That's not quite a slippery slope. I didn't say that people like you are going to become murderers. I said that, by the standard you are using to choose to not have kids, that would be a good thing to do (and therefore maybe your standard is less reasonable than it appears to you to be). But you seem to find it comforting to have a glib dismissal to use, rather than actually interacting with the point.
Now, you did kind of answer it in a way. The only way my murder point actually makes sense is if reducing the population (or the environment) is your only value. You obviously have other values as well (as you should). But just as those other values rule out murder and suicide (though that might benefit the environment), they could also allow a child.
Killing a living, breathing person is nowhere near choosing to not make a new one, morally, practically, legally or in any other sense.
Edit: choosing not to have children (and I don't think that's a reasonable way to expect people to try and address climate change) is not population reduction. It's population control, if you like. You are making sure that the population doesn't keep increasing. Killing people on the other hand is population reduction. They're really not the same thing at all.
I agree. My point is that having children or not is the wrong argument. Decreasing population growth is much more ethically achievable by decreasing child mortality in developing countries, providing women there with the education to be self-reliant on their own, and providing them with birth control so that they can plan their parenthood.
Right, I overstated the implication. More people deciding not to have children does not lead to extinction. It's just that when people say things like "not having kids is good for environment" it comes off as a moral prescription that ought to apply to everyone, and hence those who violate it are the bad guys (selfishly acting to harm the environment). And yet if sustainability -- rather than self-extinction -- is the goal, we need a mix of both types of people.
Am I wrong to interpret it like that?
The ones who insist on having children as an ultimate virtue, I find them to be just as wrong.
Either choice is fine, and the moral objections to either one are unreasonable.
Even more radically than having "no kids at all", one could also commit suicide in order to immediately and more completely "reduce impact" -- as the end-goal seems to be.
Can you explain how that is not the logical conclusion? Along those lines, some radical environmentalists have been advocating mass slaughter of the human species.
The thing is that, after you decide to not have kids, time keeps up it's inexorable march. The earth has a carrying capacity for humans. We haven't hit it yet. But we will. This is the one absolute of life: species expand in population until there's no more niche left to occupy.
So after you decide not to have children, other people will have children. Eventually, their descendents will take up the space in the earth's carrying capacity that your descendants would have taken up. There is nothing you can do to stop this. So the best strategy is to change the proportion of people who have an environmentalist bent. Children are an effective way to accomplish that.
Do you think that statement implies that human life is valueless or that people currently living should die? I don't. Simply having fewer children or (ideally) using less resources per capita accomplishes that goal just fine.
My "modest proposal" for humane population reduction is: every individual is born with the right to have one child. A couple then, can have two children, which is below the natural replacement rate of 2.1 leading to a gradual reduction in human population naturally. People who don't want to have kids or can't for whatever reason could sell their right to others who want to have more than their normal allotment while maintaining the lower-than-natural replacement rate. There are other complexities that would need to be considered and managed but it seems to me to be the most ethical way to reduce population, if that is desired.
That's quite the extrapolation from what I actually said. My point is that the choice to not have children is not the same as actively helping. Not making things worse is not "good". And demonizing all of humanity as though we are somehow a virus to be eliminated is arrogant. We can be mindful of our impact on the environment without assuming that we're a problem.
I've done exactly that. I've done my part by actively deciding to not have children. By doing so I've stopped the creation of an entire tree of exponential human population growth in the form of my (lack of) descendents. It's unquestionably the most effective way an individual can reduce the negative impact of humans on the planet.
Your humorous implication that suicide would be effective has some merit, but only for individuals who have not reproduced already.
You can reduce your carbon footprint by orders of magnitude more by not having children, or having fewer children, but I don't see as many people advocating for voluntary sterilization (or even just abstaining from childbearing). Most people believe it's their deity-given right (and often imperative) to keep reproducing, even if our environment suffers as a result.
I point this out to suggest that at the end of the day all of this is emotional and is largely driven by how we were socialized and raised from a very young age. It's often difficult to get people to agree with rational arguments when those arguments contradict a lifetime of programming.
Having said all that, I've found that the environmental argument is the only one that gives me pause around my meat consumption.
Most people who choose to have children don't do so to enable society structures to persist though. I could argue that by not having kids I'm saving the planet from the effects of over population?
I don’t see these two ideas as at odds with each other. Maybe people aren’t explicitly calculating that they should reduce the population, but deciding not to have children because of lack of resources seems like a subconscious vote to reduce the population, in my view.
This is negative utilitarianism, right? For instance, if you could press a button and wipe out humanity without (much) suffering, would you do it? Personally I'd have a quick reminisce then all slam it.
But practically, this isn't an option (yet). Nor is voluntary extinction. The people susceptible to this message or any such message (better for environment; your group of people is bad and shouldn't continue; life is more fun without kids) are more likely to be the kind of people that would contribute to a positive next generation.
The bulk of growth that'll receive and cause suffering is from people that won't ever listen or heed such a message. Hence anti natalism will only increase suffering in the world.
How is degrowth murder? Is it murder if the entire planets worth of women aren't constantly pregnant because not embracing any and all potential for human life is murder?
Are you trying to say that saying only a % of people can have children is murder in regards to those that don't get to? Aren't we already doing this by imposing financial circumstances/classes on people rather than evenly distributing wealth as much as possible?
I’m not arguing that you’ll have kids who will directly solve the problem. Instead, I am making a statistical argument. Here’s what I said in another reply:
> The carrying capacity of the earth will be reached whether you have children or not. So the consideration is different: whose descendants will take up that carrying capacity. If you, as a person concerned about the environment, opt to have children, then, statistically speaking, you are biasing the future composition of the human population toward being more concerned about the environment (since your kids share you innate predispositions and will be raised in the familial and cultural milieu that you create for them). And if people who are concerned about the environment systematically choose to not have children because they have become infected by this meme, then you have a situation where the future composition of the human population is becoming more biased toward doing nothing about the environment. So not having kids is a losing strategy.
About 12 years ago I proposed during class in school, that to save the planet we must reduce number of people living on Earth significantly and relatively quickly. Well the teacher thought that I was new Hitler (at least at first).
Just like you said, the point is that either people shouldn't have kids at all or have no more than 1. If whole Earth's population would do this, in 30years we will see a sharp fall in the population count. And in 60years it should be reduced by 30% at least [1].
If we will not do this now - our children, or grand children will not thank us.
[0] this is probably against HN ethos, though I couldn't resist
[1] It's completely out of my head, though if the perfect scenario would work - I guess it's a reasonable number.
Now, you did kind of answer it in a way. The only way my murder point actually makes sense is if reducing the population (or the environment) is your only value. You obviously have other values as well (as you should). But just as those other values rule out murder and suicide (though that might benefit the environment), they could also allow a child.
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