertility to fall orders of magnitude more for that to be the case.
- fwungy 3y agoSomewhere between 7k-15k years ago there was a massive flood that changed the world. Every culture has stories of this flood in their mythology, e.g. Atlantis, and there is rich geological evidence for it. What caused this flood? Scientists theorize there was massive and rapid increase in temperature which quickly melted glaciers from an earlier ice age. How did that happen? No one knows. Why are there ice ages and why do they end? No one knows. Please do not tell your children their lives are meaningless unless we solve the intractable problem of climate change. We can make the planet better in terms of clean air. water, and land, but changing weather patterns is orders of magnitude beyond us. We do not and likely never will have the technology to control the behavior of the massive nuclear furnace of the sun.
- satellites 3y agoYou’re making a huge false equivalence. We’re talking about anthropogenic climate change specifically. Implying that it is the same as ancient weather patterns from before the Industrial Revolution is comically dishonest.
- lm28469 3y ago> but changing weather patterns is orders of magnitude beyond us I mean, we're doing it right now .... What does the flood myth has to do with the thread btw ? I'll tell you how you sound: "guys forget what science tells us now, the bible and aztecs talk about a flood a long time ago s..so....so hm so I guess climate change doesn't exist ?"
- fwungy 3y agoThe Ice Ages are well confirmed scientifically, but not understood. The dominant climate of the earth is cold. We get relatively brief warm periods, "interglacials", of which we are in one now. Ice ages are theorized to be prompted by shifts in the Earth's orbit[0]. CO2 is measured in hundredths of a percent for impact on the climate. Does it really seem reasonable that our little human technology, an infinitesimal fraction of the energy at work in the Solar System is making a huge difference? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interglacial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interglacial
- breakingrules 3y ago[dead]
- jimmywatersabc 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- workingdog 3y agoAll the frightened people will leave the next generations to those with hope, industry, and positivity.
- it_citizen 3y agoI was often asked if I wasn't afraid of having kids because of the horrible things awaiting them. But when was the right time in the history of humanity to not be afraid to have kids if not in the western world today? Our civilisation might be reaching the end of its course. But even if it ends up tragically, my children still have a better shot at a nicer life than 95% of humans that ever lived.
- hdjjhhvvhga 3y agoWhile I agree it's correct, at the same time we have much more awareness of all evil things that await the child, and this is magnified to an extreme degree by the media.
- abeppu 3y agoFollowing the comments around decisions to have "more" children, the article veers into talking about parents' views about companies, e.g. have they reconsidered working for a company based on their climate stance, will they pay more for a sustainable product, do companies' sustainability practices influence who they purchase from, etc, all of which seems to frame behavior of individual corporations as the center of the climate crisis. Example questions they could have asked with a different framing, but didn't: - have you avoided buying categories of products or services to reduce your environmental footprint? (i.e. perhaps some whole industries are bad, rather than individual companies being good or bad actors) - should a global minimum carbon tax be implemented? (i.e. policy, not individual corps) - would you vote for or against a politician based on their climate record? - should firms with very high emissions be liable for loss and damage to property from climate-related droughts, floods and storms? (i.e. is this a justice issue?) - should governments of countries with very high per-capita emissions pay reparations to countries who disproportionately are impacted by climate change? - should any level of emission qualify as "environmental terrorism", and should responsible parties be subject to the ICJ? (i.e. insofar as the climate crisis has been avoidable, is it an act of violence?) - is any level of long-term economic "de-growth" an acceptable price to pay for limiting climate change? Of course, much more interesting would be to also ask the people who are not parents, who might become parents, or are committed to not become parents.
- renewiltord 3y agoHaha, everyone I know who says this is not saying this because it's the truth but because it's rationalization. Having hit 35, the number of people who stated this position and have changed their mind is 4/5 and I estimate that the last will change their mind too. The no-child holdouts (4 so far) have all stated it as a personal desire not to have children. Therefore, my position is that in my socioeconomic class climate change as a rationale is associated with people who have a constraint that they do not feel comfortable sharing. When the constraint is removed, they change their mind. The constraint seems to be associated with age: either higher income or a change in spouse opinions.
- woodpanel 3y agoSomehow this reminds me of China‘s decision to stop all overseas exploration and conductance of open-sea trade [1]. Cultural self-flagellation seems like a pattern for saturated empires. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y agoSomehow I don't believe this. I don't know anyone around me who's said "if it wasn't for climate change I'd have more kids". I understand the difference between personal anecdata and actual surveys.
- lamp987 3y agovery good news less competition for resources for my kids
- ldehaan 3y ago[dead]
- joeman1000 3y agoWhat about parents in China?
- activiation 3y agoI didn't want to have kids but I did because my ex wife did... The world is getting fucked up