Climate Breakdown Raises A Fundamental Question - Whether To Have Chldren

[hatrack]

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“Decision makers have repeatedly put big business and fossil fuels over a future for our children,” said Meghan Kallman, co-founder of Conceivable Future. The women-led network hopes to bring awareness to the threat climate change poses to reproductive justice, and to end U.S. subsidies for the fossil fuel industry.

Kallman and co-founder Josephine Ferorelli brought up a taboo question—how this affects a person’s decision on whether or not to have kids. “How does this affect people of childbearing age?” Kallman asked. The response they’ve received has been overwhelming, with many people commenting on articles written about the group: ‘That’s my reason!’

Women as well as men are consciously deciding not to have children, knowing that their kids could inherit a future that is unlivable.

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Projected impacts are also causing many to think twice about having a baby. “Whether or not to have children as it relates to climate change (came down to) whether or not there’ll be a sustainable future for children that doesn’t involve floods, drought and hell on Earth,” 25-year-old Caitlin, from Seattle, WA, said. Thinking about it that way made the decision too intellectual, Caitlin said, adding her life “isn’t an equation.”

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http://fusion.net/story/376997/climate-change-causes-people-to-reconsider-having-kids/

[CentralMass]

1. Everyone deciding not to have kids would also insure no future.

[democratisphere]

2. If I was thinking about having children, I would not.

Over population and the fallout from that, now combined by insane dictators at home and abroad, why would anyone subject their children to that horrid future?

[LanternWaste]

4. Hope.

"why would anyone subject their children to that horrid future?"

Many people yet hold to hope rather than abject futility and surrender to prophecy.

[hatrack]

7. It's science, not prophecy - there's a difference.

.

[democratisphere]

9. Over population is not prophecy and neither are its

very visible and real fallout. Hope is leaving on January 20, 2017.

[Nay]

3. I only had one child because I was afraid that just this sort of thing would happen.

I'm 66, so that was way back when. Nowadays I wouldn't have had even the one child -- I couldn't even think about subjecting a child (and the subsequent adult) to a world that ends up like the novel The Road.

[GliderGuider]

5. I've been an anti-natalist since I read "Limits To Growth" in 1972.

I have no right to subject unwilling participants to that possibility.

[NickB79]

6. My wife and I have one. She's starting to press for a second

And I'm really, really uncomfortable about going down that road for this very reason. It's hard for me to put my fears into words that she'll take seriously since she doesn't really follow the science or severity of climate change, so that makes it doubly hard to discuss the issue without her accusing me of being crazy.

[Boomer]

8. Even our altruism is skewed by self-interest

Whether or not any specific child will have a terrible fate because of impending climate change is impossible to predict. It frames the question as one of hope vs. despair or as a personal sacrifice for the good of the unborn child, which totally misses the real issue.

The primary reason to stop having children is that there are too many people in the world. We're eating our way through the planet ecosystem, and even if each of our carbon footprints was smaller, in the end it's the sheer number of people that is a problem.

[SubjectiveLife78]

10. That primary reason isn't going to cut it

We can't connect with 7+ billion people. Can't connect with that number. It just doesn't make sense. Forget the world, you won't meet, as in more than a hello, most people in the US. Your time zone. Your state. Your city. Probably your neighborhood at this point. Your apartment building if you live in one.

It's a rock and a hard place. The number of people there are is why we have the society we do, which not includes the bad stuff we wish didn't exist, but also all the benefits of that kind of scale. The question we would have to ask people is, what are you willing to give up to have fewer people, should that be the primary reason for climate change? Not giving up what you don't like, that's far too easy, but rather the things that you do like. Hell, that might be directly involved in your day to day survival.

That's why it's such a confusing issue for us. People that don't care about climate change, well they don't care. The people that do care, they're caught in more of a trap. They usually want the infrastructure, the technology, whatever, that makes 7+ billion human beings possible, to remain in place, but we just do it differently. Or, they're willing to give up what other people may like, but what they themselves already have a bias against, so of course they themselves would give that particular thing up.

Which is why we've come up with the idea of everything we do basically staying the same, but we just change how we do it all. That, in theory, covers all bases. That's the best of all world's. Everyone gets to do what they do, make their freedom of choice choices, as there is no greater incubator of human potential as choice, but we just do it in a green way. Works for everyone, even in the non-human world. No downside. It's all progress. No difficult choices. No this or that. It's this, that, and more, if you want it. Everyone gets everything.