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by ForHackernews 2712 days ago
This only makes sense if you assume "caring about the environment" is highly heritable and that individuals "caring about the environment" in the abstract somehow translates into large-scale public policy that's better for the environment (I would suggest available evidence shows that it does not).
1 comments
toasterlovin 2712 days ago
As I pointed out, children get their nature and their nurture from their parents. And I don't know how you can reconcile the success of the environmental movement in the developed world in the past 5 decades with your position that somehow people caring about the environment doesn't have any real world effects.
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ForHackernews 2712 days ago
CO2 emissions are not just rising but rising faster. We haven't even gotten the second derivative pointed in the necessary direction.
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toasterlovin 2712 days ago
But you and your significant other are not the only players in the game. There are other people who will have children, regardless of what you do. So your choice is between a future that contains your children, who share your disposition and are indoctrinated by you into a specific worldview, or a world that does not contain them.

How does your side win if it promotes a strategy of not even showing up to the game?

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ForHackernews 2712 days ago
My "side" "wins" in that my [non-existent] children and grandchildren will not suffer and starve on a famine-stricken planet burning itself to death.
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toasterlovin 2711 days ago
I don’t get your position. You’re evidently not concerned with the greater good, only with what your own descendants will experience. But then you’re completely willing to ensure that you will leave no descendants.
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ForHackernews 2711 days ago
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.

[0] - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/rcp-85-t...

[1] - https://hbr.org/2018/12/the-story-of-sustainability-in-2018-...

[2] - https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433

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