Should we reconsider having children due to fears about the climate crisis?

13 comments

1. Reconsider kids because of the O&G and ICE companies? The reason for reducing fossil fuels is kids. For their own good, raise kids to work in renewables instead of O&G.

2. If someone thinks that the future state of the world is such that they should not have kids, they should be supported in that decision. It’s their decision, not anyone else’s.

3. Until people en masse demonstrate they’re willing to make even the mildest of sacrifices to keep the planet livable, I won’t accept that overpopulation is a myth.

   We are currently consuming far more than we can for a stable environment, and consumption is set to go up as more people worldwide escape poverty/join the middle class. Technology is not prepared to mitigate all of that; some of our most recent advances in technology (AI, for example) are threatening to push climate goals even more out of reach, and all of our green technologies, though better than what we’ve been doing, have their own massive downsides and resource crunch issues.

   Current crisis aside, you can’t expand the population infinitely unless every generation is willing to consume *progressively* less than the ones before them. Less personal space, less access to green space, less dietary and lifestyle freedom, less resources to use for recreation.

   And that’s if everyone cooperates, which humans do not have a precedent for doing on a world level ever. Increasing numbers of wars over resources and deepening inequality as our current systems start to fail are far more likely.

   I’m no antinatalist, but we need to keep things around or below the replacement rate if quality of life for future generations is something we honestly care about.

4. Don’t worry, the economy is more than enough reason to not have kids

5. Why should I want to spawn another being into 50C weather???

6. I hear what you’re saying and, of course, the decision to have children is very much a personal decision.

   That said, this is how you make Idiocracy into real life

7. Children are not driving the climate crisis, the rate of consumption in the Western world is.

   The majority of the world’s population (and their children) are not responsible for the climate crisis.

8. Climate Change is just one of the existential problems caused by too many people and too much consumption. Making more Americans just makes the problem worse. What exactly are these kids going to do to fix the planet? Buy a Cybertruck?

9. I’ve reconsidered. Still not interested.

10. Absolutely, and the rate it’s going with AI we should be passing on the reigns to robots in a generation or two anyway, the next natural evolutionary being and the only one that could become a member of the universe

11. Doesn’t matter. People are not having children for other reasons.

12. I question why people still are.

    My Daughter is a young adult now, and I feel horrible knowing what she’s going to have to live through

13. Quite honestly, yes. The choice is yours, entirely, but things are going to get very, very different and very hard well within their lifetimes.

    And, maybe they will be part of making things better… so there is no right answer other than the one you choose together.