Maybe - but by then climate change might make that irrelevant with food shortages, unliveable conditions and further inequality. Perhaps rather than following Bill and Melinda's footsteps, the new generation should use their considerable lobbying power and personal wealth to start pushing for change in reduction in climate change. But hey, it's their ridiculous amounts of money and vanity - so they can do whatever they want with their name on the self-congratulatory banner. At least they didn't start another space company.
This topic is in my head more and more each day. I have a large family and often think how much I want their future to be livable. I try to contribute by limiting consumption of all that I know and learn to be detrimental to the environment, but I feel my efforts are useless. I was very drawn to B. Sanders as the next US President because I thought he’d be the most aggressive with regard to environmental protection. In hindsight even if he had won, I’m not sure if the efforts of leadership from one country would or could be enough.
To me this is all so sad and maddening because those in power seem to only be interested in making more billions next year with little or no effort on making sure the generational wealth has any meaning. Does it matter that your next 10 generations are covered with the wealth that’s youve amassed if they’ll just be living in a wasteland anyways?
Not sure who will spend days watching the same rocket takeoff and land :-).
Also at this rate, future generations will have to focus on surviving with much less fossil fuels (we're passed peak oil), in a world that basically wants to kill them due to global warming.
Chances are that days of video of the accomplishments of the generation that actively destroyed their world (while being fully aware of it) won't be their main concern.
The problem with this attitude is the next generation will then only have only have the offspring of non environmentally conscious people.
You shouldn't trade the chance to shape the culture of the next generation to be more environmentally conscious for the short term quick fix of reducing your environmental impact right now.
I think we should understand that new generations are currently shaping the future in general. See [1] and the same could be applied worldwide: if it is politics or finances.
IMHO the issue in the context of wealth is if would serve a purpose that benefit some part of the society or not. A lost of opportunities are lost when you don't see beyond your nose. Indeed is the human history but since these generations are more linked to global issues we will see if it is a naïveté or a force of change.
That is true if you believe that humanity will not meet climate goals over the next century.
On the other hand, if within a generation or two each person is net carbon negative (through labour, taxes, innovation or other support towards climate efforts) then children born today will be helping to mitigate the crisis.
This is the "incremental" scenario. The plausibility of this depends on how you think system change happens and your assessment of what is possible or likely.
People who have lots of children, and people who are prosperous, currently do not care about the future. In fact, it seems the wealthier people are the LESS they care about the future for some reason.
If you ask me, people need to be more educated, and especially when it comes to science and misinformation. Wealth won't make people better people, which isn't to say that inequality isn't a problem, it is, but fixing it won't solve the climate problem. That comes purely from ignorance and selfishness.
The people who are conscientious will not have kids, while the others will have kids. As a result the next generation will be more likely to be less conscientious due to nature, and nurture.
I think the solution is education, and specifically, education about ethics and conservation. If we make the next generation feel obligated to be stewards of the earth, and smart enough to act on that obligation, then the human race has a chance. But it has to happen with this generation being born now, or we won't have the time to save Earth without leaving it first - one way or another.
I do see many young people making severe changes compared to their parents, usually with reasoning along the lines of "we don’t know what is gonna happen with increased CO2 (etc) levels, but so far the earth has been pretty comfy for humans so I’d rather not find out."
As a side note, the CEO of Macy’s (Jeff Genette) said in one interview that his daughter refuses to buy new pants. Only second hand. That’s not the lifestyle I would imagine when thinking about the daughter of the CEO of a store worth multiple billions headquartered in New York.
The ones that do will have kids that'll have a much better planet in a couple generations and way less road traffic. Don't count on having a retirement though.
Everything is heritable, including political beliefs.
You've made the next generation care slightly less on average about global warming. Maybe your kids would have been more intelligent than the global average of ~90 IQ and helped work on or pay for solutions.
They probably know that visible effects of global warming won't manifest themselves until a century later: enough time for them and their kids. They don't care about their hypothetical grandkids. When the world starts collapsing in a century, they expect to have machines to fully replace 99% of the workforce: so most of the populace will fight for scare sources of clean water, while the rich would live somewhere in new Zealand, protected by unapproachable army of machines. That's what I think is their plan. However, I also think it's a naive plan.
I think you're poorly informed, or perhaps in denial about how far down the road we already are: [0] [1] [2]
It's essentially too late for your or my hypothetical descendants to have any effect on "the greater good". The IPCC says either we cut _worldwide_ CO2 emissions by 50% in the next 11 years, or it's game over for +1.5C scenarios: all coral reefs die, along with most of the fish, crop yields down 40% in some places, mass migration and resource wars are likely.
So basically I think it's too late for any "greater good" to come from my having kids, and I believe it's immoral to bring a life into a doomed world just to suffer.
I'd add that the general outlook is also grim. I'm not sure the next generation will have the luxury of retiring. They will inherit a difficult situation wrt climate change on top of it all.
Adopt a kid instead (updated my original post a bit) if you absolutely must.
But trust me, there are plenty of rich HN readers who are going to ignore me. There’s going to be plenty of new rich kids out there to found the next Facebook and then wonder how they can help with climate change before they have a couple more kids.
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