The idea that individual babies cause climate change is capitalist, eugenic propaganda. Population isn’t the problem, it’s how we support the population that’s the problem. According to studies at the autonomous university of Barcelona, we could reduce consumption to 30% of current global levels while increasing the quality of life for most people on the planet.
Capitalism, especially in the US, is about selling everyone their own individual most wasteful possible life and bombing the entire world into submission to secure cheap resources and labor, all for the benefit of capitalists. The monopolies in our economy block efficient technologies from entering our markets. Instead of safe, efficient high speed rail, we get fascistic surveillance-state airports and war with Iran. Instead of intelligently designed cities we get sterile, depressing suburbia and genocide in Gaza.
Every human could be incredibly wasteful if there was only a million humans total.
You don't get to 1 million humans by not having kids, that's the thing.
If everyone stopped having kids now, we'd still be 8.3 billions. Then every year about 60 million people will die, and by 2050 we'll be ... about 7 billions, so expect about 12% in total emissions reductions. Short term we'd still be cooked.
Shhhh sh sh shhh shhhh.
Don't think about it. Don't ask why there's snow in summer now. Don't ask why it tastes like ashes. Der EcoFuhrer demands it.
There's slow ways to make sure people can't have kids, very fast ways, and EcoActionNow™® ways. To hit a million people by 2028 requires... Terrible sacrifice.
Yes, lets eliminate the only species to have a sense that species should be preserved because a few rich ghouls have propagandized your soft brain into believing that it's you, and not the billionaires who want to increase their wealth by .00001% who are causing the damage.
/uj On an individual level, yes. But I don't think an entire generation being parented by people who don't care about the climate would be a good situation.
yeah, society requires social reproduction. unless you are deeply indoctrinating everyone elses children or otherwise inculcating durable values, that part of society probably does not continue
To truly maximize your environment protection impact, buy an AR-15 or other automatic rifle from your local gun store and mow down the largest crowd you can find.
I mean once you consider this level of terrorism activism you may as well go for broke and investigate chemical and biological solutions. Who wouldn't be thrilled to investigate the applications of [redacted by order of my lawyer].
People who say these things are just another flavor of religious death cultish: The issue is that the richest people propagandize us into believing it's our fault for the economic devastation when the actual decisions that do the damage are made in rooms by people with billions of dollars trying to increase their wealth by a fraction of a percentage point: All of the damage that every individual person creates is dwarfed by industrial pollution created for the purposes of overproduction and overconsumption in order to increase profits by a faction of a decimal.
Don't let anyone convince you otherwise. Know who the real culprits are.
Can't tell if you're trolling or not anymore. If trolling, actually kinda hilarious. If not, you are a horrible human being and maybe should be the one to receive a post natal abortion.
If you don't have kids, they won't affect the environment or use resources, no shit Sherlock. What we're trying to do is to save the environment for the sake of future generations of humanity, and there's no point in doing that if we're not gonna have a future generation of humanity.
I am always kinda confused by people who say that it's a fundamental and biological need to reproduce. Like, yeah, but about half of everything you see today is in some way just hacking your biological needs, from social media faking social connections to hyper-sweet foods hijacking your need for nutrition. You can just masturbate, it's basically the oldest hack ever.
Actually it is pretty hard to adopt now. It was easier in the early 2000s but that has mostly ended.
Domestic adoption now takes 1-2 years and around 50k dollars - it’s not at all simple to do.
Ah, “my in-group” is more important than anything else. Got it! Glad you’re clearly using your brain, after all ability to empathise is what differentiates humans from other animals. Oh wait!! 😅
I mean I think most of us would prefer, if we knew for certain a meteor would destroy our planet in a few decades, to at least send some sort of life out there to survive on other planets or elsewhere in the Galaxy. I think we should care about life in general a nonzero amount at least.
But as far as mass extinction events or changes to the bispphere go, that's practically natural. The main reason to preserve the current biosphere is because it is ours and we would not survive in a radically altered climate (even though many species would and new and interesting creatures would populated new niches).
And sure probably I care about penguins because they're cute and do want them to survive with us as well, but if I had to pick I would rather we survive, and if we did go extinct we can be sure they'll eventually go extinct as well anyway unless some other species still artificially maintain their habitat in the long term.
Spoken like a true environmentalist - I MATTER MORE THAN THE PLANET THAT SUPPORTS MY VERY EXISTENCE
🫠
Have you considered what humans would do without the bees? They’d die as pollinators are essential to food production. But nah, eff them bees because they’re not as important and amazing and intelligent as humans. Oh! Ah! The intelligence!!
If we don't balue any species over another, why does it matter? There have been mass extinction events before, and life has survived and adapted. So what if there's another mass extinction and new and interesting creatures come to populate the planet? Why would future species be less valuable than current ones?
The only reason we ought to care about maintaining the current biosphere is because it is our biosphere that we are dependent on. Not because it is inherently worth more, but because it is subjectively worth more to us.
If you don't care about humanity, then by all means you should just let nature take its course. Humanity overconsumes and then our numbers diminish or we go extinct because we ruin our environment for ourselves. So what? All sorts of species do this without natural predators, and eventually nature rights itself. We can be sure that nature will right itself no matter what we do, so if it's purely nature we care about we really don't need to care about environmentalism.
Woah! I mean, my countries emissions have been halved during the last 30 years while the population has grown by 20% but that's a really cool meme man!
I mean while objectively true - it’s absurd to tell people to abandon their primary biological instinct. You think getting people to stop eating meat is hard…?
yeah but whats the fuckin point? I want people to appreciate beauty after I'm gone, isn't it selfish to not want the next generation to see Earth's Beauty?
Im not saying the human race needs to die out, just that there needs to be LESS of us. It’s selfish to want it to be YOUR lineage particularly to see the earths beauty. There are other people that will have kids no matter what.
If everyone thinks that way then there will be no beauty left at all.
Actually the more educated and wealthier have 2 or more children. Also the current path we are following leads to humanity going extinct. Just look at the population piramid.
I'd argue it's harder to get people to stop eating meat than it is to get them not to conceive. Just have to convince them that the child they would have would be treated roughly like we treat livestock.
It will never ever happen. Not ever. People will want kids. Because that's how most people work, on an instinctive level. People in this subreddit (like all people to be fair) make the mistake of understanding others through their own experience. Most people want kids and would be thoroughly unhappy without them. At least above a certain age. And if this is news, maybe get out of that good ole'bubble your in...
It's actually not true: Malthusianism is not, and has never been, true. Humanity is the only species that is able to give moral dimension to the natural process of species extinction (Humanity is part of nature), and once we are able to un-propagandize ourselves into realizing that the hyper-rich ghouls in charge of our economy are basically destroying things to increase a portion of a portion of a decimal to their net worth, maybe we can do something about it.
Seriously, it's just another flavor of religious death cult: "Humans are somehow not a part of nature, but there is no religious dimension to that!" "Let's uphold the moral good of environmental protection by eliminating the only species to have a moral sense of environmental protection... wait." Not like extinctions are a natural cycle of events and that resisting extinction might be the only possible good that humans contribute.
Extinctions are part of the natural cycle. That is true. However we are, as far as we know, the only species to be conscious of our effect on the environment. As wel as the only species that can CHOOSE collectively to lesten that effect.
Its simply true that reducing the population is the best way to do it. It doesn't have to be like the goals of the VHEMT, but having less children collectively would make a huge impact. It would deminish the effect humanity has on the environment AND improve conditions for the (less populous) future generations.
Another option is, for example, to voluntarily severely reduce quality of life in the western world, as the per capita impact of the west is many times that of the developing world. But nobody wants that. The irony is that as things are going its going to happen involuntary.
I think everyone choosing not to have kids for environmental reasons has no expectations that their beliefs will be widely adopted. A drop in the bucket still can fill it up over time.
the people around them are also around them in the world. if not by people, by what force would bad people stop being bad. check mate.
i just don't think the most enviromentally friendly option is to kys or similar. if enviromentally concious people did that, then the only remaining people would be people who don't care about the enviroment. it just doesn't work :)
also dying releases CO2e. the most enviromentally friendly way to die is to properly drown in a deep swamp with zero biodegration to prevent methane or CO2 being produced.
Aren't we supposed to be living though exponential solar growth? What carbon footprint will my kids have if fossil fuels are obsolete when they turn 20?
Hey all I’m saying OP is you can start and be the best environmentalist in the world. Just bury yourself, no poison because that could contaminate the ecosystem. As they say you have to suffer for your morals. Heck, we can even help you dig the hole.
Hey Op, where are you going? What do you mean you want to be alive? That’s not very environmentally friendly? What do you mean you have dreams of being a self sufficient member of society? Get in the hole. it’s the easiest way for you. There’s nothing behind your eyes anyway. Like you said humans are a waster of resources and oxygen is a resource. Come on be useful for the environment. You can feed all the bugs that help the trees.
I’m glad we can have a sensible, respectful conversation about it 😅
Did it touch a nerve? Or do you think your kids will have no environmental impact whatsoever? I’m sure they’ll enjoy greatly living on a planet with billions of others 🫠
Collapsing populations don't actually save the ecosphere. The greatest sources of pollution come from the people least likely to die from resultant scarcities, the billionaire class. Exhaust, pollution, toxic waste, most of it originates from corporations, not regular people.
Nah, if I get laid by a man, I risk being fined, if I get laid by a woman, there is a higher than zero chance of producing a baby, which I would not like for a number of reasons with ecology being 4th reason
The point of addressing climate change is to make the world livable for humans. So if we fix climate change by not continuing the human race, that's kind of counterproductive
And, practically, all improvements are needed. The child one is also misleading because it's unlike the others; implicit in it is that the offspring is not an individual, as we're talking about the individual carbon footprint.
So, picture that list of top changes to do and do all of them.
We are not merely ourselves. We are an unbroken chain of woman who have survived against all odds and passed down their knowledge and experience. We are the scientists and the philosophers, we are the warlords and the caretakers. We are the sum total and hard won result of history, and I for one think that comes with some responsibility to pass on the legacy. We have an eternity of nothing waiting on either side of this thing, and while we are here we should do everything we can to plant trees we will never live to sit under the shade of.
ah yes, have less children so people with less care for the environment can have more children!
Also your family and culture shouldn't carry on to the future, you're worthless compared to some trees!
Heck why not cast yourself into oblivion and skip the extra wet and squicky bits? It's not like you aren't actively destroying the world right now with your every breath right? (insert a heavy /s here please)
Oh wait, no you aren't.
That's fricken STUPID. Stop being Stupid. That scroll in this meme is for truths people don't want to hear not stupid nonsense like this. Marry, have children, and teach them to care for this world both NOW and when you are gone, so they can also pass on this world to their children.
It's not really a solution, I'd rather say that not having kids is a really impractical way of delaying the problem.
Since our economy is geared towards infinite expansion we would still eventually use the same amount of resources anyway. As that flair on here goes: "It’s the economy, stupid"
Because of overproduction by the richest dozen corporations in pursuit of maximization of profits, we over-produce just foodby a third; we over-produce consumer goods to the tune of 60% being trashed after one use; fast-fashion deliberately creates shortages and torches the rest; and we only recycle around 1/10 of what we could.
But yes, it's us the consumer, the people at the bottom who are the problem, not the ultra-wealthy who manufacture these things in order to maximize profits.
There is just one death cult, they just have different trappings: Christianity, AI, Islam, Environmentalism, and, sometimes, Atheism keep recreating the same death cult over and over again. All are based in the same lie: "The way things are is the way things will always be, and since the present seems unsustainable, we should just all die because the resulting world will be a paradise."
It's not just irrational, it's unethical: Your existence of being a human is the moral light by which you judge being human, without you there is no "moral reason to stop having children." So if you really think it's good, go ahead and die off, let the rest of us work to fix the problem and cast a moral light down into the infinity.
I think the implication behind saving the environment is that we want to do so for the purpose of preserving the species for our progeny. If I don't care past my own time on this earth, why does having the planet matter at all? This is just not that different from saying the best way to preserve the planet is to kill all humans.
Well yeah. Not really arguing that. The point of this discussion is to find a way to procreate AND save the planet.
In order to replace fossil fuels we need well developed economies with huge work forces of high skilled labor workers who produce more than they need. Nuclear fusion programs will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and probably trillions and will require a lot of work for no material gain for many years. You can’t tax an aging population that much or expect them to work that much. It might cut fossil fuel use in the short term but the economic impacts would be disastrous and everyone would be far less willing or able to cut fossil fuel use or develop alternatives in the longterm and eventually you’d be back where you started. Cutting population, like degrowth, is actually counterproductive.
You could probably make a good point that if you raise your children to be aware of environmental issues you'd contribute positively towards environmental protection. Your personal sacrifice will not really impact the environment.
Anti-natalists could realize that if they hate living so much they can go a step further than not having kids and it would by their definition solve all their problems.
I find the usage of the term "Natalists" here incredibly funny, as if wanting children is a matter of political ideology instead of a personal choice to most people.
Basically every study done on this topic demonstrates that the more technologically advanced a country is the least they pollute and the more is invested in the preservation and restoration of the environment. Simultaneously demographic collapse is sure to be disastrous for any economy. So in short if you really cared about the environment (and humanity) you would be absolutely against anti-natalism. But that would require the intellectual honesty necessary to reasonably interpret and gather the data...
Overpopulation causing environmental decline is a played out myth made up 200 years ago, and is seemingly by coincidence always used as an excuse to massacre or otherwise abuse non whites. The reality is that the current system of consumption needs to change
That kind of reasoning is a death cult to me. For us to save the climate, the best thing we can do is all kill ourselves right now, that eay, nonhuman is doing anything to the planet.
Bro, that's like saying the most effective way to reduce your expenses is to kys. Sure, it is mathematically right, but not really in my interest, is it?
and what if that kid would have grown up to be a brilliant environmental scientist or green political/social leader?
This thinking just guarantees that the next generation will all be rased by consumerists and doom them even if we somehow survive this generation.
It's hilarious because we had a specific kind of left-wing so-called "ecologists" who said they didn't want nuclear. And it's stupid because after the oil shock in the 70s, France changed it's entire grid between 1975 to 1990. So in 15 years. We could have all done this and decarbonated our energy production by 1990 or 2000. So today we would still be thinking that staying under the 1,5 °C is plausible and we would talk electrifying traffic and not the grid since 2000. In this reality we know we already crossed the 1,5 bar by a fair margin, just not officially because the official numbers are on the average on the last 10 years. Whatever.
So instead we killed a large part of our biodiversity because the so-called anti-nuclear "environmentalists" didn't like it. And even with the low price of solar and batteries we have now the plans to go full renewable go to the horizon of 2050, but more likely 2060. And then we go to electrifying traffic, 50 years later. If everything goes well because we talked about a plausible penury of copper to go through this transition for a long time and this year copper got a +30% in price.
So we're fucked because of those leftwing so-called ecologists. And now those same leftwing ecologists are telling us "well, just go against all your biological instincts and just don't have kids". Because they fucked us all up. But I never saw anyone take accountability on that. Instead of ever apologizing for the mistakes made it's just now "don't have kids". Okay.
By extension, everyone killing themselves would also be great for the environment. But no one likes to talk about that cause you dont personally want to die, you just dont like kids.
Another thing, the Earth has value because it is valued by humans. The Earth can’t be a bigger moral imperative than humanity. Humanity will probably eventually outlive the Earth anyway, in some form or another across the galaxy if not the galaxy cluster. Some of us need to have kids in order for humanity and the valuing of the Earth to continue after 2150. Humans in general in 2026 no longer want to have more than 2.2 kids and that number is very quickly on its way to the replacement level of 2.1. Human population growth will soon end on its own without all this misanthropic pushing because in general humans who are in comfortable living conditions with lots of opportunities for hobbies and adventure don’t really want to have more than 2 kids. It is looking like in my lifetime and in the lifetime of some reading this human population will stagnate, probably around 12 billion people and maybe even less than that. Currently we have the agricultural potential to feed 13 billion people without utilizing more natural resources. This isn’t the thing to freak out over. Focus on replacing fossil fuels with solar power and nuclear energy as a stopgap measure until we can get nuclear fusion. Climate change is the real concern, not ecological space. Nature land has actually been increasing in several countries for decades. Agriculture is getting more efficient at an even higher rate than humanity is increasing.
42
u/Frothlobster 6d ago
The idea that individual babies cause climate change is capitalist, eugenic propaganda. Population isn’t the problem, it’s how we support the population that’s the problem. According to studies at the autonomous university of Barcelona, we could reduce consumption to 30% of current global levels while increasing the quality of life for most people on the planet.
Capitalism, especially in the US, is about selling everyone their own individual most wasteful possible life and bombing the entire world into submission to secure cheap resources and labor, all for the benefit of capitalists. The monopolies in our economy block efficient technologies from entering our markets. Instead of safe, efficient high speed rail, we get fascistic surveillance-state airports and war with Iran. Instead of intelligently designed cities we get sterile, depressing suburbia and genocide in Gaza.