How is this not a ridiculous fringe idea? There are plenty of completely valid reasons not to want to have children. Climate change is absolutely not one of them. If you told me 0.39% of people actually felt that way I'd be wondering why it's such a huge number (in absolute terms). The fact that it's up to 100x that is pretty surprising, in a bad way.
This is just your opinion. I think maybe climate change is the primary reason to not have kids in like .39% of people not having kids, but one of several or many reasons, doesn't mean much. Not drinking gasoline because it tastes bad is a reason I don't do it. Not the primary reason, sure, but still one of the many reasons. Same thing here, there's a long list of reasons, and climate change is one of them for many people.
The actual poll "thirty-nine percent reported they feel uncertain about having children, given the uncertainty of the environment and the added carbon footprint brought by having kids."
Being uncertain and decided to not have kids primary because of it are massively different.
Of all the people I know who list this as a reason, it barely ranks. The bigger one is the growing gap between income and cost of living right above time and energy. Most of the reasons have intersecting causes.
Not married, but if I were and kids were a topic of discussion my, ranked, reasons:
* Money - It's hard enough to retire with a late start on planning, kids totally throw another monkey wrench in it
* Time - I don't have the time, or the patience, for kids. I'm sure it's rewarding for those that do it, but every time I look at my friends with kids and the sacrifices they make for their own lives, during their prime years of living, for the sake of their kids... yea, it's like birth control on steroids for me. I was going to put freedom as a separate line item, but I think time and money both take the point for freedom.
* An extension of money, I would have to move at some point, and it seems to me doing it earlier would be better. My house is small, and it'd be fine for two people, maybe three. But it'll start to feel cramped with three. This isn't as big a deal, hence it's lower on the list, but with house prices and availability the way they are right now... plus, the time necessary to move.
* Climate change, the world ending, whatever the case may be. I find it utterly difficult to willingly bring another child into this world when it feels like no one actually gives a damn about the future.
That all said, I feel like I'd be more interested in adopting if I were to ever jump on this "got to have kids" thing. Skip the potty training and terrible (twos, threes and fours), jump right into the "I hate you" teens I guess. Yea, you can tell I'm not a kid person huh? lol
Edit: because holy hell, even in 2021 Hacker News can't do Markdown for shit.
So you're in a local maximum, and are afraid to leave it? That's fine, but ... well, forgive me if I'm misinterpreting you, but your words give the impression that you're striving for mastery over life. One of the big gifts that parenthood gives you is freedom from the illusion that life is something that can be mastered
> Climate change, the world ending, whatever the case may be. I find it utterly difficult to willingly bring another child into this world when it feels like no one actually gives a damn about the future.
I respect your right to make this decision for yourself, of course, but don't you think this is a little ironic?
Climate change itself is less of a threat to the future than the self-selection toward extinction of the culture of people who care about fixing climate change.
I think it's a larger thing in general. I tried to keep it non-political. But I probably could've hit two birds with one stone by saying "environment." Both our political environment and our physical environment.
This is perhaps a bit more US centric as well. But with this country as divided as it is, with an emphasis on climate change because that's the original topic of discussion, I don't think I really want to bring children into this world where people just generally can't get along, and have no real desire to care about their future as well.
> self-selection toward extinction of the culture of people who care about fixing climate change.
Maybe it's a defeatist attitude, but I feel like the people that care about climate change have lost this war already.
I wonder if the lessening of children's perceived obligations to parents is a factor, too. If cost of living is high but you expect your kids to look after you in your old age then that changes the risks.
A few generations of wild economic growth and thus less of a need for kids to look after their parents, shifting norms, and lag time in norms shifting back, perhaps. Though I don't really know if this fits.
I expect nothing from my children, or anyone else. I would rather take myself out than depend on someone cleaning after me in my old age.
But my conditions for having kids were only if they had significant security in quality of life and I would be able to spend time with them. I only had kids because my household income was at a level I deemed so, which is significantly above the median. I actually would have been fine with no children, but my wife wanted to experience being a mother.
The big difference in recent decades compared to all of human history is that today, people can have sex without risking having children due to very effective and convenient forms of birth control.
Edit: And women have financial independence so they can decide whether or not to have children on their own.
> The bigger one is the growing gap between income and cost of living right above time and energy.
I've never bought this one. If this were true, you'd expect richer people and richer geographies to have higher birthrates, when in fact the opposite is true, and always has been for that matter.
When people give reasons for having or not having children, it is always an after the fact rationalization. Having children is inherently an irrational act, in a good way. It's something you do because you feeling compelled or called to do it, not because you spreadsheeted it and it makes sense. From an individual standpoint, having children almost never makes sense, but we all do it anyways and wouldn't give it up for anything.
If you want to know why people choose to have kids or choose not to have kids, you need to look at culture, not economics. In some ways the answer is simple. Cultures that don't value having children (or having many children) tend to get replaced by ones that do.
> It's something you do because you feeling compelled or called to do it, not because you spreadsheeted it and it makes sense. From an individual standpoint, having children almost never makes sense, but we all do it anyways and wouldn't give it up for anything.
Or was having children an inevitable consequence of sex? Only after achieving women’s financial independence and reliable, accessible birth control with no downsides would the true measure of how many children people (really, women) want. This has only been achieved relatively recently, but all statistics indicate the birth rate after women achieve the ability to fully control how many kids they have is far less than what it was when they did not have control.
> In some ways the answer is simple. Cultures that don't value having children (or having many children) tend to get replaced by ones that do.
I can agree with this, and posit that it is possible cultures that restrict women’s rights may replace ones that value women’s rights.
I had a family member who was in their 60s and had a long, rational reason for not having kids.
I learned that they had 5 miscarriages with their partner. So the rationalization was for a decision that was made for them.
Cost of living is a comically facile argument as there’s huge swaths of rural America that are extremely cheap to live in. Especially as a digital worker.
It’s hard to live in NY or SFO, but it’s comically easy to live in South Carolina in an exurb 90 miles out of a major metro area. Like $100k house at 3% and fast internet easy.
Those places are slowly vanishing. I live in the sticks - Montana - and houses in my hometown are approaching $500k on the lowest end, and some 1,600 sqft condos downtown are over a million. Rent is in the $2k a month range.
We don’t even have a Best Buy.
It’s having an effect on the surrounding towns as well, a city over 30 miles away in a bar-postoffice-church size town is up over $300k for an average home.
And yes, there is a lot of land, but it’s all owned by somebody, and most of it is not up for sale. Ranches, farms, and government owned land makes up, well, all of it.
What is for sale could (and likely will) go up in price as demand increases. Also, you may be overestimating how many people are willing to live in the sticks. The lack of essentials (and non-essentials) without driving for miles is a bit of an acquired taste.
> Cost of living is a comically facile argument as there’s huge swaths of rural America that are extremely cheap to live in. Especially as a digital worker.
I do not see why it is comically facile to not want to leave in a cheaper place. Everyone has their preferences, and some may choose to prioritize raising children in a certain location over having children at all.
I gave up on having kids because of the housing crisis. There's no hope of -ever- being afford a home large enough for kids, let alone childcare at $2500 per kid per mo
Its all about your life project at the end.. if you are happier eating overprice avocado toasts in the Bay instead of having children then good for you. Im not even judging despitz the sarcasm
Instead of asking your parent commenter to change cities, how about change the housing rules in the bay area to something sane? So more housing can be built, within reason? I find it depressing that 95%+ of the population needs to adjust to the other 5% of the population because of NIMBY, racism, entitlement etc etc.
One is much easier than the other. To be fair, OP didn’t use the “too busy dedicating my life to local government activism” excuse. IMO one way you vote for change is by controlling what you can directly control. If the difference between having kids or not means moving to a more affordable area, then those who really would rather have kids will move. This will have the largest impact to the one who moves out of the area, of course, but it also has an impact on both the old and new hometown. I’ve seen this first hand as many are migrating to my city in the wake of the pandemic. They’re finding a better lifestyle for themselves while house prices in my area have risen 25% and still rising.
The problem is not housing rules, it's the concentration of companies in the same place that drives the concentration of talents which itself drives the concentration of companies...
From my point of view the only things that can solve this issue is remote working on a large scale.
Raising a child takes a village. Parents desperately need the kid-free time offered by aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, trusted neighbours et cetera.
Moving to a completely different city, away from all your established social networks is a good way to ensure you'll burn out from having to raise your children without any help.
Parenting teaches that many things thought impossible are truly possible, and frequently not important as I thought.
It takes a village and there are support networks in surprising places.
Also, there’s time for planning. It’s not wise to have a baby and move across the world. But it is wise to look 5 years out and move to an area to develop friends.
Comically, big families provide cousins and family in more places to give more opportunities for relocating.
So make local friends and trust your neighbors. Be part of the community. And periodically visit the extended family. We live a five-hour drive from family and it's the closest to them that we've ever been. This isn't ideal but it certainly works.
I think it is more about rhetoric, fear mongering and climate "fight". My government wants to ban cars. Transporting kids on bike in rain, wind and 40 degree F is somehow good thing.
> Transporting kids on bike in rain, wind and 40 degree F is somehow good thing
As a kid I did this every day for years and see absolutely no issue with it (-5 to +25c instead of 40F), all year long in any weather. My parents either brought me by bike or I went on my own when I was old enough.
It's not difficult at all with the right equipment which is much cheaper than a car.
And that's even before you consider what a game-changer e-bikes are.
Weather is a non-issue. The main problem is fear of cars. It's a classic tragedy of the commons / race to the bottom for "safety" with giant SUVs. Maybe ADAS systems are one way out, but real safety ultimately requires safe bicycle infrastructure and scaling back the number of cars on the road.
Weather is a big issue. It is impossible to put kid into buggy/trolley in rain without it getting wet. 1 year old with pneumonia is a horrible thing. Add shopping in rain etc...
Bikes have horrible safety record on their own, even in "safe" bicycle infrastructure. Crashing into pole on bike and in car is a big difference. Common bike-buggies have zero protection for kids.
Are you speaking from experience? I am. Proper equipment solves for rain and snow.
Crashing into a pole with your kid on board? A) don't do that? B) you'll all be fine as the speeds you should be riding with children along.
Not sure what you mean by a "bike buggy", but bike-mounted seats do provide protection against falls, and bike-towed trailers are essentially immune to them. Longtail cargo bikes put the children in the rear and have a bar that also protects during a fall. Box bikes are very difficult to overturn completely and also provide protection.
If you want to talk safety records, cars are by far the worst. They're extremely dangerous for the occupants and everyone around them.
I know one whose two children are younger than that who doesn't, so that is a provably useless generalisation. (And afaik it's not climate-motivated, could be, just no idea and wouldn't assume so.)
It is possible to have safe, effective biking infrastructure in any weather. Kids in Finland bike to school when the temperature is in the teens (Fahrenheit). This isn’t an impediment.
IMO this is a very unconvincing article. I think most people bring children into this world hoping their kids will have a better life then they do. If you're already unhappy with your life, why bring in kids when you know the world is going to be even worse for them?
I actually disagree that it is immoral in the first place. I see nothing wrong with having children, knowing full well that they may face greater adversity in their life than I have.
For generations throughout human history many have had similar thoughts, that having children was sinful since they would have to suffer through the human experience. Whether ultimately right or wrong, they failed to propagate and so their opinions didn't matter.
I said that this was a question of morality not intelligence. If one believes they are at least more capable than their peers at raising a child, then to refuse is what I consider to be ultimately immoral. The future generation comes regardless of you decide.
> Why is it smart to want to continue passing down your genes?
What a great question, thanks for the thought provoking challenge.
The best way I can engage with this is asking a question in return: is someone who crosses the street safely "smarter" than someone who wanders into traffic and dies?
If we think the survivor is smarter, then we can ask your question in another way: "why is it smart to wish to live another day?" If we come up with a satisfactory answer here, we will get closer to answering your question too.
> The best way I can engage with this is asking a question in return: is someone who crosses the street safely "smarter" than someone who wanders into traffic and dies?
Well, given that wandering into traffic likely causes some sort of pain and is a terrible way to end a life, I'd say it's not a smart choice in most situations. If the goal for a person is to die, e.g. because they're in terrible pain, then there are usually smarter (more reliable, less painful, less harmful to others, ...) options available. But of course, there are likely situations, where crossing the street hastily is a smart choice, e.g. when you're being chased by something even more dangerous. Otherwise ...
> If we think the survivor is smarter, then we can ask your question in another way: "why is it smart to wish to live another day?"
You can only accumulate pleasure and good experiences if you stay alive. Hence staying alive is a smart choice if the chances of having good experiences is high enough and the chances of having lots of terrible experiences is low enough.
It's not the goal, it's the unavoidable outcome. How we get there is all that changes. How do you know pleasure and good experience only comes through life?
>The best way I can engage with this is asking a question in return: is someone who crosses the street safely "smarter" than someone who wanders into traffic and dies?
Depends on the person's goals and risk tolerances.
Directly addressing what was previously being talked about, my thoughts are that there is nothing smart or not smart about wanting pieces of your DNA to continue existing or not wanting pieces of your DNA to continue existing. It is simply a preference, like liking a certain color.
However, if your goal is to maximize your power and/or ability to obtain resources/services, it may be smarter to have children, especially in certain parts of the world and especially for your old age. But that may not be the goal for everyone.
Babies cry, that is how they communicate.
Yes you have to change diapers, it's not that hard.
Waking up at night every 2 to 3 hours because the baby wants to eat.
Yes teens are teens and?
Pretty much life as it always was...
Sounds to more like people are stuck in a comfort zone
Or in a TV world of the 80s/90s with sitcoms like full house.
And yet, I don’t feel any lack. I have two nieces who call me “Dad” because their own don’t love them. I have helped three nieces and nephews reach adulthood. I have another nephew who was just born and giggles at my voice.
And, as much as I don’t have the experience to say how my life would be different with a child, you appear to lack the experience to know how your life would be different without a child.
I have over 25 years of childless adult life, an experience many of my parent acquaintances don’t - can’t - have. It’s been a fulfilling life.
Economic reasons, lack of time due to work hours, wanting to live ones own life without the responsibility of raising children, difficulty forming relationships that could end up in a willing pregnancy due to some of the previous reasons as well as others... Are all reasons that you'd expect to hear. Citing climate change as a reason seems unreal.
I guess it makes more sense when you realize the poll was mostly late teens and young adults. People who are yet to experience life as "adults" know it, and are citing idealistic reasons, rather than more realistic ones.
> Are all reasons that you'd expect to hear. Citing climate change as a reason seems unreal.
The difference between climate change and the other things you cited is that "climate change" is easily externalized. "I can't have kids because of my unresolved issues I should be working on" implies a burden of action. "The world is ending because other people suck" is a much more ego-saving answer.
If one truly believes that people are a net negative then you could argue that any events that lead to mass casualties are a net good. Also, that the best thing to do would be to kill yourself. Nobody is as green as someone six feet under.
I liked my friend's take on this: that humanity can use more potential people to help solve these problems than avoid that possibility by not having children.
Your friend should read the article, which quotes an expert saying any future children will do nothing for climate change, because we don't even have that much time.
I find it very hard to share the article's optimism. I don't have kids, but I have a nephew and a niece. I see the difficulty of raising children in a world of super shitty social media, climate change, easy access to drugs/guns and on and on. I also feel bad for the kids - when I was a kid, my parents let me play outside, bike a few miles to my friends' place etc. Today's kids are just prisoners in their own homes, because "safety".
All of this not even taking into account the cost of raising kids. If families with both parents making 6 figures a year have this much stress and difficulty, how about those who are making minimum wage or slightly higher than minimum wage?
Instead of simply asking young people to have kids, how about improving conditions in society so young people will voluntarily have kids? How about having sane immigration policies (and not being racist and xenophobic) so countries like Japan can at least slow down population decline?
Every generation went through some kinds of struggles which they had to fight through. Our generation's is this one and it is not an excuse to not push through it, despite the incredible costs of having children. We could've had a war, we have high costs instead.
>Every generation went through some kinds of struggles which they had to fight through.
You're completely right, and I believe people should choose to spare their would-be-children those struggles by not having them. I see it as compassion, not giving up.
I'm confused why you lumped in that last line about improving immigration policies being relevant here. The mass importing of cheap foreign labour is a major factor in why wages have stagnated as well simply due to more competition for jobs.
FWIW, I think it's also a mindset choice. Some of my coworkers over the years have been very consistent at believing that the world is on the brink of The End Times ... at all times. They're conditioned to it. What about living here during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Who would think to have children when nuclear devastation is imminent? (Which comes to mind because I saw a pamphlet on Reddit yesterday for a DIY nuclear bomb shelter from the '50s. Imagine that... thinking it's soooo likely that you'll die in a nuclear war that you're digging holes in your back yard...)
Compared to "social media, climate change, and access to drugs" omg... if you had a choice between active, prolonged fear of nuclear annihilation being likely and ... "mean people on social media", which'd you choose, really?
Anyway. When you find the right person, well, "Life, ah, finds a way." ;-)
This conversation must happen daily on this site. Re-reading the same arguments from opposing viewpoints is really getting old. Did you want a genuine response to your question was was it inflammatory?
4.5 million after taking all precautions and overloading medical systems of countries. Think how large that number would have been if we had gone our lives normally. Would have made the 1918 pandemic look like a picnic.
I often have a pessimistic outlook of the future myself and I'm trying to change that.
>Some of my coworkers over the years have been very consistent at believing that the world is on the brink of The End Times ... at all times.
I've had similar thoughts too. They began in my teens. It's been decades now and it's exhausting.
>What about living here during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
I recently watched Ken Burns "The Dust Bowl" documentary[1]. If one thinks living now is bad, imagine living during that period and in that place (watch it to better understand)! Seeing pictures of the dust storms coming reminds me the The Nothing from "The Neverending Story" [2]. The Nothing rolls along annihilating everything it covers. It's terrifying to think about.
I agree Gmork is definitely not the major villain of The Neverending Story. He's "servant of the power behind the nothing", but The Nothing isn't a weapon, it's more like the realization of a metaphor inside Fantasia. There are people in our world, who (for example) push for engagement at all costs, and don't care about what the results are—and that poisoning of peoples' hearts is what in Fantasia becomes the nothing. The dialog between Atreyu and Gmork is longer in the the book, and one thing it mentions that I don't believe the movie does, is that when the creatures of Fantasia fall into the nothing, in the real world they become lies.
> 'When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll persuade people to buy things they don't need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them.
It's really an excellent passage.
Anyway: the movie covers only about the first third of the book, and the book is quite wonderful, and I highly recommend it. I love the movie, too—I'm glad we have both.
Because you are taking that "lazy" expression literally.
The problem of appropriate mental development, formerly tackled through education, which in many territories largely failed, must be re-assessed, and progresses must be made with urgency. It is extremely important. The quality of your life depends on it - your engineers and butchers, traffic wardens and drivers, are also a social product, they fulfil their potential or get deficient out of their environment, and you want them in the "assets" column and not in the "liabilities" column.
You would take bad social media over death and destruction. "Bad social media" is a lazy expression for "widespread, overwhelming, faulty mental development". It easily affects the professionals which serve you. Their fault is death and destruction (your doctor, your engineer, their manager etc).
Lighter remark: you want quality around you. «Or are you [at Hacker's News] for the "hacking"?»
Regarding your note about a generation which seemed to have had a better time, but spent under the threat of sudden annihilation: yes, absolutely - the former post was not a comment to that.
I have never been at FB, but I think the bestiality which became apparent there where people were left free to unleash it is the same bestiality behind collapsing bridges (you know that it happens, right?) and it is worse than the plague (almost literally, but surely, after the past couple of years).
When you read «super shitty social media», maybe the poster could have found a better expression, but it is a distraction to find there an issue with "improvable" algorithms, when the issue may be more with the participants. There is inadequacy.
That inadequacy becomes very clear when the renovator damages your house, the mechanic your car, the medic your health.
Globally in the world people are now better off than they ever were in human history. Telling example is extreme poverty rate that declined several times since 1990 [1]
Raising kids is tough, but not raising them because conditions are somehow worse?
Child mortality reduced 3 fold worldwide since 1990 [2] in absolute numbers, even though population continued to grow.
Kids should be personal decision, not climatechangey ones.
Just putting things in context here, it is quite common to consider that we are worse off now than 20 years ago (Internet was better then, etc). But that's not the case.
Who is the “we” in your statement? I can certainly envision some people who think they are worse off actually are worse off. It is a very popular sentiment amongst a large portion of the population comparing their parents lives to theirs.
Kids are prisoners in their homes because other adults think it’s safe, too. When my children are out, they’re more likely to get hassled by an older adult and CPS called than they are to be assaulted. We try not to let that deter us but I’ve noticed inadvertent compromise over the years.
I honestly don’t mind if my children grow up with less, though. My generation of late X/early Y are dissatisfied because we expected to live like our parents our whole lives. I don’t think the expectation will be there for my children, which should free them up to try more interesting things without as much fear and mental effort.
There’s also the chance that they’ll not live through a period of decline like we’re expecting.
> This has already been pretty bad, with unusually many hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts. It’s hard to tell how many people have died of climate-change-related causes. Maybe thousands? Maybe tens of thousands? Probably trillions of dollars have already been lost to disasters and agricultural problems. But tens of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars lost is completely compatible with the average person in the First World not really noticing much of a change to their daily lives. The next 75 years of global warming are going to be worse than we’ve gotten already, maybe millions of lives lost and tens of trillions of dollars in damage. In aggregate, they’re going to be a giant disaster. But the average person in the First World, probably including your child, still won’t notice much of a change to their daily lives.
The author's arguments that the "First World" is somehow largely insulated from climate change are not very convincing. For example:
> 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. So far, California has continued using 5.3 million acre-feet per year - more than enough water for every residential building in the state - to farm alfalfa. Alfalfa gets used to feed cows, and the beef industry lobby is very powerful, and so far California has preferred to ask citizens to conserve water rather than make the beef industry stop growing water-hungry alfalfa plants. 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 alfalfa water, or 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.
Basically, the author's argument boils down to "it can't be that bad if people in the First World don't feel it, and once they do, somehow the problems will quickly be fixed".
If that's the case though, I wonder why my friends and family back in the states keep complaining to me about the empty shelves, Amazon Prime delays, etc. Shouldn't fixing the symptoms of today's strained supply chain have been an easy task compared to climate change?
I think the point wasn’t that the first world is insulated from climate change, but that the negative impact won’t be apocalyptically bad. And similar to how the first world is already better than being in the developing world. For example, the quality of life of being born in 2200 worst case scenario climate in San Francisco is better than being born in 2200 best case scenario climate change in Lagos.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t work on improving global health, social justice, and climate change. We should.
But if I’m choosing not to have kids because of climate change, that doesn’t seem rational since the likely quality of that child’s life is much better than other people making similar decisions around the world. Regardless of climate change.
So the author is saying that climate change will be extremely negative, but that it will be less felt in the first world. But still felt.
> For example, the quality of life of being born in 2200 worst case scenario climate in San Francisco is better than being born in 2200 best case scenario climate change in Lagos.
First, the idea that anyone living today can accurately predict what life is going to be like for anyone anywhere in 2200 is pure hubris. Heck, it's pure hubris to believe that we can do this even 5-10 years out at this point.
Second, quality of life can suffer immensely in scenarios well short of "apocalyptically bad". The author's argument appears to be that the First World can fairly easily mitigate the "symptoms" of climate change once they start to impact quality of life for enough people. I think this is hubristic too.
Using the pandemic as an example, it's worth pointing out that the US and UK were ranked first and second in pandemic preparedness according to a Global Health Security Index released in 2019[1]. Yet despite their significant resources, both have been abysmal failures.
The First World doesn't have nearly the insulation the author of this post thinks it does. And it has a lot farther to fall.
You think it’s pure hubris to predict that the quality of life in New York will exceed Lagos 5-10 years out? Really?
I’m no expert predictor, but I’ll bet you any amount of money that New York is better off than Lagos 10 years from now.
Of course no one can predict 200 years out perfectly. But you don’t need perfect prediction to say the first world will be better off than the developing worked.
Of course, Nigeria could likely be a world power that far out and may be “first world” by then.
> You think it’s pure hubris to predict that the quality of life in New York will exceed Lagos 5-10 years out? Really?
I stated:
> First, the idea that anyone living today can accurately predict what life is going to be like for anyone anywhere in 2200 is pure hubris. Heck, it's pure hubris to believe that we can do this even 5-10 years out at this point.
Emphasis added for clarity.
> Of course no one can predict 200 years out perfectly. But you don’t need perfect prediction to say the first world will be better off than the developing worked.
Have you ever considered that today's concept of the "developing world" might not be applicable in 200 years? That the world of 2200 would likely be indistinguishable to a person living today? That the probability we're not even around in 200 years is non-zero?
> Of course, Nigeria could likely be a world power that far out and may be “first world” by then.
It's worth noting that the first world has major demographic challenges and Africa is one of the few places you'll find countries that aren't dying.
Nigeria is demographically better positioned than virtually every first world country. Its population is predicted to double by 2050 and 70% of its population is under 30.
That's not to say that you would be comfortable living in Lagos, but Africa has a lot going for it in this lifetime.
It seems you have the hubris of predicting how things look in the future :)
You dodged my offer of a waver for a 5 year prediction.
I’m super Bull on future Nigeria (and big parts of Africa) when it comes to 2200. That’s why I said that Nigeria could be what’s called first world in 2200.
But that’s not our point. The point discussed is that the first world is insulated over developing nations.
"If that's the case though, I wonder why my friends and family back in the states keep complaining to me about the empty shelves, Amazon Prime delays, etc. Shouldn't fixing the symptoms of today's strained supply chain have been an easy task compared to climate change? "
If we still have empty shelves in a year, I'll admit you're right about this!
I think it's telling that the main thing you can complain about is a pretty temporary disequilibrium that's only been true for a month or two and isn't really seriously threatening most people's quality of life.
> I think it's telling that the main thing you can complain about is a pretty temporary disequilibrium that's only been true for a month or two...
I visited the US over the spring/summer and many stores had bare shelves and low stock. Starbucks in multiple states were frequently out of items and had signs about shortages. Car dealerships had sparse lots. And so on and so forth.
This isn't something that's a month or two young. It's been this way for months and from what I'm hearing from friends and family, and reading in the media, the situation is only getting worse[1][2].
> ...and isn't really seriously threatening most people's quality of life.
Tell that to a person on a middle class salary who needs to buy a new (new or used) car to get to work, or whose kid relies on school lunch for nutrition[3].
we’ve already gotten about 25-30% of the global warming we’re likely to see by 2100.
This logic is suspect -- the problem is that the effects aren't linear with respect to temperature increase. I agree we'll get through it as a species, and generally agree with the title, but we have no idea what the costs will be.
Why not? What is the issue with regressing the human population to something more easily sustainable?
From a selfish angle (since that seems to be the natural state of humans), you will be able to waste more while in aggregate doing less damage to the environment. Even as someone who tries to care about not destroying the environment too badly, that sounds pretty awesome.
> What is the issue with regressing the human population to something more easily sustainable?
The only reason I’ve been given has been related to the economy. There’s a limit to economic growth (there’s always been a limit, but this “accelerates” it) with a declining number of workers and consumers.
Unfortunately, increased population is a bit like a one-way door. A rapidly shrinking population would be disastrous to society. Think about it, for every childless person, the child of someone else will have to care for them in old age. Someone else's children will have to produce the goods and services that the childless old person needs to survive.
I'm all for a lower population, but I think it'd have to happen very slowly, unless we have reached a level of automation and robotization that can sustain a huge aging population.
>But some else's child will not have to care for them.
Generally it's considered a burden of society to take care of their elderly. Thus 'someone else's child' will have to take care of the childless elderly in some form or another.
Depends on the ability of the elderly to obtain that labor. They typically have a decent amount of political power, but it is certainly possible for quality of care to decline in the event that the cost of their care rises too high.
I do agree that it shouldn't be sudden. It's mostly the fear of any population decline or stagnation that bothers me.
I do also think that we have the capability of automating more than we currently do. We just haven't gone that far because it would cause job shortages.
It's already shrinking in the whole western world, as well as China, South Korea and Japan AFAIK. Rapidly in many places. So despite large increases in places like Nigeria, we're still reaching an equilibrium soon without encouraging even lower birth rates in struggling western countries.
> So despite large increases in places like Nigeria, we're still reaching an equilibrium soon without encouraging even lower birth rates in struggling western countries.
What are you basing these claims on? Projections that I saw predict further population increase for at least next 50 years. And even though sources disagree when the population will peak, none of them forecast _rapid_ population shrink after the peak.
No, it's not shrinking at all. You fail to take into account that as many as 4 generations are alive at once, hence an actual decline is very far away.
Likewise, first a population peak of 8 billion was predicted, now it's 10-11 billion.
Let me rephrase, I should have said: rapidly _aging_ population. You're right the population is not shrinking that quickly even in Japan. But it's the aging of the population that is the dangerous part, not the shrinking.
What about not having kids because of government corruption? A violent police state that keeps growing? A multi-trillion dollar deficit that will never go away? Housing, Health Care, and Education expenses that grow at >3× the inflation rate? Chemical, Nuclear, and Drone warfare?
My guess is people of Afghanistan won't stop having kids even though their conditions are much worse, so none of that stuff probably makes a difference at scale. Though of course individual circumstances and decisions may vary.
The women of Afghanistan would most certainly stop having kids if they had the choice.
The only reason "people" of Afghanistan continue having kids is because the women there do not have a choice. They need access to effective and convenient birth control like IUDs, pills, vasectomies, condoms, and most importantly, women's financial independence.
Given these things, birth rates drop around the world in almost all cultures since childbirth is a very costly thing for women, and who only in recent decades have gained control of it.
Our greedy asses ripped the world apart for oil, imagine when the time comes to war for water. These fucks need slaves to run their future wars and since the world is being led by the MIC of all, who tf wants to bring in more soldiers for these greedy inbreds? The US military alone is the biggest polluter at this stage, oceans will have more plastic than fish. Your media psyop FUD did this and now it's time to patch the ship back up in your ductape. Have fun, these genes won't slave for you past this generation.
Summary: things will be bad but quite OK still for Californian high earners, so carry on. That is, if you produce "democratic" children.
I would agree though that likely climate change is used as a virtue signal for people whom already decided to not have children for other reasons.
Such as economical ones. It's expensive to raise children but more importantly, the quality of life of those children is in strong decline, economically speaking.
High debt. Low job security. Low and stagnant wages. Unaffordable housing. Needing to compete with the entire world. High speed of change. Political instability. Accelerating inequality.
I imagine these to be important reasons. The general feeling that younger generations have it worse, with things getting ever worse, and never better. We lost our humanity, our economic system is beyond repair.
I don't know the author, but i'd bet he is neither an engineer nor a physicist (nor a chemist).
Carbon removal is allegedly 1000$/Tons and prototype work for 500$/tons (i did not check this, i'll trust him). And then he add "There seems to be a Moore’s Law for this kind of thing, and when people calculate it out it looks like it’s going to get cheaper pretty quickly". Yeah, no, sorry, this is a weird take. It's like saying we have Moore's law for Carnot machines when our 10% efficient motor went to 20% efficiency and then 40%. Yes, looked like moore's law. But we do have physic constraints, and i think our best gas plant have a theorical efficiency of 55 to 60% max, and ICE motors are still around 30%, even for the best cars. When it's only size constraints, we can make Moore's law last for a while, but energetic and chemical constraints, you can have one or two breakthrough - and we had that historically- but you can't plot those breakthrough on a notebook chart.
Agree with some of his other points, also i guess the main reason not to have kids is economical.
But please, don't talk about climate drift solutions if you don't have studied the question. Physic is hard. I should know i failed and had to settle as a software engineer :)
I'm the author. Guilty as charged of not being an engineer. But did you see the paper I cited for this, https://sci-hub.st/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art... ? I also think the fact that the price has come down by several times already and is still nowhere near an economy of scale suggests it can do so more in the future. I didn't mean Moore's Law as a literal "it will always go down by exactly the same amount every year"
I didn't want to accuse you of something like "not being an engineer" (which is perfectly fin as long as you're not working in digital marketing :) ), i'm sorry, it was poorly worded.
I've read the paper, it is very interesting, it does not talk about machine pumping carbon out of the atmosphere however (the figure appeared low, now i know why). But yeah, DAC might be a solution. I'll rather take the IEA rapport on this [0].
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere and removing carbon is not the same thing. You then need to either seal the CO2, or transform it ( in a power-to-gas station? ). Also their base case of 15% capex/year can go outside see if i'm there.
I remember 30 years ago listening to how people were choosing not to have kids because of nuclear war and whatnot.
There’s always a reason for people with a negative outlook to choose not to have kids.
And that’s fine as parenting is an extremely personal choice.
It gets a bit annoying with use of the word “breeder” and stupid articles lauding #childfree and whatnot. But that’s easy for me to avoid along with other social media stupidity.
I don’t think these are rational decisions so I stopped trying to discuss with rational bases (eg, people are creative and produce more than they consume).
> It gets a bit annoying with use of the word “breeder” and stupid articles lauding #childfree and whatnot.
I find calling people names unhelpful in virtually all situations, however normalizing being childfree is very helpful to some people facing unwelcome social pressure to have children.
Right, because society itself evolved where societies that promote too much violence don't survive and those which do not do, thus the societies that are extant and have survived for a period of time have accumulated wisdom stored in their transmitted values, beliefs, moral codes, and customs.
Including the basic wisdom of understanding that having at least a replacement level of kids is a requirement for the society to survive. Societies that lacked this wisdom aren't around anymore.
So both genetic and social pressures point the same direction, which is why there is both biological pressure as well as social pressure to have kids. I have yet to see any traditional society that discourages children. Deviate from this learned wisdom at your peril.
Traditional societies had all sorts of taboos around sex, such as extreme social punishment for sex outside marriage (so society wasn't straddled with too many bastards). Why can't we develop similar taboos around having too many children?
Sure we need some children to continue, but what if the optimal number of children is 0.1 per woman?
> Traditional societies had all sorts of taboos around sex,
Yes, but all of those taboos are there for a reason. You may not know the reason for Chesterton's fence, but there is surely a reason. It is so costly to transmit a taboo across time that you don't get random taboos that survive and don't perform a socially necessary function.
> Why can't we develop similar taboos around having too many children?
I think there is already social disapproval for having more children than you can take care of in most places. Traditional societies even had mechanisms for infanticide -- child abandonment -- that were replaced in the middle ages with state sponsored orphanages.
> Sure we need some children to continue, but what if the optimal number of children is 0.1 per woman?
Well, if that were the case, then it would be the norm already. Of course we know it is not the case because that geometric series goes to one. And we know it is greater than 2 because there are plagues, wars, etc, and populations need to be able to recover from these quickly. And we also know that a larger group is generally stronger than a smaller group. These groups compete with each other to see which will win out. This even transmits to democratic societies, obviously, so if people unconcerned about CO2 have more kids then the society will be dominated by those unconcerned with CO2. Thus any belief system which results in having fewer kids is put at a disadvantage both in terms of biological evolution as well as social evolution. Now fortunately no nation is an actual democracy, it is always controlled by elites to some degree, so you can hang on for a while with a shrinking population that follows your beliefs, but at some point things reach a tipping point and you lose power if your beliefs result in having fewer children than the competing social system.
> Sure we need some children to continue, but what if the optimal number of children is 0.1 per woman?
Then the next generation has 1/20th the population of the current generation. The one after that, 1/400th. The one after that, 1/8000th.
Imagine the US with a population of 40,000 people (after three generations of this). Imagine Mexico with its current population (if they don't do this for three generations). Do you think the US society survives in that situation? I don't.
Many things that were adaptive in humanity's evolutionary environment, such as eating all the calories available are not healthy decisions for specific individual humans today.
Humans absolutely pressure each other into overeating. A great many social occasions in most cultures center around food and result in difficulty for people who struggle to maintain a healthy diet. They don't even need to be special occasions. "Let's go out for [500 calorie coffee drinks]" or "you deserve this [800 calorie slice of cake]" are routine for a lot of people in the US and EU.
It's a different kind of pressure from the pressure to have kids, but it's definitely pressure.
> Any guess as to why the human species is predisposed to pressure each other into having kids?
Are they predisposed or is it learned behavior that more people in your tribe means more resources for your tribe?
I assume pretty much all animals have children because their instincts tell them to have sex. Children are a side effect. Although, humans have the capacity to evaluate the costs and benefits of having a child, so humans may choose to have sex in order to have a child.
I have a 3 months old daughter and for the people here writing that it should not be a point, or it should be a point, I can only say it is the wrong way of thinking about it.
If you have a child, the first thing you want is that the child is safe and healthy.
And you start to think what can you do better and what should change in the world so that your kid/baby has it better.
So in the end, if just 50% of the scenarios of climate change are true, you will change your behavior.
It's the same with eating candy or other unhealthy stuff. You will stop eating it because you want to show your kid/baby what is healthier for her/him.
So I would say we need more kids in the world if we want to have a better future.
Sorry, let me expand then. The assertion that is happening in this thread is “having children will improve the world”.
Given this assertion, how is it possible that global warming even happened in the first place, when there were, as you state, bigger birth rates than we have now?
Most of the issues we’re facing today - especially global warming - weren’t caused just yesterday. They’ve been in progress for decades, and we’ve known about the potential issues for decades (I remember such concerns when we started opening holes in the ozone some 30 years ago).
>So I would say we need more kids in the world if we want to have a better future.
is funny because birth rates are at the lowest they have ever been. So it is brings up the question that if insufficient kids are the problem, then how did we end up in the current world?
Indeed, more people means more people to solve problems is ridiculous optimism. We don't have a shortage of people whom could solve these problems, we lack the political will to solve them.
It's not related to the amount of people, people just generally optimize for short term economics, at the expense of everything else, even existence.
Only if you don’t think you have or need something that can be passed politically.
I have a nightmare that the woman smart enough to create sustainable energy is currently an illiterate 14 year old girl being married to someone three times her age.
The idea is complete nonsense. Even with absolute worst case climate change scenarios, the average person will have a quality of life vastly above basically anyone in the past. Especially during the Middle Ages when plague was killing people in the street. Yet those people still had families and children.
This is a cultural phenomenon, not a rational one, and has more to do with the West’s lack of a coherent worldview in our post-Christian age. It’s a problem of nihilism.
The “interesting” part is that this, like all scenarios, has evolutionary consequences. People that don’t buy into the climate change = I don’t want kids narrative will out-reproduce and out last those that do. The future isn’t a small society of rationalist childfree vegans, it’s comprised of people that have a lot of kids.
Past comparisons outside recent memory are useless. They are correct, but still useless.
Already right now for younger generations their awesome "quality of life" means they can't even start a family. Everything is unaffordable. It's not a solution to say "you have it so easy compared to the worst part of the middle ages".
Everything isn’t unaffordable. Living at a high quality of life with iPhones and Uber eats might be unaffordable in certain cities. But the basic costs of having a family (food, shelter, etc.) are probably cheaper today than at any time in history.
I don’t think people understand how poor the average person was even a century ago.
The idea that people should have fewer children struck me as cultural suicide when I first encountered it in the 1990s, way before climate change became a commonplace topic.
Having kids has always been a leap of faith. Does anyone think it's "scarier" to have kids now than it was during the Depression, WW2, AIDS epidemic, Cold War, post-9/11, etc?
If your philosophy includes not having kids, then your philosophy will go away on its own in a few decades. Whatever the world will look like 20-50 years from now, it will exclude those people and ideas who opted out of life.
On one hand, it's those people's problems. On the other hand, as someone living in the West, I am very much "in the same boat" with these people. I suspect the danger to our the kids 20-50 years from now will be consequences of demographic decline much more than climate change.
This feels sinister. Why is the idea that the best thing you can do for the future is to die out so popular? If you wanted to destroy a people/country/humanity, you'd work hard to spread the idea of not having kids. So who's doing this?
I am not the person you responded to, but in the context of that reply, my answer would be because I played no part in other people’s decision to have children. Note that this is not about no empathy overall, but in the context of empathy due to effects of declining population.
Yes, it's sinister and really unhealthy. People, on balance, are a blessing, and love of humanity is a prerequisite to having a civil society.
These misanthropic beliefs are primarily limited to elites, who have become so decadent as to hate mankind. You have Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburough saying "If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels." Also some of the more fanatical environmental groups are less about loving the environment than hating people. You also see similar sentiments expressed in modern architecture -- the idea that architecture shouldn't be beautiful or comfortable because people should be uncomfortable, etc, as in the famous debate between Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman. This idea of hating your own group or even hating all mankind is basically the extreme end of modern decadence, a luxury primarily afforded to a subset of people in the wealthiest western nations. Fortunately, it is not shared by the bulk of humanity, or even by ordinary blue collar people in wealthy nations.
In just a 100 years time, we have completely wrecked this planet. Decimated wildlife, emptied the oceans, spread our pollution everywhere. Humanity as a whole very much behaves like a cancer, and that makes it hard to love ourselves.
The goal isn't necessarily self-hate, it's damage control.
Furthermore, consider the option that a lower population long term can be a positive to humanity itself.
> Humanity as a whole very much behaves like a cancer, and that makes it hard to love ourselves.
I guess I see that kind of attitude as the primary thing and then arguments like climate change etc as post-fact justification.
Humanity has been and always will be a mix of beautiful and terrible. In the same time window you're talking about, we made huge strides in equality, science, reached for the starts, explored the depth, etc.
Go back decades, centuries and millennia and you will find something to be depressed about. Crusades? Slavery? Pandemics? Wars? Those things have existed for ever, and yet humanity has always found a way to move forward, trending towards better/safer/more equal. If you believe that "humans are as cancer", you are as justified today as you had ever been, but as a human, forgive me for not being interested when someone who loathes my species suggests it'd be better if we died out.
The difference in our thinking is that I look outside the scope of our singular species and also take into account what it does to this amazing planet, its habitats, and the millions of other species it houses. We're raping and wrecking this place.
All of the accomplishments you list are for our own species, whilst you dismiss anything else. I think humans are an amazing species, as well as a catastrophe. Or maybe it's technically not that humans are awful, rather our "systems" are, our endless growth machine of short term optimization.
I didn't advocate for dying out. There's quite a lot of wiggle room between the predicted 10 billion peak and zero. I would welcome a population decline if it is voluntary and think it's better both for people and for the planet.
> If you believe that "humans are as cancer", you are as justified today as you had ever been, but as a human, forgive me for not being interested when someone who loathes my species suggests it'd be better if we died out.
Scale makes a difference. Going back centuries and millennia is not comparable when talking about problems caused simply by the numbers in existence today.
I do not think anyone is suggesting humans die out in this thread. But it is a mathematical fact that it is possible for the number of humans (or total consumption of humans) to exceed boundary conditions that would allow humans to exist in a stable environment.
> guess I see that kind of attitude as the primary thing and then arguments like climate change etc as post-fact justification.
That reads like you're saying "I see accusing them of murder as the primary thing, and then arguments like the fact they stabbed someone 37 times as post-fact justification."
I think you're misrepresenting this. The problem opposite to dying out is overgrowth. How do you distinguish which philosophy is trying to reduce overgrowth, and which is promoting dying out? Why do you think the article talks about one, and not the other?
> On one hand, it's those people's problems. On the other hand, as someone living in the West, I am very much "in the same boat" with these people. I suspect the danger to our the kids 20-50 years from now will be consequences of demographic decline much more than climate change.
"West" can just import as many young people as it needs. Already educated and ready for work. Demographic decline is only possible in "rich" countries that intentionally restrict immigration.
> If your philosophy includes not having kids, then your philosophy will go away on its own in a few decades. Whatever the world will look like 20-50 years from now, it will exclude those people and ideas who opted out of life
it’s not only workforce but an ideological suicide.
I wish I could give you more than one upvote here.
PSA: I'd also like to point out sometimes people who are smart but suffer from anxiety or depression concoct elaborate philosophical systems in order to rationalize their maladaptive thoughts and behaviors.
For all readers who have anti natalist passion: Depression and anxiety are so common now, please get help if you need it. Please do so before diving into philosophies or movements that reinforce depressive, morbid, or otherwise unhealthy views and actions, like antinatalism
For the people who say, “I won’t have children because look at the present and it’s problems, how could the future be any better”, have kids. Have’em or adopt’em or mentor’em and help them be part of the difference. The future is bleak if people like you with real awareness of the issues don’t pass them on in some way. That includes having kids and raising them on your shoulders. The effects of good parenting/mentoring bleed far past the pupil. Your super child could influence communities even if not a recognized leader.
Because of climate change? no, because of Schopenhauer.
Kidding aside, people don't have kids in developed world because it is costly to create a child that would operate in a competitive urban environment with high home prices, nurseries, healthcare, unstable job market, pandemics and cut throat competition. No body wants to bring kids just to see themselves and their kids struggle, millennials can barely offered a house.
Modern day leaders and thinkers don't seem to offer a sensible pragmatic solution to the major issues facing humanity.
I am biased, as I am the father of a wonderful (adult) child. Some thoughts.
1) Being a parent was the absolutely best thing that I've ever done and experienced. Nothing IMO, can compare to this.
2) Climate change was not (ever) a consideration for us in the late 90s. Though the climate wasn't that great back then (fairly hot preceeding decade, a few years before the pause).
3) Economics were definitely a consideration. I was making good income at my job, my wife was enjoying her life working at a museum. We could easily live on what I made alone (though not what she made alone). Additionally, we live(d) in a LCOL area, compared to the coasts.
Honestly, the LCOL areas are IMO a much better place to consider raising a family anyway, from an economic viewpoint. Some LCOL areas aren't great from a security or environment standpoint, due to years/decades of pollution and terrible politics. But in this day and age you can choose where you want to be. There is nothing special about the coasts, and much to be gained by not living there.
All this said, there are many valid reasons for not wanting to become a parent. But climate change isn't one of them. For the simple reason that, despite protestations of many, the climate has always changed, and humans have either adapted to these changes, or died out.
I recall from middle school biology, a definition of adaptation to an environment given. When a species can reproduce in its environment, it is said to have adapted to it. This has quite a bit loaded into this definition that is not spelled out in detail, but the point remains that you need to have line of sight to food, shelter, security, etc. in order to be able to consider procreating.
Some points about population collapse are worth noting. When a society fails to produce sufficient children such that it can sustain itself and its quality of life, it eventually reaches a point where there are too few young people to replenish what you lose. When that occurs, you get something similar to what we see today, in terms of insufficient number of workers available to work.
That case could be "fixed" by improving the healthcare, compensation, and social security nets right now, but in the future, with insufficient offspring, no amount of additional incentive to work, will create new workers for you.
Put another less sympathetic way, not having kids because of irrational reasons is an automatic Darwin Award nomination. It is species level self-own. An L.
The gene pool only propagates the winners of adaptation. So if you don't adapt, i.e. reproduce, your genes are not going to be in the gene pool. Which, is the literal definition of the Darwin award.
Ignoring the merits of whether or not it’s a good idea to have kids due to climate change: I feel like the author doesn’t appropriately consider the cascading effects of climate change.
Kids aren’t in my present life plan (I’m too young atm) but I can already see that the biggest barrier to kids in my future right now is just the extreme wealth inequality and rising costs of having children. Compound that with an inevitable climate migration that will shift the balance of wealth in the USA, and you’re likely to see greater difficulties for new middle-income families (who are, as the author notes, still among the most privileged on the planet).
Furthermore, the real effects of climate change that our children are likely to have great difficulties with, in my mind, are ecological destruction and the eradication of micro-ecosystems leading to global calamity with food. I feel, without much evidence to support it, that we’re likely to see a spectrum of symptoms that lead to targeted devastation and mass-death of various species. It’s not any one of those things, it’s everything all at once.
Now, I love the argument that this all is not a reason to not bring in kids because we will need bright, young minds to dream and live futures that we won’t get to have. And that gives me hope, which is something we should all allow ourselves to have.
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Being uncertain and decided to not have kids primary because of it are massively different.
* Money - It's hard enough to retire with a late start on planning, kids totally throw another monkey wrench in it
* Time - I don't have the time, or the patience, for kids. I'm sure it's rewarding for those that do it, but every time I look at my friends with kids and the sacrifices they make for their own lives, during their prime years of living, for the sake of their kids... yea, it's like birth control on steroids for me. I was going to put freedom as a separate line item, but I think time and money both take the point for freedom.
* An extension of money, I would have to move at some point, and it seems to me doing it earlier would be better. My house is small, and it'd be fine for two people, maybe three. But it'll start to feel cramped with three. This isn't as big a deal, hence it's lower on the list, but with house prices and availability the way they are right now... plus, the time necessary to move.
* Climate change, the world ending, whatever the case may be. I find it utterly difficult to willingly bring another child into this world when it feels like no one actually gives a damn about the future.
That all said, I feel like I'd be more interested in adopting if I were to ever jump on this "got to have kids" thing. Skip the potty training and terrible (twos, threes and fours), jump right into the "I hate you" teens I guess. Yea, you can tell I'm not a kid person huh? lol
Edit: because holy hell, even in 2021 Hacker News can't do Markdown for shit.
I am striving towards trying to make my life my own. I feel like I've failed at that pretty badly so far as well.
It's very much a roll with the punches type of thing over here. Seems to me nothing goes right or according to plan.
I will happily admit that life cannot be mastered.
https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
I respect your right to make this decision for yourself, of course, but don't you think this is a little ironic? Climate change itself is less of a threat to the future than the self-selection toward extinction of the culture of people who care about fixing climate change.
This is perhaps a bit more US centric as well. But with this country as divided as it is, with an emphasis on climate change because that's the original topic of discussion, I don't think I really want to bring children into this world where people just generally can't get along, and have no real desire to care about their future as well.
> self-selection toward extinction of the culture of people who care about fixing climate change.
Maybe it's a defeatist attitude, but I feel like the people that care about climate change have lost this war already.
A few generations of wild economic growth and thus less of a need for kids to look after their parents, shifting norms, and lag time in norms shifting back, perhaps. Though I don't really know if this fits.
But my conditions for having kids were only if they had significant security in quality of life and I would be able to spend time with them. I only had kids because my household income was at a level I deemed so, which is significantly above the median. I actually would have been fine with no children, but my wife wanted to experience being a mother.
The big difference in recent decades compared to all of human history is that today, people can have sex without risking having children due to very effective and convenient forms of birth control.
Edit: And women have financial independence so they can decide whether or not to have children on their own.
I've never bought this one. If this were true, you'd expect richer people and richer geographies to have higher birthrates, when in fact the opposite is true, and always has been for that matter.
When people give reasons for having or not having children, it is always an after the fact rationalization. Having children is inherently an irrational act, in a good way. It's something you do because you feeling compelled or called to do it, not because you spreadsheeted it and it makes sense. From an individual standpoint, having children almost never makes sense, but we all do it anyways and wouldn't give it up for anything.
If you want to know why people choose to have kids or choose not to have kids, you need to look at culture, not economics. In some ways the answer is simple. Cultures that don't value having children (or having many children) tend to get replaced by ones that do.
Or was having children an inevitable consequence of sex? Only after achieving women’s financial independence and reliable, accessible birth control with no downsides would the true measure of how many children people (really, women) want. This has only been achieved relatively recently, but all statistics indicate the birth rate after women achieve the ability to fully control how many kids they have is far less than what it was when they did not have control.
> In some ways the answer is simple. Cultures that don't value having children (or having many children) tend to get replaced by ones that do.
I can agree with this, and posit that it is possible cultures that restrict women’s rights may replace ones that value women’s rights.
I learned that they had 5 miscarriages with their partner. So the rationalization was for a decision that was made for them.
Cost of living is a comically facile argument as there’s huge swaths of rural America that are extremely cheap to live in. Especially as a digital worker.
It’s hard to live in NY or SFO, but it’s comically easy to live in South Carolina in an exurb 90 miles out of a major metro area. Like $100k house at 3% and fast internet easy.
We don’t even have a Best Buy.
It’s having an effect on the surrounding towns as well, a city over 30 miles away in a bar-postoffice-church size town is up over $300k for an average home.
And yes, there is a lot of land, but it’s all owned by somebody, and most of it is not up for sale. Ranches, farms, and government owned land makes up, well, all of it.
What is for sale could (and likely will) go up in price as demand increases. Also, you may be overestimating how many people are willing to live in the sticks. The lack of essentials (and non-essentials) without driving for miles is a bit of an acquired taste.
I do not see why it is comically facile to not want to leave in a cheaper place. Everyone has their preferences, and some may choose to prioritize raising children in a certain location over having children at all.
Its all about your life project at the end.. if you are happier eating overprice avocado toasts in the Bay instead of having children then good for you. Im not even judging despitz the sarcasm
Vote to improve housing laws. And leave.
It comes to a point where I can’t improve my situation so I move so as not to be a martyr.
The bay area is not the only place on earth but it's the only one with such high real estate prices
Moving to a completely different city, away from all your established social networks is a good way to ensure you'll burn out from having to raise your children without any help.
It takes a village and there are support networks in surprising places.
Also, there’s time for planning. It’s not wise to have a baby and move across the world. But it is wise to look 5 years out and move to an area to develop friends.
Comically, big families provide cousins and family in more places to give more opportunities for relocating.
As a kid I did this every day for years and see absolutely no issue with it (-5 to +25c instead of 40F), all year long in any weather. My parents either brought me by bike or I went on my own when I was old enough.
And that's even before you consider what a game-changer e-bikes are.
Weather is a non-issue. The main problem is fear of cars. It's a classic tragedy of the commons / race to the bottom for "safety" with giant SUVs. Maybe ADAS systems are one way out, but real safety ultimately requires safe bicycle infrastructure and scaling back the number of cars on the road.
Weather is a big issue. It is impossible to put kid into buggy/trolley in rain without it getting wet. 1 year old with pneumonia is a horrible thing. Add shopping in rain etc...
Bikes have horrible safety record on their own, even in "safe" bicycle infrastructure. Crashing into pole on bike and in car is a big difference. Common bike-buggies have zero protection for kids.
Crashing into a pole with your kid on board? A) don't do that? B) you'll all be fine as the speeds you should be riding with children along.
Not sure what you mean by a "bike buggy", but bike-mounted seats do provide protection against falls, and bike-towed trailers are essentially immune to them. Longtail cargo bikes put the children in the rear and have a bar that also protects during a fall. Box bikes are very difficult to overturn completely and also provide protection.
If you want to talk safety records, cars are by far the worst. They're extremely dangerous for the occupants and everyone around them.
For generations throughout human history many have had similar thoughts, that having children was sinful since they would have to suffer through the human experience. Whether ultimately right or wrong, they failed to propagate and so their opinions didn't matter.
I said that this was a question of morality not intelligence. If one believes they are at least more capable than their peers at raising a child, then to refuse is what I consider to be ultimately immoral. The future generation comes regardless of you decide.
If your game plan is to die out, how smart are you really? It's literally the Darwin Awards on mass scale.
What a great question, thanks for the thought provoking challenge.
The best way I can engage with this is asking a question in return: is someone who crosses the street safely "smarter" than someone who wanders into traffic and dies?
If we think the survivor is smarter, then we can ask your question in another way: "why is it smart to wish to live another day?" If we come up with a satisfactory answer here, we will get closer to answering your question too.
Well, given that wandering into traffic likely causes some sort of pain and is a terrible way to end a life, I'd say it's not a smart choice in most situations. If the goal for a person is to die, e.g. because they're in terrible pain, then there are usually smarter (more reliable, less painful, less harmful to others, ...) options available. But of course, there are likely situations, where crossing the street hastily is a smart choice, e.g. when you're being chased by something even more dangerous. Otherwise ...
> If we think the survivor is smarter, then we can ask your question in another way: "why is it smart to wish to live another day?"
You can only accumulate pleasure and good experiences if you stay alive. Hence staying alive is a smart choice if the chances of having good experiences is high enough and the chances of having lots of terrible experiences is low enough.
Depends on the person's goals and risk tolerances.
Directly addressing what was previously being talked about, my thoughts are that there is nothing smart or not smart about wanting pieces of your DNA to continue existing or not wanting pieces of your DNA to continue existing. It is simply a preference, like liking a certain color.
However, if your goal is to maximize your power and/or ability to obtain resources/services, it may be smarter to have children, especially in certain parts of the world and especially for your old age. But that may not be the goal for everyone.
Pretty much life as it always was... Sounds to more like people are stuck in a comfort zone Or in a TV world of the 80s/90s with sitcoms like full house.
My point is, I can get the full experience (namely the called out smiling) without them being mine.
I can tell you from experience, it is different if it is your own child.
And, as much as I don’t have the experience to say how my life would be different with a child, you appear to lack the experience to know how your life would be different without a child.
I have over 25 years of childless adult life, an experience many of my parent acquaintances don’t - can’t - have. It’s been a fulfilling life.
That said, I appreciate the sentiment. Thank you. :)
I guess it makes more sense when you realize the poll was mostly late teens and young adults. People who are yet to experience life as "adults" know it, and are citing idealistic reasons, rather than more realistic ones.
The difference between climate change and the other things you cited is that "climate change" is easily externalized. "I can't have kids because of my unresolved issues I should be working on" implies a burden of action. "The world is ending because other people suck" is a much more ego-saving answer.
All of this not even taking into account the cost of raising kids. If families with both parents making 6 figures a year have this much stress and difficulty, how about those who are making minimum wage or slightly higher than minimum wage?
Instead of simply asking young people to have kids, how about improving conditions in society so young people will voluntarily have kids? How about having sane immigration policies (and not being racist and xenophobic) so countries like Japan can at least slow down population decline?
You're completely right, and I believe people should choose to spare their would-be-children those struggles by not having them. I see it as compassion, not giving up.
None the less, it is giving up by definition. If everyone thought like you, the world would end.
Plus, 99.9999999% of other species on this planet would cheer.
Compared to "social media, climate change, and access to drugs" omg... if you had a choice between active, prolonged fear of nuclear annihilation being likely and ... "mean people on social media", which'd you choose, really?
Anyway. When you find the right person, well, "Life, ah, finds a way." ;-)
We need to have a talk about COVID-19…
>Some of my coworkers over the years have been very consistent at believing that the world is on the brink of The End Times ... at all times.
I've had similar thoughts too. They began in my teens. It's been decades now and it's exhausting.
>What about living here during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
I recently watched Ken Burns "The Dust Bowl" documentary[1]. If one thinks living now is bad, imagine living during that period and in that place (watch it to better understand)! Seeing pictures of the dust storms coming reminds me the The Nothing from "The Neverending Story" [2]. The Nothing rolls along annihilating everything it covers. It's terrifying to think about.
Here's an interesting excerpt from the movie: https://poorvillains.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/the-nothing-an...
[1] https://kenburns.com/films/dust-bowl/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_NeverEnding_Story_(film)
> 'When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll persuade people to buy things they don't need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them.
It's really an excellent passage.
Anyway: the movie covers only about the first third of the book, and the book is quite wonderful, and I highly recommend it. I love the movie, too—I'm glad we have both.
I’ll take bad social media over nuclear war, plague, or famine any day.
The problem of appropriate mental development, formerly tackled through education, which in many territories largely failed, must be re-assessed, and progresses must be made with urgency. It is extremely important. The quality of your life depends on it - your engineers and butchers, traffic wardens and drivers, are also a social product, they fulfil their potential or get deficient out of their environment, and you want them in the "assets" column and not in the "liabilities" column.
Or are you here for the "hacking"?
Lighter remark: you want quality around you. «Or are you [at Hacker's News] for the "hacking"?»
Regarding your note about a generation which seemed to have had a better time, but spent under the threat of sudden annihilation: yes, absolutely - the former post was not a comment to that.
When you read «super shitty social media», maybe the poster could have found a better expression, but it is a distraction to find there an issue with "improvable" algorithms, when the issue may be more with the participants. There is inadequacy.
That inadequacy becomes very clear when the renovator damages your house, the mechanic your car, the medic your health.
Raising kids is tough, but not raising them because conditions are somehow worse?
Child mortality reduced 3 fold worldwide since 1990 [2] in absolute numbers, even though population continued to grow.
Kids should be personal decision, not climatechangey ones.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/mdg1a-poverty
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-deaths-igme-data?ta...
surely some people are worse off than in 1990, but the number of people worse-off is significantlly reducing.
If one had a choice to be born on planet earth now or 1990, much better bet is now.
I honestly don’t mind if my children grow up with less, though. My generation of late X/early Y are dissatisfied because we expected to live like our parents our whole lives. I don’t think the expectation will be there for my children, which should free them up to try more interesting things without as much fear and mental effort.
There’s also the chance that they’ll not live through a period of decline like we’re expecting.
We have to try to remember how much more we understood things than the past and how much more kids will understand the future than us.
Kids or no kids we can do a lot for the children of the world, although it becomes a lot easier to prioritize this once you have a kid.
If good people stop having kids it’s kind of scary.
The author's arguments that the "First World" is somehow largely insulated from climate change are not very convincing. For example:
> 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. So far, California has continued using 5.3 million acre-feet per year - more than enough water for every residential building in the state - to farm alfalfa. Alfalfa gets used to feed cows, and the beef industry lobby is very powerful, and so far California has preferred to ask citizens to conserve water rather than make the beef industry stop growing water-hungry alfalfa plants. 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 alfalfa water, or 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.
Basically, the author's argument boils down to "it can't be that bad if people in the First World don't feel it, and once they do, somehow the problems will quickly be fixed".
If that's the case though, I wonder why my friends and family back in the states keep complaining to me about the empty shelves, Amazon Prime delays, etc. Shouldn't fixing the symptoms of today's strained supply chain have been an easy task compared to climate change?
I think the point wasn’t that the first world is insulated from climate change, but that the negative impact won’t be apocalyptically bad. And similar to how the first world is already better than being in the developing world. For example, the quality of life of being born in 2200 worst case scenario climate in San Francisco is better than being born in 2200 best case scenario climate change in Lagos.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t work on improving global health, social justice, and climate change. We should.
But if I’m choosing not to have kids because of climate change, that doesn’t seem rational since the likely quality of that child’s life is much better than other people making similar decisions around the world. Regardless of climate change.
So the author is saying that climate change will be extremely negative, but that it will be less felt in the first world. But still felt.
First, the idea that anyone living today can accurately predict what life is going to be like for anyone anywhere in 2200 is pure hubris. Heck, it's pure hubris to believe that we can do this even 5-10 years out at this point.
Second, quality of life can suffer immensely in scenarios well short of "apocalyptically bad". The author's argument appears to be that the First World can fairly easily mitigate the "symptoms" of climate change once they start to impact quality of life for enough people. I think this is hubristic too.
Using the pandemic as an example, it's worth pointing out that the US and UK were ranked first and second in pandemic preparedness according to a Global Health Security Index released in 2019[1]. Yet despite their significant resources, both have been abysmal failures.
The First World doesn't have nearly the insulation the author of this post thinks it does. And it has a lot farther to fall.
[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/countries-preparednes...
I’m no expert predictor, but I’ll bet you any amount of money that New York is better off than Lagos 10 years from now.
Of course no one can predict 200 years out perfectly. But you don’t need perfect prediction to say the first world will be better off than the developing worked.
Of course, Nigeria could likely be a world power that far out and may be “first world” by then.
I stated:
> First, the idea that anyone living today can accurately predict what life is going to be like for anyone anywhere in 2200 is pure hubris. Heck, it's pure hubris to believe that we can do this even 5-10 years out at this point.
Emphasis added for clarity.
> Of course no one can predict 200 years out perfectly. But you don’t need perfect prediction to say the first world will be better off than the developing worked.
Have you ever considered that today's concept of the "developing world" might not be applicable in 200 years? That the world of 2200 would likely be indistinguishable to a person living today? That the probability we're not even around in 200 years is non-zero?
> Of course, Nigeria could likely be a world power that far out and may be “first world” by then.
It's worth noting that the first world has major demographic challenges and Africa is one of the few places you'll find countries that aren't dying.
Nigeria is demographically better positioned than virtually every first world country. Its population is predicted to double by 2050 and 70% of its population is under 30.
That's not to say that you would be comfortable living in Lagos, but Africa has a lot going for it in this lifetime.
You dodged my offer of a waver for a 5 year prediction.
I’m super Bull on future Nigeria (and big parts of Africa) when it comes to 2200. That’s why I said that Nigeria could be what’s called first world in 2200.
But that’s not our point. The point discussed is that the first world is insulated over developing nations.
If we still have empty shelves in a year, I'll admit you're right about this!
I think it's telling that the main thing you can complain about is a pretty temporary disequilibrium that's only been true for a month or two and isn't really seriously threatening most people's quality of life.
I visited the US over the spring/summer and many stores had bare shelves and low stock. Starbucks in multiple states were frequently out of items and had signs about shortages. Car dealerships had sparse lots. And so on and so forth.
This isn't something that's a month or two young. It's been this way for months and from what I'm hearing from friends and family, and reading in the media, the situation is only getting worse[1][2].
> ...and isn't really seriously threatening most people's quality of life.
Tell that to a person on a middle class salary who needs to buy a new (new or used) car to get to work, or whose kid relies on school lunch for nutrition[3].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/01/americ...
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/america-is...
[3] https://www.waff.com/2021/09/28/alabama-schools-facing-unpre...
This logic is suspect -- the problem is that the effects aren't linear with respect to temperature increase. I agree we'll get through it as a species, and generally agree with the title, but we have no idea what the costs will be.
There's pollution, the mass extinction of other species, overfishing the oceans, deforestation, desertification, the list goes on.
From a selfish angle (since that seems to be the natural state of humans), you will be able to waste more while in aggregate doing less damage to the environment. Even as someone who tries to care about not destroying the environment too badly, that sounds pretty awesome.
The only reason I’ve been given has been related to the economy. There’s a limit to economic growth (there’s always been a limit, but this “accelerates” it) with a declining number of workers and consumers.
I'm all for a lower population, but I think it'd have to happen very slowly, unless we have reached a level of automation and robotization that can sustain a huge aging population.
The old person might want someone else's child to care for them. But someone else's child will not have to care for them.
Generally it's considered a burden of society to take care of their elderly. Thus 'someone else's child' will have to take care of the childless elderly in some form or another.
I do also think that we have the capability of automating more than we currently do. We just haven't gone that far because it would cause job shortages.
Who said population should be shrinking _rapidly_? Making world population size constant would be a big win for environment already.
What are you basing these claims on? Projections that I saw predict further population increase for at least next 50 years. And even though sources disagree when the population will peak, none of them forecast _rapid_ population shrink after the peak.
Likewise, first a population peak of 8 billion was predicted, now it's 10-11 billion.
The only reason "people" of Afghanistan continue having kids is because the women there do not have a choice. They need access to effective and convenient birth control like IUDs, pills, vasectomies, condoms, and most importantly, women's financial independence.
Given these things, birth rates drop around the world in almost all cultures since childbirth is a very costly thing for women, and who only in recent decades have gained control of it.
I would agree though that likely climate change is used as a virtue signal for people whom already decided to not have children for other reasons.
Such as economical ones. It's expensive to raise children but more importantly, the quality of life of those children is in strong decline, economically speaking.
High debt. Low job security. Low and stagnant wages. Unaffordable housing. Needing to compete with the entire world. High speed of change. Political instability. Accelerating inequality.
I imagine these to be important reasons. The general feeling that younger generations have it worse, with things getting ever worse, and never better. We lost our humanity, our economic system is beyond repair.
Carbon removal is allegedly 1000$/Tons and prototype work for 500$/tons (i did not check this, i'll trust him). And then he add "There seems to be a Moore’s Law for this kind of thing, and when people calculate it out it looks like it’s going to get cheaper pretty quickly". Yeah, no, sorry, this is a weird take. It's like saying we have Moore's law for Carnot machines when our 10% efficient motor went to 20% efficiency and then 40%. Yes, looked like moore's law. But we do have physic constraints, and i think our best gas plant have a theorical efficiency of 55 to 60% max, and ICE motors are still around 30%, even for the best cars. When it's only size constraints, we can make Moore's law last for a while, but energetic and chemical constraints, you can have one or two breakthrough - and we had that historically- but you can't plot those breakthrough on a notebook chart.
Agree with some of his other points, also i guess the main reason not to have kids is economical.
But please, don't talk about climate drift solutions if you don't have studied the question. Physic is hard. I should know i failed and had to settle as a software engineer :)
I've read the paper, it is very interesting, it does not talk about machine pumping carbon out of the atmosphere however (the figure appeared low, now i know why). But yeah, DAC might be a solution. I'll rather take the IEA rapport on this [0].
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere and removing carbon is not the same thing. You then need to either seal the CO2, or transform it ( in a power-to-gas station? ). Also their base case of 15% capex/year can go outside see if i'm there.
[0] https://www.iea.org/reports/direct-air-capture
There’s always a reason for people with a negative outlook to choose not to have kids.
And that’s fine as parenting is an extremely personal choice.
It gets a bit annoying with use of the word “breeder” and stupid articles lauding #childfree and whatnot. But that’s easy for me to avoid along with other social media stupidity.
I don’t think these are rational decisions so I stopped trying to discuss with rational bases (eg, people are creative and produce more than they consume).
I find calling people names unhelpful in virtually all situations, however normalizing being childfree is very helpful to some people facing unwelcome social pressure to have children.
Any guess as to why the human species is predisposed to pressure each other into having kids?
Including the basic wisdom of understanding that having at least a replacement level of kids is a requirement for the society to survive. Societies that lacked this wisdom aren't around anymore.
So both genetic and social pressures point the same direction, which is why there is both biological pressure as well as social pressure to have kids. I have yet to see any traditional society that discourages children. Deviate from this learned wisdom at your peril.
Sure we need some children to continue, but what if the optimal number of children is 0.1 per woman?
Yes, but all of those taboos are there for a reason. You may not know the reason for Chesterton's fence, but there is surely a reason. It is so costly to transmit a taboo across time that you don't get random taboos that survive and don't perform a socially necessary function.
> Why can't we develop similar taboos around having too many children?
I think there is already social disapproval for having more children than you can take care of in most places. Traditional societies even had mechanisms for infanticide -- child abandonment -- that were replaced in the middle ages with state sponsored orphanages.
> Sure we need some children to continue, but what if the optimal number of children is 0.1 per woman?
Well, if that were the case, then it would be the norm already. Of course we know it is not the case because that geometric series goes to one. And we know it is greater than 2 because there are plagues, wars, etc, and populations need to be able to recover from these quickly. And we also know that a larger group is generally stronger than a smaller group. These groups compete with each other to see which will win out. This even transmits to democratic societies, obviously, so if people unconcerned about CO2 have more kids then the society will be dominated by those unconcerned with CO2. Thus any belief system which results in having fewer kids is put at a disadvantage both in terms of biological evolution as well as social evolution. Now fortunately no nation is an actual democracy, it is always controlled by elites to some degree, so you can hang on for a while with a shrinking population that follows your beliefs, but at some point things reach a tipping point and you lose power if your beliefs result in having fewer children than the competing social system.
Then the next generation has 1/20th the population of the current generation. The one after that, 1/400th. The one after that, 1/8000th.
Imagine the US with a population of 40,000 people (after three generations of this). Imagine Mexico with its current population (if they don't do this for three generations). Do you think the US society survives in that situation? I don't.
It's a different kind of pressure from the pressure to have kids, but it's definitely pressure.
Are they predisposed or is it learned behavior that more people in your tribe means more resources for your tribe?
I assume pretty much all animals have children because their instincts tell them to have sex. Children are a side effect. Although, humans have the capacity to evaluate the costs and benefits of having a child, so humans may choose to have sex in order to have a child.
If you have a child, the first thing you want is that the child is safe and healthy.
And you start to think what can you do better and what should change in the world so that your kid/baby has it better.
So in the end, if just 50% of the scenarios of climate change are true, you will change your behavior.
It's the same with eating candy or other unhealthy stuff. You will stop eating it because you want to show your kid/baby what is healthier for her/him.
So I would say we need more kids in the world if we want to have a better future.
Funny, a vast majority of folks have children (>85% in the US), and yet, here we are.
Birthrates in the US are going down from 25.000 per 100.000 to 10.000 per 100.000.
Given this assertion, how is it possible that global warming even happened in the first place, when there were, as you state, bigger birth rates than we have now?
Most of the issues we’re facing today - especially global warming - weren’t caused just yesterday. They’ve been in progress for decades, and we’ve known about the potential issues for decades (I remember such concerns when we started opening holes in the ozone some 30 years ago).
Sorry, I find your assertion as a sign of depression and helplessness
>So I would say we need more kids in the world if we want to have a better future.
is funny because birth rates are at the lowest they have ever been. So it is brings up the question that if insufficient kids are the problem, then how did we end up in the current world?
A minority of people not wanting to add to the population growth (and being OK with that decision) will never incite the death of humanity.
No, let's start reducing our population to somewhat sustainable levels. We can always start having more children it the future.
It's not related to the amount of people, people just generally optimize for short term economics, at the expense of everything else, even existence.
I have a nightmare that the woman smart enough to create sustainable energy is currently an illiterate 14 year old girl being married to someone three times her age.
I believe 99% of human potential is wasted. Because the typical human spends every waking moment of their lives just trying to make a living.
This is a cultural phenomenon, not a rational one, and has more to do with the West’s lack of a coherent worldview in our post-Christian age. It’s a problem of nihilism.
The “interesting” part is that this, like all scenarios, has evolutionary consequences. People that don’t buy into the climate change = I don’t want kids narrative will out-reproduce and out last those that do. The future isn’t a small society of rationalist childfree vegans, it’s comprised of people that have a lot of kids.
Wasn't right then, isn't right now.
Already right now for younger generations their awesome "quality of life" means they can't even start a family. Everything is unaffordable. It's not a solution to say "you have it so easy compared to the worst part of the middle ages".
I don’t think people understand how poor the average person was even a century ago.
At age 30-35, they still don't have their basics in place, and the choice for kids is postponed until an ever higher age.
But I'm sure it's all fine, because they have a phone.
Having kids has always been a leap of faith. Does anyone think it's "scarier" to have kids now than it was during the Depression, WW2, AIDS epidemic, Cold War, post-9/11, etc?
If your philosophy includes not having kids, then your philosophy will go away on its own in a few decades. Whatever the world will look like 20-50 years from now, it will exclude those people and ideas who opted out of life.
On one hand, it's those people's problems. On the other hand, as someone living in the West, I am very much "in the same boat" with these people. I suspect the danger to our the kids 20-50 years from now will be consequences of demographic decline much more than climate change.
This feels sinister. Why is the idea that the best thing you can do for the future is to die out so popular? If you wanted to destroy a people/country/humanity, you'd work hard to spread the idea of not having kids. So who's doing this?
My kids will face no such consequences on account of me not forcing them into this world. What the rest of you get up to is not of much concern to me.
These misanthropic beliefs are primarily limited to elites, who have become so decadent as to hate mankind. You have Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburough saying "If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels." Also some of the more fanatical environmental groups are less about loving the environment than hating people. You also see similar sentiments expressed in modern architecture -- the idea that architecture shouldn't be beautiful or comfortable because people should be uncomfortable, etc, as in the famous debate between Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman. This idea of hating your own group or even hating all mankind is basically the extreme end of modern decadence, a luxury primarily afforded to a subset of people in the wealthiest western nations. Fortunately, it is not shared by the bulk of humanity, or even by ordinary blue collar people in wealthy nations.
The goal isn't necessarily self-hate, it's damage control.
Furthermore, consider the option that a lower population long term can be a positive to humanity itself.
I guess I see that kind of attitude as the primary thing and then arguments like climate change etc as post-fact justification.
Humanity has been and always will be a mix of beautiful and terrible. In the same time window you're talking about, we made huge strides in equality, science, reached for the starts, explored the depth, etc.
Go back decades, centuries and millennia and you will find something to be depressed about. Crusades? Slavery? Pandemics? Wars? Those things have existed for ever, and yet humanity has always found a way to move forward, trending towards better/safer/more equal. If you believe that "humans are as cancer", you are as justified today as you had ever been, but as a human, forgive me for not being interested when someone who loathes my species suggests it'd be better if we died out.
All of the accomplishments you list are for our own species, whilst you dismiss anything else. I think humans are an amazing species, as well as a catastrophe. Or maybe it's technically not that humans are awful, rather our "systems" are, our endless growth machine of short term optimization.
I didn't advocate for dying out. There's quite a lot of wiggle room between the predicted 10 billion peak and zero. I would welcome a population decline if it is voluntary and think it's better both for people and for the planet.
Scale makes a difference. Going back centuries and millennia is not comparable when talking about problems caused simply by the numbers in existence today.
I do not think anyone is suggesting humans die out in this thread. But it is a mathematical fact that it is possible for the number of humans (or total consumption of humans) to exceed boundary conditions that would allow humans to exist in a stable environment.
This is different.
That reads like you're saying "I see accusing them of murder as the primary thing, and then arguments like the fact they stabbed someone 37 times as post-fact justification."
"West" can just import as many young people as it needs. Already educated and ready for work. Demographic decline is only possible in "rich" countries that intentionally restrict immigration.
it’s not only workforce but an ideological suicide.
PSA: I'd also like to point out sometimes people who are smart but suffer from anxiety or depression concoct elaborate philosophical systems in order to rationalize their maladaptive thoughts and behaviors.
For all readers who have anti natalist passion: Depression and anxiety are so common now, please get help if you need it. Please do so before diving into philosophies or movements that reinforce depressive, morbid, or otherwise unhealthy views and actions, like antinatalism
Kidding aside, people don't have kids in developed world because it is costly to create a child that would operate in a competitive urban environment with high home prices, nurseries, healthcare, unstable job market, pandemics and cut throat competition. No body wants to bring kids just to see themselves and their kids struggle, millennials can barely offered a house.
Modern day leaders and thinkers don't seem to offer a sensible pragmatic solution to the major issues facing humanity.
1) Being a parent was the absolutely best thing that I've ever done and experienced. Nothing IMO, can compare to this.
2) Climate change was not (ever) a consideration for us in the late 90s. Though the climate wasn't that great back then (fairly hot preceeding decade, a few years before the pause).
3) Economics were definitely a consideration. I was making good income at my job, my wife was enjoying her life working at a museum. We could easily live on what I made alone (though not what she made alone). Additionally, we live(d) in a LCOL area, compared to the coasts.
Honestly, the LCOL areas are IMO a much better place to consider raising a family anyway, from an economic viewpoint. Some LCOL areas aren't great from a security or environment standpoint, due to years/decades of pollution and terrible politics. But in this day and age you can choose where you want to be. There is nothing special about the coasts, and much to be gained by not living there.
All this said, there are many valid reasons for not wanting to become a parent. But climate change isn't one of them. For the simple reason that, despite protestations of many, the climate has always changed, and humans have either adapted to these changes, or died out.
I recall from middle school biology, a definition of adaptation to an environment given. When a species can reproduce in its environment, it is said to have adapted to it. This has quite a bit loaded into this definition that is not spelled out in detail, but the point remains that you need to have line of sight to food, shelter, security, etc. in order to be able to consider procreating.
Some points about population collapse are worth noting. When a society fails to produce sufficient children such that it can sustain itself and its quality of life, it eventually reaches a point where there are too few young people to replenish what you lose. When that occurs, you get something similar to what we see today, in terms of insufficient number of workers available to work.
That case could be "fixed" by improving the healthcare, compensation, and social security nets right now, but in the future, with insufficient offspring, no amount of additional incentive to work, will create new workers for you.
Put another less sympathetic way, not having kids because of irrational reasons is an automatic Darwin Award nomination. It is species level self-own. An L.
The gene pool only propagates the winners of adaptation. So if you don't adapt, i.e. reproduce, your genes are not going to be in the gene pool. Which, is the literal definition of the Darwin award.
Have kids. Its worth it. Every last second of it.
Who cares? When you die childless, it's over anyway. I think people choosing to not have children understand this basic consequence.
Kids aren’t in my present life plan (I’m too young atm) but I can already see that the biggest barrier to kids in my future right now is just the extreme wealth inequality and rising costs of having children. Compound that with an inevitable climate migration that will shift the balance of wealth in the USA, and you’re likely to see greater difficulties for new middle-income families (who are, as the author notes, still among the most privileged on the planet).
Furthermore, the real effects of climate change that our children are likely to have great difficulties with, in my mind, are ecological destruction and the eradication of micro-ecosystems leading to global calamity with food. I feel, without much evidence to support it, that we’re likely to see a spectrum of symptoms that lead to targeted devastation and mass-death of various species. It’s not any one of those things, it’s everything all at once.
Now, I love the argument that this all is not a reason to not bring in kids because we will need bright, young minds to dream and live futures that we won’t get to have. And that gives me hope, which is something we should all allow ourselves to have.