Comments on: GREEN RANT: Having a Baby is NOT Bad for the Earth

By: mrgaric

mrgaric — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 19:52:06 +0000

Personally:
1. I don’t think there should be some totalitarian regime telling people they can or cannot have children
2. I think having a child is one thing, but having many (you decide how many “many” is) is another.
3. People use resources that require the use of land that will never be untouched and wild again.
4. More people need more resources.
5. There is already very little untouched, wild anything left.
6. We can have a few kids who get to enjoy a wonderful world or many that inherit a messed up world.
7. There will not be a mature discussion about this until the situation is in crisis

PS The people who read this website probably aren’t the ones having many, many children that they cannot support anyhow

By: alexjameslowe

alexjameslowe — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 17:33:09 +0000

luvzwool-

“The FACT is that the planet is finite which means more humans means less of everything else, and the more humans there are the faster they multiply”

This is true of bacteria, but not necessarily of human beings, some of whom are brilliant engineers and scientists who are figuring out how to make the resources we have stretch much much farther, maybe even go all the way into space. See my post above. Why not abandon nihilism and fight the good fight of keeping the planet, and ourselves, alive and well?

By: luvzwool

luvzwool — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:29:51 +0000

You should not have children for YOUR child’s sake. The FACT is that the planet is finite which means more humans means less of everything else, and the more humans there are the faster they multiply – that’s why it’s called an exponential population explosion. Experts now reckon the human race may be headed for extinction itself by the end of this century. Do you really want YOUR child(ren) to face such a dire future?

By: alexjameslowe

alexjameslowe — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:12:53 +0000

Having kids is not selfish. The people who think that the human race is necessarily bad for the planet would do well to remember that in two billion years time, the sun will run low on hydrogen and swell into a red giant, baking the surface of Earth to molten temperatures and killing anything that remains. The only way that ‘Mother Earth’ can survive in the long term is through human colonization of space.

So for God’s sake, don’t sterilize yourself- your would-be child or grandchild might be the next Einstein who will write the theory of quantum gravity and provide endless clean energy and a superhighway to space. More modestly, he or she might just be an MIT professor who will find a way to make solar panels ten times more efficient. By all means- have kids and raise them to love math!!

By: grunch

grunch — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 23:33:33 +0000

However, the earth may not be the most hospitable place when the child reaches adulthood.

By: grunch

grunch — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 23:32:32 +0000

However, the earth may no be the most hospitable place when the child has reached adulthood.

By: russ

russ — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:44:27 +0000

If you want children – great!

If you don’t – great!

Who cares?

By: mercurian ferret

mercurian ferret — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:18:20 +0000

Like many popularization of debate points, the question is not a binary one: children or no children. It is about the decisions of how many children and how to raise them that is important. For example, would parents who have only one child that is raised to be the ultimate consumer be “environmentally moral”? What about in comparison to parents who raise their four children to be as eco-conscious as possible?

Also, the question of moral judgment is not only for whether or not parents should have children, but also with the idea of how environmental lessons can be passed down (and – importantly – followed) from one generation to another. However, like compounding interest, if there is a positive population gain, no matter how efficient future generations are, there will be impacts. From that multi-generational perspective (one in which we cannot control for the behaviors toward the environment our progeny have, but one in which we can mathematically model population growth based on a particular birth rate), then morality toward one’s planet changes. You cannot argue that 10billion people living efficiently will have a greater effect than 6 billion living as efficiently (or even finding a way to drop the number to 1 billion) — of course, unless we figure out a way to have a net-negative per-person impact.

By: aphid

aphid — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:05:50 +0000

I trhink these extreme environmentalists are a bit crazy and probably not too bright. However, on the basis that craziness and stupidity might be inherited characteristics, I see no reason to encourage them to have children.

If you agree with them, obviously don’t argue with them.
If you don’t agree with them, don’t argue with them and they don’t just go away – they die out!

The best thing to do in this debate is to remain silent, but to give encouraging glances now and again.