The thing many people here don't realize is that they can make real money fighting climate change. See my other comment in this thread for links to the major conferences with lists of cleantech companies that are hiring.
Are you serious? If I go and buy an acre of land (or many acres, more likely) and grow my own food, keep a few animals, and trade with my neighbours, how the hell does "move to an urban environment" make me suddenly more efficient? So I can rely on the supply chain to get all the goods that I could get by walking down the street to another farm?
Instead, they drive a lot, because everything (stores, work) is far away, and the infrastructure created for them is relatively inefficient. Very few people and regions are supplied locally, and not by large-scale, large-distance supply chains, rural or urban.
Also, because someone living in a major city produces dramatically less carbon due to economies of scale, and your idea would result in an incredibly low density, offsetting any gains to food shipping cost.
It's pretty well-demonstrated that the moralistic approach to climate change, where you harangue people into recycling or biking or whatever, doesn't work. It's just trimming around the edges, leaving the core 95% of the problem untouched. People won't give up their lifestyles, and in the case of poor third-worlders it's hard to ask them to do that anyway.
If climate change is stopped, it'll be by technological solutions.
There's <10% of the world population who will be endowed with the genetic gifts to participate in this process of technical solution-making. Your kids will be among them. Make some kids.
Can you back up these claims? I don't think either is obviously true. IQ tests themselves have dubious value.
> A study (1999) by Capron and Duyme of French children adopted between the ages of four and six examined the influence of socioeconomic status (SES). The children's IQs initially averaged 77, putting them near retardation. Most were abused or neglected as infants, then shunted from one foster home or institution to the next. Nine years later after adoption, when they were on average 14 years old, they retook the IQ tests, and all of them did better. The amount they improved was directly related to the adopting family's socioeconomic status. "Children adopted by farmers and laborers had average IQ scores of 85.5; those placed with middle-class families had average scores of 92. The average IQ scores of youngsters placed in well-to-do homes climbed more than 20 points, to 98."
This demonstrates quite clearly that high socioeconomic status causes high IQ scores, not the other way around.
Your other source is the Pumpkin Person who's blog is titled "The psychology of horror" and writes about horror movies. Does not appear credible.
Which is pretty obvious. There is always an amount of abuse that will destroy someone's IQ. Bringing them back to a decent middle-class upbringing will restore them to their baseline.
But once that baseline is achieved, evidence is that it can't generally be improved. One can learn skills and knowledge but IQ is stable. Above lower-middle class American abuse-free households, increases in SES don't affect IQ.
E.g. People have inherent talent at sprinting. Malnutrition or abuse can destroy this talent. But once people have decent upbringing, and try hard, and have support, what determines the champion is genetics. Which is why pretty much all champion sprinters have west African ancestry (since they have inherited traits that make them good sprinters).
EDIT: Here's a source for you on IQ heritability: American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Intelligence report.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.134...
“If one simply combines all available correlations in a single analysis, the heritability (h2) works out to about .50 and the between-family variance (c2) to about .25.” And “By late adolescence h2 is around .75 and c2 is quite low (zero in some studies).” (p. 85).
Now, I can not prove that to be the case but it is far from settled that better genes = better IQ = better socioeconomic status. That reasoning implies that people in third world countries are poor because they are stupid which I just don't believe, partly because I've actually been to some of those countries.
2) Go vegetarian. (Avoid beef if you can't and eat meat less).
3) Stop buying stuff.
4) Repair not replace.
5) Move to an urban environment.
6) Consider going car free. (Walk, Bike, Public Transport, Car clubs).
7) Stop flying.
8) Avoid plastic packaging, or at least any product in packaging that cannot be locally recycled. (Here in the UK I have no idea why we allow food to be supplied in black plastic which most councils do not recycle).
9) If you have to have children, just have one. Choose schools they can walk/bike to.
10) Insulate (cheap) and solar (expensive) your home.
11) Buy local goods.
12) Join recycling groups https://www.freecycle.org/