To add onto this comment, saying "having children is the worst thing for the climate" is a totally defeatist attitude towards the issue. What people are saying is "human life is incompatible with the Earth so we should stop perpetuating it". We might as well count our living selves alongside hypothetical future children and all kill ourselves now if that's the case. Of course, the people espousing this message are pretty much exclusively talking to western/European people, who are in almost all cases already giving birth at far below-replacement levels.

none of these arguments are useful if they are all phrased in terms of two absolutes. we could clearly chart a middle course between breeding as much as possible and lying down and dying.

ignoring our apparent inability to do anything at all about anything of course

> none of these arguments are useful if they are all phrased in terms of two absolutes. we could clearly chart a middle course between breeding as much as possible and lying down and dying.

That's also primarily an American issue. They tend to view everything through the lens of 2 political camps and "whose side are you on?".

That kind of view is completely antithetical to actually solving problems.

And makes any discussion absolutely obnoxious with the usual "if you don't agree you must be on the other side and be the enemy"

I always wonder if it's related somehow to the deep imprint that organized professional team sports, especially football, seems to have on the US psyche.

Yeah, hockey is popular here in Canada, but it's not nearly on the same level as the NFL in the US. And "college sports" etc. is not even a thing. I feel like the American mindset is ever more leaning towards framing everything in a "my team vs your team" dynamic.

> saying "having children is the worst thing for the climate" is a totally defeatist attitude towards the issue

But, spreadsheet at hand, it is.

It's always the parents that get offended by this. We are not judging anyone's lifestyle. Relax.

It really isn't though. Spreadsheet at hand, having American children is.

It's always the Americans that get offended by this. Relax. It just happens to be your fault.

Not American, sorry.

No worries. You're probably only 40% responsible baby.

If we're attributing the carbon emissions of children to their parents, then we can pass the buck all the way back up to a handful of apes that decided to descend from the trees.

Right. But to many "saving the future" is to have good future for their children.

Saying that basically sounds like saying "don't have children peasants, so our the world is better for our overlord's children"

Love this. Really. Everytime I hear people say "yeah I don't want kids because of how f* the planet is" it turns out all these guys are part being 100% themselves part of the problem.

What if we focus on having a positive impact ourselves ? What if we teach our children what we're learning so that the next gen might eventually do things better than we do instead of just saying "oh yeah kids are just bad for the environment, but I do literally 0 efforts myself to do something, so here's a nice excuse I made up to justify my behavior". Sort of.

Not having kids is doing something. It removes a lifetime of future carbon emissions, and that is ignoring any further ancestors.

You may disagree that that is the right path to take for personal reasons and that's fine, but an average middle class person who doesn't have kids has likely saved more carbon emissions than any other realistic action (eg. not flying, vegetarian/vegan diet, using paper straws). Don't discredit that.

I discredit all such talk as unrealistic and meaningless. People will have kids if they want kids, and if they don't want kids, they'll use that to say they're saving the environment. Same with eating meat, going on vacations, etc.

None of that is going to solve the problem anyway.

Not having kids and not using all the excess money to fly around the globe, drive cars, consume hardcore isn’t an improvement.

I’d say most childless adults I know are way more carbon intensive the me simply because they can do more.

Kids are actually economical. They’re light, don’t eat much, can be entertained by pretty simple means and because they constantly grow and everything needs to be changed over, second hand goods are so accessible, nearly everything we buy for them is secondhand, bikes, skateboards, clothes.

I honestly ride my bike with my kids everywhere and we have not used the aircon once this summer. I’d say my kid uses 1/20th the emissions of an average adult with no children.

If I’m responsible for my kids’ emissions, then my parents are responsible for mine. Emissions are no longer my problem!

While I'm not skeptical about the reality of anthropogenic climate change, I _am_ skeptical of viewing the climate like a fundamentally unstable / delicate system, like that all life on Earth will perish and the planet will become like Venus on a runaway path if we hit +2C.

Earth _has_ had periods both much warmer than that and with more CO2! There are checks and balances to any system - like Life - that has been around a billion years. So Life will go on. And so I'm skeptical of a claim that "the environment seems to have a negative effect on itself" generally given its longevity. Life will go on -- though...that might be with or without Sapiens.

So you think if a bunch of people is Palau go under water because of sea level increase, they are not worth saving?

Are they just going to sit there for decades as the water rises and drown very, very slowly? Might there be some other way of "saving" them?

This is another piece of the puzzle climate change deniers don't understand (I am not calling you one btw). Of course these people are not going to stay there. We will see mass migration. It is easy to dismiss climate change by saying that life will go on. But we all know how the western societies view and treat migrants these days.

> But we all know how the western societies view and treat migrants these days.

Migrants from incompatible bring crime and strife. Countries don't want to have more crime and strife.

Right, so either accept that, or spend resources on combating climate change. Or at least do not instigate proxy wars in other parts of the world.

Lmao, they don't migrate because "it's too hot", they migrate coz their goverment is fucked and the country they migrate to gives free handouts. Nothing to do with climate, everything to do culture and development.

Easy to slam poor countries and their governments when you're practically living in the most powerful and rich country in history. You sound like one of today those who never ventured outside their bubble.

I don't live in US or Germany or France if that's what you're suggesting.

Hell, my countrymen had reputation for "stealing immigrants" in Germany before the way worse ones arrived there in droves...

Similar cultures can mix. Different ones cause at best strife. AT BEST. Usually worse.

If you live all your life in "every man for himself" and absolute zero regard for law and other human beings then come to country that has those values, well, France happens.

You don't have to explain to me about culture mix. The British came and ruled us for 210 years. Before them the French and the Spanish and the Portuguese came. Unlike the migrants you are getting, we were sent the worst of them with the explicit intent to be stolen from, enslaved, maimed, raped and killed.

Whether you’re skeptical or not, you accept that there is some risk of catastrophic destabilisation.

And the appropriate attitude to uncertainty and risk is not to bet everything on the mean outcome.