Comment by inasio
4 days ago
Saw once a discussion that people should not have kids as it's by far the highest increase in your carbon footprint in your lifetime (>10x than going vegan, etc) be driven all the way to advocating genocide as a way of carbon footprint minimization
> Saw once a discussion that people should not have kids as it's by far the highest increase in your carbon footprint in your lifetime (>10x than going vegan, etc) be driven all the way to advocating genocide as a way of carbon footprint minimization
The opening scene of Utopia (UK) s2e6 goes over this:
> "Why did you have him then? Nothing uses carbon like a first-world human, yet you created one: why would you do that?"
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcx-nf3kH_M
Setting aside the reductio ad absurdum of genocide, this is an unfortunately common viewpoint. People really need to take into account the chances their child might wind up working on science or technology which reduces global CO2 emissions or even captures CO2. This reasoning can be applied to all sorts of naive "more people bad" arguments. I can't imagine where the world would be if Norman Borlaug's parents had decided to never have kids out of concern for global food insecurity.
It also entirely subjugates the economic realities that we (at least currently) live in to the future health of the planet. I care a great deal about the Earth and our environment, but the more I've learned about stuff the more I've realized that anyone advocating for focusing on one without considering the impact on the other is primarily following a religion
> It also entirely subjugates the economic realities that we...
To play devils advocate, you could be seen as trying to subjugate the worlds health to your own economic well-being, and far fewer people are concerned with your tax bracket than there are people on earth. In a pure democracy, I'm fairly certain the planets well being would be deemed more important than the economy of whatever nation you live in.
> advocating for focusing on one... is primarily following a religion
Maybe, but they could also just be doing the risk calculus a bit differently. If you are a many step thinker the long term fecundity of our species might feel more important than any level of short term financial motivation.
2 replies →
> this is an unfortunately common viewpoint
Not everyone believes that the purpose of life is to make more life, or that having been born onto team human automatically qualifies team human as the best team. It's not necessarily unfortunate.
I am not a rationalist, but rationally that whole "the meaning of life is human fecundity" shtick is after school special tautological nonsense, and that seems to be the assumption buried in your statement. Try defining what you mean without causing yourself some sort of recursion headache.
> their child might wind up..
They might also grow up to be a normal human being, which is far more likely.
> if Norman Borlaug's parents had decided to never have kids
Again, this would only have mattered if you consider the well being of human beings to be the greatest possible good. Some people have other definitions, or are operating on much longer timescales.
Insane to call "more people bad" naive but then actually try and account for what would otherwise best be described as hope.
The point is that you can go "from more people bad" to "less people good" in just a few jumps, and that is not great.
> People really need to take into account the chances their child might wind up working on science or technology which reduces global CO2 emissions or even captures CO2.
All else equal, it would be better to spread those chances across a longer period of time at a lower population with lower carbon use.