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 they stopped on “one less child”? I’m pretty sure that a suicide is the best thing a person can do to fight against climate change.
Also, suicide has a positive impact on the pension system, whereas having less children has a negative impact.
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Advice doesn’t make much sense within some kind of shared ethics framework, otherwise you just end up with a reward function for some kind of rampaging AI.
That’s likely why this collection of personal choices doesn’t list “kill yourself” or “kill others” - because it doesn’t consider them to be acceptable personal choices. And surely neither do you.
Agree. But promoting/pushing childfree as a responsible answer for a climat issue as the next option after carefree does not make sense either for the same reason.
I’m not sure I follow - are you saying that you would consider a family with two children to have made a less acceptable/responsible decision than a family with three children (or zero/one, one/two, … etc.)?
I mean if so then I certainly don’t want you to feel uncomfortable talking about it, it’s just that I’ve never encountered that kind of outlook before, so it’s a bit of an unexpected turn in the conversation for me. Could you elaborate on what you mean?
Well, the info promotes options people can do to fight climate change. It says less children is the best option. Right now eco-activists blame and attack people for using cars and planes, they promote laws to restrict this kind of things. In few years they will blame attack mothers with 2 children and promote birth restrictions laws.
How many children to have - is a personal decision made considering many different reasons. What I find not acceptable is - promoting/advertising/pushing people to have less children because to protect climate. Like: “you have a 2 children? You are a shitty person killing our planet - much worse then a guy flying private jet!”
I always find it helpful to try and decouple everything from value judgements as best as possible - in that regard I find it hard to read any kind of “blame” or accusations of “being a shitty person” into that graphic. I mean, it’s just a fancy spreadsheet, isn’t it? “This kind of choice entails that kind of impact”.
Assuming that the data and the estimates themselves are reasonable and correct then it wouldn’t seem too far-fetched to accept that avoiding a transatlantic flight is a more impactful decision for one’s carbon footprint than life-long dutiful recycling. I mean at that point it’s just comparing numbers and it would seem to be rather objective and judgement-free to say “A person choosing to live their life without a car has made a bigger impact on their carbon footprint with that decision than than a person choosing to replace that car with a hybrid” or, conversely, “A person choosing to live their life with one fewer children has made a bigger impact on their carbon footprint with that decision than a person choosing to recycle” - wouldn’t it?
Or let’s do it the other way around: What would you change about that graphic to make it more acceptable in your eyes? Would you just leave out the last column or do something completely different with the data?
I would remove the last column, all other parts are widely recommended/enforced steps and putting “less children” to the same line automatically makes it most recommend option.
If this picture is just for fun - there should be no problem to add a suicide there - since this just shows facts, not pretend to impact anyone’s decisions.
Thanks for humoring me!
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”.