Post a controversial opinion

that's not necessarily true.

really the only ways to significantly change your individual carbon footprint (really a symbolic and pyrrhic "victory" the way things are going to go) are not to consume animal products and not to travel by airplane.

so someone eating bacon cheeseurgers all day could cause more environmental damage than several people not doing that. cf. the consumption habits of individuals in rich countries v poor.

Isn't travelling by airplane greener than driving?

Not-having-children, as an environmentalist measure, means that a larger percentage of tomorrow's grownups will be people whose parents were not environmentalists.

That might mean a thing or two in terms of their values, and the resulting impact of their lifestyle choices. Just sayin.

Not-having-children, as an environmentalist measure

Actually, my not-having-children is directly related to my not-liking-children. Nothing to do with environmentalism at all.

Isn't travelling by airplane greener than driving?

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Wednesday, December 2, 2015 4:25 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think there are cases where flying the same distance is greener than driving that distance by yourself, especially in a less fuel efficient car. On the whole, though, absolutely not. Especially since air travel is largely done across distances that people wouldn't drive, i.e. just wouldn't travel at all otherwise (going halfway around the world for a vacation, etc.)

Another thing that has a big impact on carbon footprint is the size of your living space and how you heat/cool it -- moreso than driving IIRC.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/sep/09/carbon-emissions-planes-shipping

(tl;dr - car v air travel in environmental terms actually rather complex)

No beef with yr stance, top man etc. Having kids is not for everyone of course.

Hate to belabor the obvious, but no children = no future grownups. Everybody you've ever had sex with, every one of your friends, and everybody who's ever made a record/written a book/painted a painting that you liked? That was once a snot-nosed poop-covered brat. And they all had parents who had to curtail, to some extent, whatever they previously thought of as their lives (clubbing, meth, whores, golf, whatever).

Pretty much, on Kantian grounds, somebody has to have children, and I'd rather it be Us (broadly speaking) rather than Them (broadly speaking).

Climate change can only be fought through state action, however I have come around to think individual choices accompanying calls for state action mutually strengthen each other.

Not having kids for environmental reasons kind of stretches the logical limit of ethics imo. I'm fine with people not having kids but that strikes me as an odd reason.

There's tons of good reasons not to have kids let's not get silo'd here

yeah, like given the infinitesimal impact having a kid will have on environment, if it will bring you great joy please have a kid

Just keep your joy to yourself where possible.

How.many things mentioned itt have less of an environmental impact than a kid that lives to idk 75?

To whom are you doing your ethical duty by not having kids except other people's presumed future kids? Unless you think the most ethical think humanity can do is to die out, in which case your ethics places other species ahead of humans.

Ugh v human centric not cool man

trimming back is good. raising children is not the only way to have an impact in the world. lots of sources of joy out there incl. adoption.

let's be real - there are no potential parents out there that are going to change their mind on having kids bc of fear of overpopulation

if you say so. i honestly have no idea but would rather give them the benefit of the doubt.

i would say mordy is otm but tbh i can easily imagine some slate article pitched as "i always wanted kids...then i started thinking about overpopulation. here's why you should too!"

one of my envirofascist college professors actually did change their mind on having kids because of climate change/resource constraints. he and his wife limited themselves to one kid (don't know if they adopted more or not)

but yeah, not too common

I can kind of see someone having the feeling of "not wanting to bring a child into this world to suffer" assuming climate change is going to massively fuck up the planet, but the results seem so indeterminate and unknowable, and so much human suffering has occurred in so many eras that it sees presumptuous to think you can guess whether your own offspring will suffer particularly badly in the coming decades.

my wife and i have thought about environmental concerns when talking about having a kid but def more in terms of "hey the world is going to be screwed when our hypothetical kid grows up" rather than "hey our hypothetical kid is going to contribute to screwing up the world".

here's a controversial opinion. or not a controversial opinion but like a serious consideration i've been having recently which is that despite my fervent wish for more gun control that could successfully bring down the murder rate in the US i keep thinking about asking a gun-rights promoting friend to initiate me into the horrors of gun ownership. i can totally get how these things reinforce themselves - ppl are afraid and they want to defend themselves and naturally if just you own a gun it's not a problem. like it's a categorical imperative issue. obv a society full of guns doesn't work but it's easy to think that you are not contributing to that problem. or like why ppl don't vote. so i guess i will continue to vote + to not own a gun bc kant.

xp the world is going to be screwed up for the next couple generations i assume unless humanity miraculously pulls itself out of this nose dive like a hero in an adventure pulp but tbh most eras of history seem pretty bleak and humanity has survived and i assume there was even happiness and great satisfaction in the most horrific of times and those people continued to have kids knowing how shitty their lives would be

I know plenty of people who are still upset by the curly lightbulbs

CFLs have already been overtaken by LEDs fyi

xp oh, it's just one of a myriad of different considerations and counter-considerations in an interminable debate that we have with varying degrees of seriousness, I agree that it's not a deeply compelling reason not to procreate.

xp Always find it interesting to read what the coherent end of gun owners have to say, though in my mind, they tend to get bracketed off with miniature carpenters with respectable workshops (10+ kinds of saw and a selection of stock wood) and people who take drugs responsibly and people who are very good at painting 15mm Greek hoplites and other professional hobbyists, with just one telling distinction which is that this a gun

is artisanal gun craftsmanship/ownership a thing, like fellas reclaiming gun ownership just as they reclaim the wood they use on the gun handle?

I haven't seen that, no doubt it's out there? But gun ownership def matches up with 'non-tradesman's interest in tools and hardware'

People who make it a summer project to build their own house extension or replace their own joists and boards, through a feeling of being a Renaissance man or a Henry David Thoreau

Muscular Christianity

I'll cop to having had a certain curiosity about gun ownership at times, although the risks of one of my children using it have always outweighed any perceived security benefits, which I think are probably marginal anyway.

; if only we could all concede contra-causal free will is a delusion.

if we don't concede this, presumably it's because we have no free will to choose to do so

you know when you submerge a straw in water and put your finger on one end and then take the straw out of the water, and the water stays in the straw instead of falling out? i don't get how that works

that was my controversial opinion

i know a guy who deals in historical guns and let me fire a civil-war-era pistol once, from which i surmise that not many civil-war-era people were killed by pistols

anyway

Hate to belabor the obvious, but no children = no future grownups

so what? i'll be dead soon enough; why should i care?

we have reached such a pinnacle of evolution that i neither need to play these darwinian games nor appreciate enormous strollers on the subway at rush hour

i am optimistic about the future of human civilization.

"I agree that it's not a deeply compelling reason not to procreate."

Idk - it's one that I seriously think of often. I worry about bringing a new kid into such a fucked up future. Somehow it just doesn't seem fair. It's one of the things that's made me start thinking about maybe fostering one day instead of bio parenting. Which is not to say I have decided not to ever have a kid. I haven't decided anything yet but it's something I think about a ton.

the future is going to be the best time ever

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/15/15-future-rapper.w529.h352.jpg

ok even if you don't feel as optimistic about me, there's still good reason to be suspicious of your own forecast of an apocalyptic future

for example, people born in the 1970s: many people of your parents' generation were extremely pessimistic about the future. however, people born in the 1970s (in america or wherever) live super sweet lives

*optimistic about IT as me

people who decided NOT to have kids in the 70s for that reason are now old, and see other people's children living wonderful lives as they die alone. you wanna risk being that person?

we all die alone

Worth noting I get a sweet pension

lol having kids so that you don't die alone seems insanely selfish and is also ridiculous considering how many people have kids and die alone anyway

however, people born in the 1970s (in america or wherever) live super sweet lives

― flopson, Thursday, December 3, 2015 2:38 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no they fucking don't. what?