
Given the State of the World, Is It Irresponsible to Have Kids? - mykowebhn
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/t-magazine/should-have-kids.html
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bmmayer1
Ah yes, the state of the world:

\- Lowest global poverty rate of all time (<3%)

\- Lowest global childhood mortality rate of all time (<4%)

\- Lowest incidence of child labor ever (<17%)

\- Most wealth per capita ever

\- Highest literacy rate of all time (86%)

\- Lowest CO2 emissions per $ of GDP since 1950

\- Highest % of people living in a democracy (70%)

A horrible world to raise kids in. Definitely.

All data from [https://ourworldindata.org/](https://ourworldindata.org/).
Great resource.

~~~
usaar333
Overall agreed on these, but to nitpick, the world has gotten less democratic
over the past decade.

57% in 2005; just under 56% in 2015; probably a bit lower now. (not sure where
you get 70% from).

from
[https://ourworldindata.org/democracy](https://ourworldindata.org/democracy)

~~~
bmmayer1
Ah, I was including anocracies in the number because they are _technically_
democracies and still an improvement over autocracies. Should have rephrased
as "70% live in at least a partial democracy"

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pjkundert
Given the state of the world, it's irresponsible to _not_ have kids -- if
you're a maker, giver, and lover of the neighbors, lands and wildlife
surrounding you.

If you're a doughy-handed politician or jr. totalitarian central planner, be
my guest; don't have children.

Let the adults and our awesome kids take care of the planet. You've tried to
ruin it; we'll fix it. Your time is done.

~~~
utopian3
How about adopting? Or fostering?

~~~
pjkundert
Awesome idea! Unfortunately, there is essentially no adoption in my country of
Canada (single-digit infant adoptions annually in most provinces, nation
wide).

It’s inexplicable, given that thousands of families are waiting years without
success for a child, and many more have simply given up.

The government agencies are either incompetent beyond human comprehension - or
are architected to actively suppress adoption.

The options presented to a prospective young mother who cannot care for her
child are: Abortion, or Abandonment (to a terrible institutional care system);
Adoption is basically not an option.

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prepend
It’s irresponsible for NYT editors to have kids.

This article is weird because it assumes we’re in a finite, zero sum game.
People are creative. More smart people is really good for the world as they
create things, help others, etc.

Journalists like this need to get a basic economics background to realize that
it’s not just humans using stuff up and then we’re gone. We reuse the same
atoms over and over. Information doesn’t even really need atoms in the same
way.

~~~
thefz
But to expect continuous growth in a finite system is naif, even accounting
for optimization and reuse. As an example, a mass of x humans will still need
x*1500 calories a day at least; the bigger x, the bigger the strain on the
planet.

~~~
prepend
Who’s expecting continuous growth? Population tends to level out with
urbanization and education.

Food can be grown much more efficiently. If we get to the point of needing
1500 calories then we’ll be drinking soylent and having offworld farms long
before we break the world.

It’s such a phenomenally large population if you’re just trying to grow x*1500
calories that we can hit it in hundreds of years. So should not factor into
anyone decision to have kids.

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cgrealy
Simple answer: yes. The single biggest positive change you can make towards
climate change is not to have children. This outweighs any other change you
can make (going vegan, not flying, etc) by 5-10 times
[[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-
to-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-
climate-change-have-fewer-children)]

Complex answer: well, it's complicated. If everyone stopped having kids...
well, that's not going to work either.

~~~
bryanlarsen
If that's the single biggest positive change then we're doomed.

1\. Given the lack of other constraints, humans tend to use the maximal
resources available. If the world population dropped to 10 million, but those
10 million people used the bounty left behind by the 7 billion and used
private jets to go everywhere, we'd still be screwed.

2\. The goal is net-zero by 2050. Without any other change, that means 0
humans by 2050? Stopping having babies isn't going to get anywhere near that.
For population change to have any effect on the environment, it requires a
drop in population into 9 figures in a decade or three. Nuclear war is the
only way to achieve that, and that's not going to be too friendly to the
environment...

3\. Net Zero is achievable without drastic solutions. There are lots of better
options, but the backstop is carbon sequestration. At a cost of $100 - $300
per ton, that's tens of trillions for net zero. Incredibly expensive, but
achievable for the modern economy. A lot easier than removing a few billion
people from the planet in a few decades.

~~~
cgrealy
It's the single biggest change the average individual can have.

Climate change isn't going to be solved by lots of individual actions. The
whole planet could go vegan overnight and we're still doomed.

If we're going to have any meaningful impact on climate change, we need to
deal with it on a total war footing.

But that's not going to happen.

~~~
bryanlarsen
It's quite possible to go carbon-negative, assuming you're well off. A family
of 4 being carbon-negative is going to do more for climate change than a
carbon-positive family of 2.

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stale_turnip
I couldn't read the article because of the pay wall, but this stuff creeps me
the fuck out. Genocide is wrong but convincing a certain demographic to not
have children is somehow okay, even if it produces a similar result.

I bet this article doesn't include this map
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate#/media/File:Countri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate#/media/File:Countries_by_Birth_Rate_in_2017.svg)

