[jniedrauer]

Bringing a child into the world to increase my own personal happiness, when nothing else I could do has such a direct and massive climate impact, is not something I can justify personally. Not to mention, my child would have to live to see the impacts of climate change.

There is coming a point (it has already passed, in my opinion), where we can no longer justify our purpose for existence as "creating more humans."

[Robotbeat]

That's an extremely negative-sum way of viewing the world. Some individual humans (and even communities) can and have had a net-positive impact on the environment. For instance, did the parents of Greta Thunberg have a net-negative impact on the world by choosing to bring her into it?

When people implicitly say that bringing children in the world is necessarily a net-negative on climate, they're implying that their lifestyle is necessarily net-carbon-positive and that they just refuse to do enough to make their own lifestyle net-carbon-negative. Yet it IS possible to do so. I'm reminded of this Indian fellow who planted an entire forest pretty much by himself (although surely his wife/family also helped enable him to accomplish that goal): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7i3QlMvsZs

...there are so many decisions one can make to cut one's carbon emissions to near zero. And some decisions can even make one's carbon emissions negative (some startups at Y Combinator, even... although there are more proven methods as well).

The most powerful thing as a parent is that you can help pass on your values to your children. Teach them (through example) how to live a low or negative carbon lifestyle and teach them the value of the environment and why the Earth must be protected. Plant trees. Make intentional decisions with lifestyle (mode of travel, living arrangements, diet) that lower carbon emissions, and explain these things to your children starting at a young age.

Because the world will NEED people with those values in the future if climate change will ever be addressed and eventually reversed without a collapse of human civilization. Because if everyone with a positive view of the environment and the need to fight climate change does not pass on that worldview to their children, BUT those who deny climate change and do not value the environment pass on their worldview to their children, then that is clearly not going to work out for those who value the environment.

[Robotbeat]

Just to follow up, there are things one can do immediately to drive their carbon emissions negative.

For instance, pay people to plant (native) trees and restore ecosystems (or do it yourself). About $15/month could offset your entire carbon footprint and bring it negative: https://mossy.earth/

If you don't buy that argument for forest restoration counting ($15/ton of CO2), then you could also try some of the more expensive methods like sustainable biochar sequestration ($300/ton CO2). Even the super expensive options for offsetting CO2 are no more than a car lease payment at the individual level (and cheaper, of course, if you reduce your direct emissions as well).

[lostphilosopher]

I had no idea something like this existed. A beautiful combination of cool, clever, and inspiring. Thanks for making me aware of it.

[Joukahainen]

It is not realistic to expect that children will live without carbon emissions when it is clear that billions and billions of people don´t do that.

We have too many people on the planet. Carbon emissions is only one of the many huge environmental problems we have. Creating new consumers to the planet is clearly the most devastating act for the environment what individual people can do.

[Robotbeat]

You can't just dismiss out of hand the power of individual choices (living carbon negative) while simultaneously advocating for a certain type of individual choice (not having children).

The number of people that can inhabit the planet without destroying the environment is highly dependent on individual choices and (maybe even more) government policy. Government policy is determined by voting power, which is in turn determined by the values of people weighted by population. So absolutely it matters if the pro-environment folk advocate removing (to some degree) their own voice from future populations of voters while anti-environment folk do not.

The most devastating act that individual people can do is to not pass on positive, lasting values to the next generation. Because you're not going to stop anti-environment people from passing down negative values by doing so; you'll in fact be amplifying their stance. We must heal the Earth.

[gdy]

Do you think you qualify for receiving the Darwin Award?

[somatic]

If you want plants to die, starve them of carbon dioxide.

[Existenceblinks]

> Because the world will NEED people with those values in the future ..

The world doesn't even need human or dinosaur. It will work just fine.

[mac01021]

I'm pretty sure that by "the world" the GP meant human civilization.

And I feel like that's obvious enough that this objection that you and others raise has to be willful, disingenuous misinterpretation, just to be disagreeable or something.

[residentfoam]

The way I see it is that you don't bring child into the world to "increase" your own personal happiness. They are (at least in my personal case) the result of my own happiness. And yes they require a lot of work, but all the hard work is totally worth it every time your children look at smile at you.

[jniedrauer]

My point is not that they require a lot of work. My point is that they have a massive impact on climate change. You could spend your entire life flying to conferences, living on a cruise ship, dumping trash in the ocean, and none of it would even hold a candle to the environmental impact of having a child.

[nwalker85]

This type of attitude is pretty common these days. It's this postmodern view of the world where humanity is somehow separate from nature and must be controlled to protect nature. This is such an arrogant attitude. Sure, you may be right, that having a child has a high carbon footprint, but your decision to not have children doesn't improve anything. Not being actively bad isn't the same as being good.

[jniedrauer]

What's your point? That we should collectively bury our heads in the sand and keep living the two-kids-and-a-minivan suburb life right up until the end?

[nwalker85]

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.

[manfredo]

> Not making things worse is not "good".

If you have Choice A which actively makes things worse and Choice B which doesn't make things worse then Choice A is the "good" choice as it is the one that causes the least harm. Driving a 50cc scooter instead of a car doesn't actively help carbon emissions, in fact it still puts out carbon, but it any reasonable person would say that switching from a car to a scooter helps the environment. Splitting hairs over whether doing less harm counts as "helping" isn't very productive.

[spookthesunset]

> That we should collectively bury our heads in the sand and keep living the two-kids-and-a-minivan suburb life right up until the end?

Have kids and don't do that. If the "good guys" aren't having kids then we'll be fucked. I assure you the "bad guys" are having loads of kids and they don't care one iota about climate change....

[RankingMember]

There's a 3rd option not being given attention here: adoption. Why play into the idea that the fate of the future depends on some contest to reproduce more "good guys" than "bad guys"? There's plenty of kids that need families who, otherwise, may become the very "bad guys" you speak of. At the same time, you're not further burdening the world's ecosystem with another human simply because of a selfish desire to have another "you" out there. Sounds like a win-win to me.

[manfredo]

The view isn't that humanity is separate from nature. It's being cognizant of humanity's impact on nature. The decision not to have children absolutely does improve the situation. In fact, as far as environmental impact the decision to have children is one of the highest-impact choices a person can make. I suppose if you want to be pedantic it doesn't improve anything but it does drastically reduce the continued harm to the environment.

[AlexandrB]

> It's this postmodern view of the world where humanity is somehow separate from nature and must be controlled to protect nature.

The viewpoint that really puts humanity as separate from nature is the one that assumes that the planet can support an unlimited quantity of humans without obliterating nature in the process. How many people do you think the earth can support? 10 billion? 15 billion? At some point we're going to hit a wall. But, thanks to technology, long before we hit that wall most of the plants and animals we take for granted today will be gone.

If we want to preserve a fraction of the biodiversity we have today, at some point soon the human population of the planet will have to stop growing. People who don't have kids are making the rational, forward-looking choice as far as I'm concerned.

[icelancer]

> The viewpoint that really puts humanity as separate from nature is the one that assumes that the planet can support an unlimited quantity of humans without obliterating nature in the process...

The true but unpleasant situation is that, on average, people on HN should be having more kids while those in developing countries should have fewer.

You not having a kid is very unlikely to be a net positive for humanity if you live in a developed country with a large, stable income.

[AlexandrB]

> The true but unpleasant situation is that, on average, people on HN should be having more kids while those in developing countries should have fewer.

Exactly backwards if you look at the resource consumption and carbon footprint per capita in SF vs. that in developing countries[1]. iPhones and Ubers and Bird scooters are expensive. Not just in monetary terms but in terms of generating tons of carbon emissions during production, operation, and disposal/recycling.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

[spookthesunset]

> People who don't have kids are making the rational, forward-looking choice as far as I'm concerned.

People who don't have kids because they are worried about climate change are doing a big disservice because they are ensuring that all the folks who don't give a rusty rats ass about climate change eventually outnumber them.

[AlexandrB]

Ideology and science are not like the ability to run fast. They don't require biological heritage to propagate. If I spent the money I would spend educating my kids on funding education in the developing world it would probably result in far more net increase in awareness of climate change.

[nwalker85]

And we can work towards that kind of preservation without demonizing humanity as a whole and not view ourselves as some kind of virus that must be eliminated. That's really my point. And it's a very arrogant view that ironically stems from religion, though no liberal westerner will ever admit to it. The concept of humans being separate from nature goes back to the story of Adam and Eve and is embedded in western thought. It's a good thing to be mindful of the environment, but it's not a good thing to think that all of humanity is evil and needs to be eliminated in order to save the earth.

[tsbertalan]

I don't understand why you're being downvoted. Carrying capacity is a thing, and it applies both at the petri dish level and at the biome/global level.

[ryandrake]

“Nature” as it existed 500M years ago has been obliterated and does not exist today. Same for nature as it existed 100M and 10M years ago. Who’s to say which era’s version of nature is correct and deserves special preservation?

[tracker1]

Well, by your logic, killing all the people in the most overpopulated areas would be a great thing to do. That and/or sterilize them all.

/sarcasm

[RankingMember]

> Not being actively bad isn't the same as being good.

True, but doesn't being good involve not being actively bad?

[nwalker85]

No. You don't get points for being not-bad. All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.

[iamnothere]

So it's OK to be bad as long as you are also being good? Seems like the two would cancel each other out, at best.

[ardy42]

> My point is not that they require a lot of work. My point is that they have a massive impact on climate change. You could spend your entire life flying to conferences, living on a cruise ship, dumping trash in the ocean, and none of it would even hold a candle to the environmental impact of having a child.

Your argument applies equally to "having a child" and "letting some person live."

[jniedrauer]

That's a pretty big jump. In one case, I create a human where one does not currently exist. In the other case, I choose to impose my will on a human that currently exists and has a will of their own.

[ardy42]

> That's a pretty big jump.

It's not as big of a jump as you think. If climate change is such an urgent issue that anti-natalism should be on the agenda, perhaps it's a big enough crisis to motivate a re-evaluation of some old ideas about the sanctity of individual human lives.

[AlexandrB]

This is like the bartender telling you that "maybe you've had enough" and, instead of just not drinking anymore, you immediately calling an ambulance to take you to the hospital and get your stomach pumped.

Seems like all-or-nothing thinking to me.

[iamnothere]

> perhaps it's a big enough crisis to motivate a re-evaluation of some old ideas about the sanctity of individual human lives

You say this flippantly, but if we don't eventually reverse the trends, this will happen. It will be camouflaged in the garb of warfare against the "enemy", as it always is.

[paulmd]

You're delusional if you think climate change isn't going to play out without human deaths on a massive scale, regardless of whether that's wars for habitable land and water or explicit murders of "surplus" populations.

We're on a path that is going to significantly lessen the carrying capacity of the planet (on the human timescales we care about). It's implicit and unavoidable barring a wholescale change in power structures and probably human attitudes in general.

It's not a good thing but it is inevitable at this point.

[tracker1]

So you want war? War is the way scarce resources tends to be managed at scale...

[jerkstate]

It really, really sounds like you haven’t done the math. The average per-capita CO2 emissions in the USA is about 15 tons (among the highest in the world) and a round-trip flight between SF and NY is about 1.5 tons, 10% of that. So if you flew to conferences 10 times per year, you would be using the entire carbon footprint of an average US citizen, which is among the highest in the world.

[arcticbull]

I assume you think the child would stay put? :)

[jniedrauer]

You're disregarding future procreation in those calculations[0]:

[0]: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541

[jerkstate]

Your original statement - that a carbon-hedonistic lifestyle of frequent flying and cruise ships would still be lower CO2 output than having children - is flatly wrong, and your source does not bolster your argument.

[manfredo]

Sure, but who's to say whether or not those children will fly on planes or go on cruises? Or their grandchildren? Or their great-grandchildren? This strikes me as a fallacious argument that simply not going on cruises or plane rides can offset the environmental footprint of having children. At least not unless there's some mechanism to forbid those children from every flying on a plane or taking a cruise - and not aware of any such mechanism.

[tracker1]

What have you personally done to change that? To reduce your ecological impact? To improve the world.

There's an old saying that if you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem. You don't think raising a child under the auspices of being environmentally aware, and that their influence would extend beyond yours is a good thing? That if you and your partner only have one child, you are generationally reducing the population while allowing your views to seed and grow.

There is so much negativity in the world... kind of lines up with the article title itself, and is more of the same problem than the solution. Even then, you aren't helping the world by actively not having children.

[residentfoam]

So you are saying that children "have a massive impact on climate change" ?

I don't have any statistics that can either confirm or dispute that assertion. But I will gladly ban SUV and Cruise s in favor of whatever climate impact children can have.

[ecoled_ame]

Are you crazy? Increasing the number of humans on the planet is the number one thing you can do to worsen climate change. You forget that we are nothing but an organism, we all produce waste and contribute hardly nothing beneficial to the environment.

[Robotbeat]

If that is true of organisms, then life of all types is a net negative.

What a sad perspective. I know many people who contribute massively to the environment. Maybe you need to choose a different, pro-environment lifestyle? Plant some trees. It's possible to live carbon negative and pass on those values to your children.

[sk5t]

You should acquaint yourself with trees and fungus, if you think negative environmental impact is the case with all organisms.

[taysic]

Why not just raise your kids with a low eco footprint? The whole argument is silly to me. If you want to find the best action you and your children can do about climate change - it’s going vegan.

[jniedrauer]

The impact of changing your diet is not all that large. You can wipe out a year of eating vegan with a single transatlantic flight.

[ardy42]

> You forget that we are nothing but an organism, we all produce waste and contribute hardly nothing beneficial to the environment.

So in your view, humans are weeds. Do you think it's time to get out the weedkiller?

[jriot]

This is the biggest load of bull.... being pushed these days, reaming of a selfish, entitlement attitude.

[cpursley]

And what about your environmental impact? How do you justify that?

[jniedrauer]

That's a hard question. Some days I don't have an answer.

[chr1]

In a book i've read the hero was saying that if you believe the end of the world is imminent, and you are contemplating suicide, then most likely you are in a cult.

Unfortunately modern environmentalism is a cult with its own armageddon. And WWF actively displacing native hunter gatherer people to "save the wildlife". What is the point of preserving environment if there are no people in it?

In fact shrinking population is the worst thing for the environment that can happen now, because at this point we have already activated the natural process of arctic melting and releasing CO2, and even if half of people were magically removed there wouldn't be a huge difference.

On the other hand the new science and technology depend on large number of people ready to pay for them. Things like starlink, new CPUs, would be impossible with smaller population. But if the population was larger, we would already have floating cities increasing carbon capture in sea, desalination plants irrigating large parts of sahara, system of balloons, solar updraft towers and satellites controlling the local climate.

If you are from a rich country, not having children is doubly bad, because you have all the resources to give these kids better education. The world would have been a much better place if people from western countries were immigrating to the rest of the world bringing their money and their knowledge of how to build a better society, but instead of that the rich countries are making easy for smart and entrepreneurial people to immigrate there leaving us perpetually underdeveloped. (When most of the people who were exposed to western values, and had good education immigrate, there is not enough power remaining to fight with those who want to build medieval dictatorship).

[gautamdivgi]

Any data to cite on this claim?

[jniedrauer]

I can type "environmental impact of having a child" into google[0]

[0]: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541

[Robotbeat]

That's taking the average of all humanity.

If pro-environment people do not have children to pass their values to but anti-environment people do, then clearly there won't be much support for climate action in the future.

Climate action is still a very long road. Yes, we probably already have nearly 1.5C baked in, but our children and grandchildren will still have a massive role in the future of the environment.

[AlexandrB]

> Yes, we probably already have nearly 1.5C baked in, but our children and grandchildren will still have a massive role in the future of the environment.

Another great reason not to have kids. They are going to be left to deal with the consequences of the 1.5C. Including war, famine, and the likely re-emergence of various fascist and totalitarian ideologies due to the crisis. Why would you choose to put people you love through that?

[ecoled_ame]

Forget your feelings and stick to the key question - does the world need more people, less people, or do we have exactly the right amount? I think we have too many, practically every day I see people in my own city that I will never see again in the future. It's chaotic.

[AnimalMuppet]

Your measure of "too many people" is that you see people in your city and never see them again? That's an amazingly self-centered metric for deciding how many people there should be.

And it's very easy to fix your problem. Just move to a small town.

[ryandrake]

Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Instead, assume that unlimited human population growth is inevitable, and ask what technology or social systems do we need to develop in order to sustain that growth.

What do we need to develop/implement in order to support a population of 10B? 100B? 1T?? At some point, routine space travel needs to come into play. 100x-to-100000x improvement in the efficiency of our energy capture/storage/distribution technology. Terraforming or other world-modification technology. At 10-100 trillion population, interstellar travel and communication. At 100+ trillion population, we need to invent stuff that isn’t even in science fiction yet.

I find all this agonizing over how to keep this tiny ball of mud habitable to be... less than ambitious.

[JoeSamoa]

If we can't figure how to keep this mud ball habitable longer, we wont make it to any of the other marvels!

[BeetleB]

>Forget your feelings and stick to the key question - does the world need more people, less people, or do we have exactly the right amount?

HN doesn't have an unwritten rule about expressing emotions, and the person you're responding to didn't dodge any question. Given that the submission is about happiness, it's very much on topic to discuss children and happiness.

[BeetleB]

>Bringing a child into the world to increase my own personal happiness, when nothing else I could do has such a direct and massive climate impact, is not something I can justify personally. Not to mention, my child would have to live to see the impacts of climate change.

I find your comment, and your subsequent replies, exemplifies the headline of the submission quite well:

>The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

[kaftoy]

Maybe your child will be a part of a generation who can have a realm impact over the climate, in a positive way, or maybe just a path to it. And creating more humans is not only a purpose, it is also the means of existence.

[AnimalMuppet]

> There is coming a point (it has already passed, in my opinion), where we can no longer justify our purpose for existence as "creating more humans."

Two comments. First, within evolution (true, a brutal and inhumane theory), the point of life is exactly to survive and reproduce. It is literally unnatural to deliberately choose to not have children (unless you don't believe in evolution).

Second, I presume that you don't mean for this to be taken to the point of nobody having children, that is, to the extinction of the human race. I get the impression that some eco-types think that would be a good thing; I deeply disagree.

[bscphil]

>It is literally unnatural to deliberately choose to not have children

Something's being natural or unnatural has no bearing on whether it is right or wrong. I assume that when the OP says "we can no longer justify" they are making a moral claim, which means that saying it's "unnatural" to not reproduce is failing to be relevant.

[AnimalMuppet]

Fair point.

Also note that my argument was trying to argue within someone else's viewpoint, and it's not a viewpoint that I agree with.

[lordnacho]

You're going to die someday though, and so will whoever you make the kid with. So that will reduce the impact.

Plus there's an assumption we won't figure out climate change. Why assume that kid will be as bad for the environment as you?

[mac01021]

I'm not sure all that logic is sound.

First, having a child does not require you to travel more, get a bigger house, keep it warmer or cooler, buy non-second-hand clothes or do anything else with a significant carbon footprint beyond grocery shopping (which admittedly has a nontrivial footprint). It's not until adulthood that they'll really start to have a full fledged carbon footprint of their own.

Second, social animals that we are, a person's net total impact on the carbon footprints of others can be much larger than that person's individual, "direct" footprint. Raise your kid the right way and their footprint could, in a very real sense, be negative.

Third, there are some indications that the point in the future where we either solve climate change or fail catastrophically is near enough that it may have past before your kid reaches that damaging, adult phase.

Your kid would live to see the impacts of climate change, though. If we as a society would just put a price on carbon emissions and reimburse the externalized costs through a fee & dividend system, even that would not be a problem (in theory) because your kid would be compensated financially for any climate-change-induced hardship.

[tracker1]

That is the single most negative comment I've seen in a while... I'm glad you aren't spreading your view to a new generation.

[malvosenior]

It is funny that the people who feel like this are actively working to ensure their ideas don’t survive into the future.

I also wonder if we’re no longer properly teaching evolution in school. There are a lot of key concepts people are missing.

[ecoled_ame]

Seriously. The only reason I could justify having kids would be if I looked around, thought to myself "gee, there seems to be a shortage of people", and then I would replicate. Justifying replication for the sake of one's happiness is such a logical folly that it makes me die inside.

[RankingMember]

On that note, how funny is it to hear people discuss "invasive species" and how they need to be culled while our numbers are such that we're able to significantly (negatively) impact our planet in the span of 100 years.

[toasterlovin]

Having children bestows the incomparable gift of life on other people (your children). Bestowing that gift is the part of having children that makes someone happy. It's not a self centered happiness; the day-to-day of raising children is frequently miserable.

[_khau]

Come on now.

Don't try to make out like your choice to have a child is because you want to 'spread happiness'.

It's a biological imperative to perpetuate your genetic code and is the single most selfish and egotistical thing you can do with your life.

Don't delude yourself that it is anything different than any other species procreating.

[malvosenior]

Well most of those species don’t have egos so I wouldn’t say it’s egotistical.

Society is entirely composed of people who were given birth to. I don’t see how the very foundation of humanity (and all life on earth) could be viewed as “selfish”. You’re literally sustaining the human race.

[ionised]

> You’re literally sustaining the human race.

While true, that's not the reason people reproduce.

Most people are only truly concerned with their own offspring and their own bloodline.

That everybody in the world is primarily focused on their own legacy but just happens to contribute to the numbers of our species as a whole is an evolutionary mechanic, not a human one.

[malvosenior]

I don't think you can separate what's human and what's evolutionary. All human actions are a by product of evolution. We evolved to want to reproduce (for selfish reasons or not). Regardless, it seems pointless to assign negative moral worth to reproducing since it's an inevitable drive and very likely the only reason we exist at all.

[toasterlovin]

FWIW, in my opinion, it's pretty gross to make parenting out to be this egotistical, self centered thing. You're shitting on the most consequential experience that most people have in their entire life.

And, aside from that, you're just plain wrong.

[ionised]

> And, aside from that, you're just plain wrong.

Convincing argument.

[toasterlovin]

You really set the tenor of this exchange with all the copious evidence you provided for your argument...

[malvosenior]

Aside from eradicating the human race, any changes to climate will have to be driven by humans. Someone’s child will help solve the problem. It could be your’s.

[jniedrauer]

There is no shortage of humans who want to have children. Not all 7 billion of us can have a family.

[malvosenior]

Indeed not everyone will reproduce but the future will be exclusively filled by people who’s parents did.

[trizzak]

People who care deeply about the planet are exactly the people who should pass their sensibilities to the next generation.