I'm for all sorts of radical action to stop climate degradation. But "just don't have kids" really is tantamount to saying "just don't exist or be human." It isn't just a tough sell, it isn't even what is being discussed.
It’s incredibly simple for me to use birth control methods, barely an inconvenience.
I have lots of reasons to avoid having kids, but it doesn’t hurt that a side effect is I automatically become a top-1% environmentalist in any crowd I’m standing in, without even really trying.
But it would reduce your carbon output, even though as with all things someone else would just consume more to make up for it.
My carbon footprint, or footprint of other kinds, doesn’t constitute a blip on the radar, because mine ends between now and a few decades from now, and doesn’t grow at all into the future, much less geometrically.
And no, "don't have kids" and "kill yourself" are really not actually the same.
“I’m gay”
Hn: so what, everybody’s something
“I’m an atheist”
Hn: yes and?
“I embed sensors under my skin”
Hn: cool!
“I’m childfree”
Hn: why don’t you just kill yourself then?
Tongue in cheek: obviously not all of HN. But this is one of the few alt views / lifestyles that HN doesn’t easily rally behind.
What I object to is the suggestion "just don't have kids" is a viable political path forward on the question of the environment. It isn't a viable path of any kind, political or otherwise.
"Stop being an omnivore" is sound advice for the modern furless ape.
I'm not really advocating anything here, just lamenting the seeming (and somewhat assumed) immutability of it all.
(random but I really appreciated these subthreads, definitely some good stuff for me to chew on)
Why not? It's appropriate to dictate and even advise on lots of things that are personal/private.
We have laws and social norms to keep people from being horrible to their own children, even behind closed doors, but only after those children are born.
My suggestion is for those bits of advice, backed by the government's monopoly on force, to kick in just a year earlier than that.
Carbon taxes/credits are probably possible. Huge public works (build enough solar panels and energy storage station to meet most of our power needs). Big taxes on carmakers for making high emission vehicles, etc. There are lots of policies which can work, and I think the market will, eventually, also probably get there eventually. But just telling people not to have kids is silly.
Or put "eat meat" in there.
"Biological imperative" at the peril of the planet. Idk. It's probably ironic for me to have any opinions of the biological imperative of heterosexual sex but it just strikes me as odd.
I'll go do my own research but now I'm quite curious about this. I guess for some reason I expect people to be better than their urges, but maybe that's foolish of me.
Not having children is not effective at perpetuating the human race, and thus not usually considered as an ecological solution.
That being said, you don't have to have children to be an ecologist either, but you certainly should realise that your efforts are directed towards future humans, not towards the planet which does just fine anyway.
Unless you are cooking up ideas on how to wipe the human race out like some kind of mad scientist, and presumably kill yourself afterward, the fact is, people need to be convinced to modify their lifestyle/culture somehow. Telling them to simply die without children ain't gonna do it.
I essentially don't care about the state of the planet if there are no humans around to enjoy it.
The larger long-term risk to sentient life is that anti-energy people get their way, humanity never reaches the productive output required to become spacefaring, and we get wiped out by an engineered virus or something.
No it isn’t. The single biggest way to reduce your impact on Earth is so unpalatable as to be literally unthinkable: don’t eat meat and dairy, avoid having children that have children that have children that all want to eat meat and dairy.
Avoid having children that take airplanes and eat almonds.
Avoid having children and your impact on the Earth rapidly zooms out to nothing.
That’s not the only reason or the main reason to avoid having children. But it’s as good a reason as any.
Nobody will mention it at the top of articles though. Children are a joy and a treasure and not having them would be a slight against human nature.