[astazangasta]

This line of reasoning is spurious. The people who consume the most resources also have the lowest fertility rates.

What we can do other than despair and contemplate genocide is transition to a carbon neutral economy. It really only requires political will.

[otikik]

Sorry but your comment doesn't help me. I can not "transition my society to a carbon neutral economy". I don't know how I can "create political will". Can you be more concrete?

[astazangasta]

You posited an individual act that could only have a result if realized collectively. I posit the same. Make carbon neutral choices as much as possible, in your personal and professional life; conservation works.

As for political will, it is the same: composed of individual wills. Bill McKibben points out that a major impediment to a carbon-neutral future is that fossil fuel reserves are capital; the powerful people that own them need us to remain dependent on fossil fuels so their capital continues to have value. These people mobilize huge resources to support their goals; in the last generation trillions of dollars, representing engineering, resources and manufacturing, that should have gone to developing a carbon neutral economy was squandered in useless wars to secure access to fossil fuel resources in the Middle East.

At the same time these forces are extremely vulnerable to collective action in the form of an organized populace. Creating political will means: educate yourself and your neighbors and discover ways (protest, lecture, lobby) to stymie their agenda and advance your own.

[jelliclesfarm]

We could always transcend from carbon based life forms to a hybrid silicon-carbon based lifeform by becoming part AI.

[magduf]

>Creating political will means: educate yourself and your neighbors and discover ways (protest, lecture, lobby) to stymie their agenda and advance your own.

Tons of people have been trying this for decades now, and all we have to show for it is Trump and climate denialism. Educating people doesn't seem to actually work in practice.

[CuriousSkeptic]

Blog, tweet, participate in tv, radio shows “, join a political party, join an activist group. Really pick any assembly of people and contribute to the agenda in with any means available. Be a leader.

[skh]

It's not genocide to not have children. At an individual level the best thing we can do is to not have children if you are in a rich country. Those of us who live in rich countries massively over consume (including myself in this). Going to a carbon neutral economy is not helpful if it isn't done on a world wide scale. Right now rich countries have a nice system whereby they can realistically become carbon neutral in terms of their energy usage but their appetite for consumer goods is one of the main reasons for all of those polluting factories in other countries. Rich countries are outsourcing their pollution.

The resource consumption per capita of a person in the U.S. far exceeds the resource consumption of a person in Afghanistan. One American is more damaging to the world wide environment than a family in Afghanistan. Thus your second statement is not relevant. It is true that Americans have fewer children than people in poor countries. But our overconsumption more than makes up for this deficit.

It really only requires political will.

Are you an American? Because this statement sounds like someone who is not aware of the political reality in the United States.

[astazangasta]

Not having children is also not helpful if not done on a worldwide scale, so I dont see how your strategy is better.

I am an American, and I remain optimistic that we can fix our politics. In fact I'd say that fixing our politics is exactly the same as manifesting political will. For a generation since the labor movement dwindled there have not been any significant vehicles of popular will at work in American politics. It's past time to change that. To suggest we can't is simply despair - it will be true as long as we believe it, and no further.

[skh]

The person I originally responded to asked for suggestions to deal with the reality of living on a planet increasingly becoming a shitty place to live. He/she appeared to be having a problem coming to terms with this reality. I suggested not having kids. The suggestion isn't feasible in terms of large scale change. It is feasible in terms of coming to grips with being an over consumer of resources and assuaging the accompanying guilt. At least it has worked for me.

[Zoh0eich]

Political reality in america is that there were multiple changes of ruling party in the last decade and MPs being voted out on specific issues. Of course a representative multi-party system would be preferable, but it's not that it's impossible to achieve anything at all.

[skh]

...multiple changes of ruling party...

I think you don't understand the American political system. At present there are only two parties in terms of realistically getting elected. There is no such thing as a ruling party in the sense of European parliaments. Members of a party are free to vote as they please. Hence Lieberman famously derailing aspects of Obamacare. There is also the fact that both parties in the U.S. have shifted very much to the right the last 40 years. The reality in the U.S. is that even with our so called left leaning party in power in the legislative branch and executive branch no serious environmental accords were negotiated and passed.