[xienze]

> Right now the absolute worst thing you can do for the environment is to have a child as a westerner.

Just out of curiosity, are you also opposed to immigration from third world countries into first world ones?

[GekkePrutser]

No I'm not. I am opposed to unlimited immigration though due to the shock effect on society.

[xienze]

Surely you can see where the issue is, don’t you? How can a westerner having a baby be any worse than an immigrant making their way to a western country, from a carbon footprint perspective? To me you can’t logically say that westerners having babies is a problem and still be OK with any amount of immigration, at least if the environment is your argument.

[GekkePrutser]

That's not really an immigration issue but a distribution of wealth issue IMO. Something we also have to reduce to have a more sustainable world.

The issue is that the source of our wealth externalises the cost to the environment. The problem is really with our western society, not the people.

It's pretty likely African immigrants can teach us a thing or two about living more in harmony with nature.

[xienze]

> It's pretty likely African immigrants can teach us a thing or two about living more in harmony with nature.

Well this is definitely a line of tortured logic I’ve never heard before in order to square “babies bad, immigrants OK.” But again, who has a higher carbon footprint? An African in Africa or an African in the USA? IMO if your concern is carbon footprint, you need to be against both western births and replacement immigration.

[GekkePrutser]

What we have to tackle is not immigration. It's the reason for it (too much discrepancy in standards of living), and our own pollution we put on the planet.

Because we are the main polluters on this planet, not them. We produce tens of times more pollution per person than people in Africa. The buck stops with us. We have to set a more sustainable standard of living and help others to attain it too. It's very unfair that where you're born defines your standard of living.

By looking purely at immigration you're looking only at one tiny piece of the puzzle and disregarding all the others.

[xienze]

The standard of living will never ever be the same all over the world. There will always be rich countries and poor countries. Always have, always will. The fact of the matter is that population growth is out of control in poor parts of the world and every last one of those people want to migrate to countries where the standard of living, and therefore carbon footprint, is higher. Which is why I find it maddening that people lecture westerners to stop having children when birth rates are already below replacement, and at the same time see no problem with allowing never ending numbers of people to instantly elevate their carbon footprint via migration. It’s just not a logically consistent set of viewpoints to hold if your primary concern is climate change.