[hn_throwaway_99]

I've heard this kind of commentary a lot, but I still believe it's much more of a case of "people not wanting to have kids and then giving climate change as the reason" than climate change actually being the deciding factor in not having kids. I think in most cases it's more akin to virtue signaling.

The modern world, especially in the US, is quite unfriendly to having kids. Both parents have lots of other opportunities that having children may conflict with, and having children can be horrendously expensive depending on your child rearing style. Given that, if you're subconsciously thinking "I don't want to have kids, it's just too hard", it comes across as "more virtuous" if, instead of giving the reason as you want to be more selfish with your time and money, that you want to protect a potential child from having to go through a future hellish environment.

[Auracle]

A common thing I’ve heard is people saying “I wouldn’t want to bring a baby in to THIS world,” which I think shows that we really need to do a better job teaching history. It’s literally the best time there’s ever been to bring a child in to the world. There’s no constant threat of nuclear annihilation, no giant world wars, a large portion of childhood diseases have been eradicated, the chance of the mother dying in childbirth is incredibly low comparatively, and the list goes on and on.

[langitbiru]

Even if this world is not ideal, it's still fine to breed or bring children to this world.

"Never feel sorry for raising dragon-slayers in a time when there are actual dragons," unknown.

[errcorrectcode]

There's always an existential threat. That argument is for people who won't have anyone to care for them when they get old, won't have as much joy or love in their lives, and their genes will die with them. An absolutely pointless life, in my unpopular opinion, but only my opinion nonetheless.

[confidantlake]

There is a constant threat of nuclear annihilation. It never went away.

[Auracle]

Sure, but we’re not constantly on the brink and teaching kids to duck and cover.

[errcorrectcode]

Duck and cover was pointless fearmongering and safety theater.

We are on the brink from numerous existential threats including, but not limited to: climate change (i.e., more extreme weather damage and deaths, desertification, regional famines, resource wars, and billions/hundreds of millions of CC refugees), asteroids, GRBs, pandemics (viral, bacteriological, and mycotic), epidemics of diabetes, CHD, and cancer, nuclear terrorism, US vs. China over Taiwan, NATO vs. Russia, mega-tsunami.

[jah242]

'you want to be more selfish with your time and money' - from my perspective having children is up with the most selfish things an individual can do - you are spending a huge amount of time and resources replicating yourself (to as greater degree as possible with current technology) and then usually trying to give that replication as much advantage over other people's as possible.

From my experience parents are often great for their children but the trade off is they often become worse members of society, switching to focusing time and resources on their family (to give their genetic material an advantage) rather than any wider potentially more utilitarian outlets or considerations.

[engineer_22]

I think you should reflect a little bit more on what a society is and it's goals.

To my point, a society is made up of people. They must be born before they can be useful to society.

[Dracophoenix]

I don't think lacking a child would make someone any more considerate of society than they are. As the poster above you mentioned, many young couples don't want to have children because the economic and QoL calculation is unfavorable to doing so. They have no concern for the utilitarian needs of society (and for that matter, most people don't).

[DiggyJohnson]

Can you give some examples of this trade off? I have a different perspective: that non-parents have less incentive to build and maintains communities?

What sort of activities do non-parent adults engage in that is lost in this trade-off?

[Zababa]

I feel like this may be mostly signaling, because the logical conclusion from the argument that more people means more climate change would be to either have your existence reduce climate change (which most people don't do), or to remove yourself from the equation.

Or maybe the argument is about the relative impact, and not having kids allows you to take the plane and still feel good about your actions because your total carbon impact is less than other people? I'm honestly not sure how the reasoning works.

[jjj123]

I don’t think we should hold people to “the logical conclusion” of all of their beliefs. We are not robots. We are capable of believing something without willing to go to the ends of the earth to be consistent with that belief.

For example, I believe it’s good to go to protests for causes I care about. However, I don’t go to even a fraction of the protests near me. Does this mean I don’t actually believe protests are a good thing?

[Zababa]

We can believe something, and believe that this belief influences our actions, but that doesn't mean that it's true. For example, I don't heat my appartment. I could say that it's for the planet. But the reality is that it's not for the planet, it's that I don't need to heat my appartment for it to be at a confortable temperature for me. The consequences are still good for the planet, but this is a consequence, not a reason.

If you think children are a massive pain and your rationalization for that is that it's for the planet, there's nothing wrong with that. That may be also a thing people say so they won't get asked too much questions. I've heard that people can put a lot of pressure on other people to make children, the planet argument might be a good justification/counter to avoid being constantly questioned.

> We are capable of believing something without willing to go to the ends of the earth to be consistent with that belief.

I think my point here is that there's a notion of "intensity" or "importence". Having children is a strong belief in many people, and to counter it, you often seem to need a strong belief of the type "climate change is very important", instead of a less strong believe in the type of "I just don't want to".

[errcorrectcode]

How to create an idiocracy and ruin the gene pool: The "smart" people worried about their "carbon footprint" or "quality of life" deciding not to have kids while the knuckle-draggers down the street have 10.

[native_samples]

You realize Idiocracy is based on highly controversial theories of IQ, genetics and eugenics? And that you're also using a rather laughable definition of "smart" that involves deciding not to have children because of some stuff some academics said, when they've been saying the same things for decades and have been proven wrong many times before? This is not a definition of smart I'd subscribe to.

[errcorrectcode]

Are you going to call me racist and sexist now, snowflake?