Edit: I wanted to apologize after reading some of the comments. You raise some legitimate points, I realize that there is a subtle malthusian element to this chart and some of you feel like a burden already. Furthermore, you raise a good point about corporate pollution, oil companies, and how their footprint is much greater than average plebs like us.
That’s 100% valid and I don’t disagree with you at all. My “compromise” I guess would be that continue to apply pressure and protest against large corporations, but in terms of ourselves, just pick a few things you can cut down on yourself, it does not have to be everything on this list.
For example, I really prefer having animal products in my diet, but I am willing to live in a small apartment , car-free, and not go on vacation much in my adulthood. In the same way, you guys can pick what you are comfortable with in reducing and what you do not want to compromise on.
All of us have different standards of living and we are flexible on some things, and some things we are not flexible. That is alright, just consider changing what you are comfortable with, but please do not think you are a burden. Your presence and your life is valuable to me. I don’t like to demoralize people.
Why not? Choosing to have 1 child instead of 2 (or zero instead of 1) is generally considered a legally/ethically/morally acceptable choice. On the other hand stabbing someone (or yourself) with a carbon-neutral knife is generally not. Actually committing suicide would be less effective than having a child, unless you were able go back in time and kill yourself as a newborn.
Right now there are eco-activists which blame and attack other people for using cars and planes and pushing restriction in these areas to fight with the climate change. In few years they will blame and attack people with children and push laws forbidding having more than one child.
Having on not children is a valid personal choice, promoting/pushing this idea to others for reduce climate change - is not very acceptable.
Slippery slope argument aside, what does having information about the consequences of your choice have to do with how personal the choice is?
I’d wager most people who are thinking about having a kid have not thought much about the impacts outside of their own personal life, or only about the potential positive impacts. Fact is the world really doesn’t really need more people, and if you’re serious about making a better future for humanity, you’d at least consider the impacts of having more than a couple kids.
And just to head off any semantic argument, when I say the world doesn’t need more people, I’m saying 8 billion is plenty of humans, not that we should just stop reproducing.
Let’s all have no kids and save the future of humanity!
Sounds like mass suicide with extra steps imo.
That’s especially true in any country with the resources to reduce emissions which are already below replacement rates. I’m not suggesting we grow forever or even at all. We’re already going to have less people every generation than the one before it, telling people to have less kids to save the future seems especially deaf. Who exactly are we saving the planet FOR?
Saving the earth by ending humanity is the trivial solution to the problem not a useful one.
The plants and animals who didn’t create this catastrophe and don’t deserve to suffer from it.
Although they all suffer from being killed and eaten by other animals, so I’m not sure it matters very much. Nature is brutal even without humans involved.
What are you on about?? It takes a little over 2 kids per child-producing couple just to sustain the population flat. Does that sound dystopian to you? Sounds like the average suburban family to me.
Uhhhh… those hundreds of millions of kids born each year, exploding population or not, are the ones we are saving the planet for.
Show me a country where people have enough money to “make choices to reduce climate change” where the fertility rate is above 2
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
Fair point, now try weighting it by “per capita climate impact” or some other factor as vague as “enough money to make choices to reduce climate change”.