
Should We Be Having Kids in the Age of Climate Change? - rflrob
http://www.npr.org/2016/08/18/479349760/should-we-be-having-kids-in-the-age-of-climate-change?
======
Decade
Rieder's argument against having children seems incredibly egocentric to me.
Our children will inherit a hellhole, and he doesn't want to subject them to
it. Might as well kill yourself while you're at it.

The issue is that without children, there will be no experience of the
hellhole. As terrible as humans have been for the rest of the life on this
planet, we are becoming more conscious of it, and I think intelligence is a
worthwhile trait to preserve. Since immortality is a fiction, children are the
way to do it.

Children are very adaptable. It's us old people who will suffer through
change. I mean, in the US, college freshmen have grown up in a world where you
can be jailed for discussing encryption and kicked out of the airport for
sharing a name with a suspected terrorist and police use military gear, and
they're doing fine. For the most part.

We see how the world is changing, and we're horrified. For our children, that
will just be the way things are. I am optimistic that some aspects will even
be better. Our great-grandparents would say the same about our world now, and
we're only around to experience it because they chose to have children.

~~~
thansharp
That doesn't have to mean everyone needs to have children or everyone needs to
have multiple children.

I'm not proposing that people curb procreation, just that the logic you
proposed does not talk about the magnitude of procreation that would be
'optimal', so to speak.

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jseliger
1\. Yes. You don't know if your kid will be the one who solves or ameliorates
climate change.

2\. Human life is its own good.

3\. Bryan Caplan discusses this and many other interesting topics in _Selfish
Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun
Than You Think_ [https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-
Kids/dp/046...](https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-
Kids/dp/0465028616?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957).

~~~
Waterluvian
I'm having kids for one reason: I hate mowing my lawn.

~~~
ImTalking
You could always buy a goat.

~~~
kbenson
I have an acquaintance who borrowed someone's goat for a few months to deal
with her grass. Unfortunately, she also had a deck that surrounded a portion
of her house. The goat destroyed[1] the deck (and I believe a portion of the
siding). Having a relatively large animal (for a house) with hooves running
(galloping) around on a wood structure isn't necessarily a good plan if you
care about that structure.

1: Well, maybe not destroyed. Achieved the equivalent of 10-20 years of normal
wear in months may be more appropriate.

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stephenbez
It seems like if you want kids and are very concerned about climate change you
can do both. Just purchase carbon offsets.

By my own calculations, it looks like offsetting 100% of an American's carbon
footprint costs $55/month.

Sources:

[http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/survey-of-
carbon-...](http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/survey-of-carbon-
offset-services.html)

[http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/carbon-
offset-p...](http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/carbon-offset-
prices-vary-widely-by-standard-and-project-type-study/)

9,441 metric tons of carbon * $5.5 /metric ton / 936 month average lifespan =
$55 / month

~~~
internaut
That's very rational of you but boy do people love a good morality play. If
you solved CO2 storage with a new technology you'd be stoned to death by a
pack of wild journalists with copies of Evgeny Morozov's books.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I'll go one further on the slippery morality slope: What if carbon credits
could be used to pay for permanent birth control (voluntarily! it must always
be voluntarily!).

Based on the math above, you'd pay a woman $51480 to have her tubes tied.

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arcanus
Am I the only one who thinks that a shrinking population might also result in
large-scale technological growth?

Scarcity often results in innovation. A finite resource like labor will result
in higher salaries due to competition and innovation to increase productivity
to circumvent his costs.

Conversely, a glut of labor results in low wages and societal problems as
fewer positions exist than job seekers.

This appears consisten historically: After the black death in europe, workers
were more valuable and this helped break the chains of serfdom and feudalism.

I am all for a smaller global population, particularly in light of the growing
automation I expect to observe in the next 30 years.

~~~
lj3
> Am I the only one who thinks that a shrinking population might also result
> in large-scale technological growth?

The problem is the only population that's shrinking is well educated white
liberals. Ironically, they're the only ones that buy that not having kids will
somehow benefit the "planet".

~~~
norikki
Yup. The people who need to be told to stop having kids are the people in
India, Mexico and Nigeria etc. who are currently having population explosions
that have crippled their economic progress and have lead to intractable
poverty, environmental mismanagement, and starvation.

~~~
newyankee
India has a fairly low fertility rate compared to other countries of similar
socio economic conditions, it is just that it has a very high population base
and most of it is very young.

Also the fertility rate is varies significantly across the country.

If you think about it countries like Saudi, Pakistan and most parts of Africa
have the highest fertility rates

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mmagin
Not sure it's over-educated upper-middle-class NPR listeners that they need to
be convincing here. :)

~~~
DougN7
On the other hand, it is exactly their (assumabley) also educated offspring
that could make a difference. Cutting smart people out of the gene pool seems
like a bad idea, even if they're convinced to do it willingly.

~~~
coldtea
They're not smarter because of some gene, just richer and better educated
(which, given today's universities doesn't say much).

~~~
umanwizard
So, you're claiming intelligence isn't heritable? Citation needed.

~~~
sjg007
The money is.

~~~
clevernickname
And so is the intelligence.

------
NPravdaR
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate)

"Population boom: 40% of all humans will be African by end of century":
[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/africa-to-
experien...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/africa-to-experience-
population-boom/article19998373/)

"By the end of the century, almost half the world’s children may be African":
[http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-
africa/2161334...](http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-
africa/21613349-end-century-almost-half-worlds-children-may-be-african-can-it)

But apparently the real problem is white, college-educated westerners having
too many children. Thanks NPR.

------
monochromatic
If you're the kind of person who thinks about these things, then yes, we'll
probably be better off with your offspring existing.

~~~
goldenkey
Reminds me of the beginning of the movie Idiocracy:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unoMMru4-c0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unoMMru4-c0)

------
ImTalking
It depends on how apocalyptic you are about the future.

On the one hand, I'm pretty pessimistic about the current political will
necessary to create global policy on climate change solutions. I feel we are
too primitive right now; too fixated on historical inertial factors such as
religion, ethnicity, and nationalism to let go and embrace the one thing that
will allow global solutions to happen: tolerance.

On the other hand, I have faith in the human race that if we do get to a
crisis point, that sanity will prevail and we will pool our resources to
overcome these global issues. However, much pain will occur before this
pooling (hopefully) takes place. For example, if projections are correct, the
Persian Gulf will be uninhabitable by 2050 which will make today's refugee
crisis pale in consideration.

So I say have kids, but we must instil upon them that their generation needs
to wrestle the power away from the current band of old white males. They
cannot stay on the sidelines because basically they are fucked if they do.

~~~
Karunamon
Why is race and sex being brought into this?

------
osmala
The people who would be willing to sacrifice having kids for climate reasons,
should have two kids. You don't want to have next generation where everyone's
parents don't care.

------
skraelingjar
Working to reduce the total fertility rate worldwide to between 2.0 and 1.5
may be beneficial to the environment and to our development since it would
relieve pressure on food and health systems.

After all, with the advent of AI and the rapid pace of robotics research the
transition to a near-jobless society will be interesting...

------
omonra
According to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions)
US and EU make up 22% of world's carbon emissions.

So if we (ie the people addressed by the article) stop to exist, the
population will continue to grow in size (4bn in Africa by the end of the
century) and carbon emissions will probably catch up to where they are now in
a decade or so.

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anon1253
I thought no, and wrote about it [1]

1: [https://joelkuiper.eu/change](https://joelkuiper.eu/change)

~~~
toasterlovin
You say: "I'm thinking about planting trees. A lot of them."

 _Children_ are the trees that we plant. They are our contribution to the
future of our species. For most of us, they are our _only_ contribution to the
species.

So plant trees. Lots of them. Raise them up to be like you: concerned for the
welfare of our species and it's only home. Humanity will need as many of their
kind as we can get.

------
sjg007
There's never an ideal time to have kids.

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pixl97
Yes. Should we have fewer kids, yes. Should all the smart people say no and
pull and idiocracy, no.

~~~
norikki
The tone of the piece is serious, but I can't help the feeling that it is a
parody. How can this be serious? "Males are the weaker gender, don’t be
fooled; just look at the flimsy Y-chromosome."

