[anonporridge]

To be fair, westerners are cutting down their reproduction below replacement rate. That's far and away the most impactful thing you can do to cut your personal contribution to carbon emissions.

But yeah, fretting about energy efficiency on the margins is a waste of time and cognitive effort. The world economy and travel largely shut down last year and it barely made a dent in global emissions.

Our choice is rapidly decarbonize energy production and figure out carbon capture or bust.

[maccard]

The only reason the reproduction rate matters so much in the west is because of the impact of each individual person. If we systemically reduced the CO2 per Capita by half, having as many children wouldn't be a problem. There are many other things you can do that have a massive impact; things that are magnified you have any kids, like eating meat weekly instead of 2x per day, or turning down your home thermostat. On an individual and a population level just those two changes can have enormous effects

[faeriechangling]

...then the westerners turn around and replace their population with immigrants to maintain their standard of living, whom in turn must waste as much power as the local population to be competitive and have a similar standard of living, and whom send remittances to their home countries, in which the reproduction happens. Outsourcing reproduction to other countries doesn't stop pollution any more than outsourcing industry to China means that the west isn't polluting, because in both cases it's western demand for goods and labour driving the engine forwards.

If you want a model of a country with falling emissions, look at Japan, which is actually dropping in population without merely outsourcing reproduction. The western model will never cause emissions to drop, because the point isn't to cause emissions to drop, the point is to maximize gdp growth and standard of living in the medium term, which is a goal that all but guarantees emissions growth. Get ahead now because if we don't, somebody else will, and then we'll be behind when global warming does everybody in!

[matheusmoreira]

> That's far and away the most impactful thing you can do to cut your personal contribution to carbon emissions.

Yeah, and it's also the fastest way to put an end to your nation. Without people, there's no nation.