• xenith
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    22 years ago

    There’s a lot of great reasons to not have kids but they’re often not accepted by the family, friends, culture, or society as a whole that may he pressuring someone to procreate.

    I personally don’t believe that people who highly value reproduction are abstaining because of climate change. The impending environmental (and economic) collapse are both relevant and more acceptable excuses for those who were on the fence or never bought into the notion that pooping out babies is the point of life.

    • @null_radixOP
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      12 years ago

      yep many great reason not to! But the point here is that climite change is probably not one of them

      If you think privileged modern Americans shouldn’t have children now because of quality-of-life issues, you implicitly believe that nobody in the Third World, or nobody before 1900, should ever have had children. This isn’t necessarily wrong. There’s a group of philosophers called “antinatalists” who believe nobody should ever have kids because life is suffering. These people are at least consistent. If you’re not one of them, I think the quality-of-life argument for not having kids now is pretty weak.

      • xenith
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        2 years ago

        The difference between deciding whether to have children in a past less-than-ideal situation and now while considering climate collapse is hope.

        People believed that things could change and get better, and that their own child could help shape a better world.

        People who are currently choosing not to have children due to climate collapse don’t see a future where anything but extreme suffering and death is possible. They don’t agree with the author’s assessment that it’ll be bad for people growing their own food but we’ll maybe be OK, and personally I don’t either. We’re here because the rich and powerful decided that short term gains for the few matter more than basic humans needs for all, and that governing notion is only accelerating. No one is going to help or save us.

        Sure it might not be an extinction level event, but I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to create life that has to experience a “might not be an extinction level event.”

  • LunaticHacker
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    12 years ago

    Thanks for the laugh. the author is hilariously delusional and privilaged

    • @null_radixOP
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      2 years ago

      Can you highlight a point in the article that you consider delusional or “privilaged”?

      • LunaticHacker
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        12 years ago

        Miami, New Orleans, Venice, and a handful of other extremely low-lying cities could sink before 2100 unless strong measures are taken. If you live there, you should be extremely worried - but instead of giving up on having kids, consider moving somewhere else

        how much money would it take to offset the carbon cost of your future child? That is, you can build machines that suck carbon out of the air - how much would it cost to use these machines to suck up exactly as much carbon as your future child will emit over their lifetime?

        yes, climate change will probably mostly affect poor subsistence farmers - so not your own children. But isn’t it still immoral to have children, knowing that they’re making the problem worse for others? I think no.

        Self Contradiction in next two

        But so far, the droughts haven’t been bad enough that California stopped golf courses from watering their massive lawns to keep them perfectly green every day. But if anyone was actually dying of thirst, or even having enough trouble getting water that they might be motivated to vote out some politician over it, the government could redirect the golf course water, or any of a thousand other things like this, and everyone would have more than enough. You see this everywhere - lots of resources are being wasted for stupid political reasons. If the political calculus ever changed - as it will, if these problems ever start inconveniencing privileged First World citizens - then we can stop wasting the resources, and use them to address the symptoms of climate change instead.

        Meanwhile, Republicans don’t care about this and have just as many children as ever. Since children tend to share their parents’ political beliefs, this skews elections in favor of the Republicans, who will prevent strong government action.

        But if emissions decline at the same rate they’ve been declining recently, by the time your child is in their 20s that’ll be down to 7.5 tons.

        Reading the article again will probably help, i think it’s self explanatory. I will try to briefly explain why i used “delusional” and "privileged’

        Privileged
        • The author is giving a privileged usa centric view, doesn’t seems to grasp the idea that a climate crisis in one country will affect others.( qoute1,qoute3)
        Delusional
        • Thinks that emissions are declining(qoute6)
        • Believes that voting can bring systemic change(qoute4,qoute5)
        • Believes in techno-copium like Carbon capture(qoute2)

        There is probably more ridiculous takes in the article, but think this is suffice to prove my point. if you need any further clarification on these feel free to ask. but i’m a bit busy now so responses will be slow.