'I’m not having children because I want to save the planet'

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-43699464/i-m-not-having-children-because-i-want-to-save-the-planet

by Mimino123 • 8 years ago

33 100 8 years ago

bbc.com

bitxbitxbitcoin• 8 years ago

Are there a disproportionate amount of people in the tech industry that end up making this decision?

azeotropic• 8 years ago

If you're not having children, who are you saving the planet for?

colmvp• 8 years ago

Other people’s children?

kawsper3• 8 years ago

Or your adopted children, you don't have to reproduce to have a child.

extrememacaroni• 8 years ago

Good question, assuming this does help the situation, who should have children and who shouldn't?

317070• 8 years ago

Animals, plants and other beautiful things. Saving it for life in general does not sound too bad? If it goes between leaving a dead rock in space, or keeping this lively rock around albeit without humans, that does not sound too bad. You can turn your question upside-down. Why should there be humans around to enjoy it in order for it to be a thing to strive for?

taneq• 8 years ago

Earth's gonna get hit by another big meteorite at some point. When we get to that point, any species that hasn't been lifted off the planet by humans (or whatever equivalent is around at that point) are gonna be wiped out regardless. We're the best hope for a continued existence in the long run, for all life.

And if the argument is that animals are happier without humans around, you should watch some nature documentaries. Nature is brutal.

Will_Parker• 8 years ago

Why should there be humans around to enjoy it in order for it to be a thing to strive for?

Advanced consciousness may be the key thing the universe has going for it.

richforrester2• 8 years ago

For the people who don't give 2 shits.

I realize that sounds like a meme, but it's kinda true, isn't it?

Might be better to have kids so you can rease them as super-heroes that fight the planet-killers?

This is a very un-ycombinator feeling thread.

js83• 8 years ago

Might be better to have kids so you can rease them as super-heroes that fight the planet-killers?

Please don't. While I understand that you might think that it is unfair to those people who decide not to have kids, they made the decision.

What you're suggesting is arguably worse. I certainly wouldn't want to be raised with onus of having to clean up the planet after the wild party of my parents.

aetherspawn• 8 years ago

Seems counter intuitive for a bunch of apparently smart people to write themselves out of the gene pool.

ashelmire• 8 years ago

It’s almost like their attitude isn’t very smart at all. It’s a naive reaction to the issue.

koolba• 8 years ago

Those of us that think they're not so smart are quite happy with the net effect on the gene pool.

shubb2• 8 years ago

We are not our children. Though they might carry our genes, our ideas, and our appearance, we will absolutely still be dead one day.

Other peoples children are almost genetically identical to us, and to ours. Depending on how you live your life, people other than your children might carry more of your ideas forward. And in the scheme of things, all humans look like you, when compared to rabits.

Only caring about your own children seems like a strange place to start.

ithkuil• 8 years ago

there is a certain selective pressure to tend to care a little bit more about your children than somebody else's children (as well as caring to a broader kin such as humanity vs rabbits).

it's not right or wrong, it's just an instinct that has been selected through evolution because apparently it favours carriers of such genes to outnumber those who don't.

reformedjuju• 8 years ago

My guess would be for some imaginative, idyllic Eden where all animals are herbivores and all remaining humans sit around solar ovens getting high off their own hubris.

ForHackernews4• 8 years ago

Does only human life have value? Or should other organisms exist as well?

mavdi3• 8 years ago

The kinda comment that shows how arrogant we are in thinking if there are no humans, the planet isn't worth saving.

ianai• 8 years ago

The solution is probably buried in the reasons people use to not have children. The “costs” to raise a child can easily exceed a family’s abilities. In the US, maternity leave, if offered at work, only lasts the first few months. But the child’s need to be supervised 24/7 doesn’t end for maybe even a decade after that. (I don’t know the real timeframe, but suffice to say it’s years.) A family needs to find someone or company to watch their child(ren) for years. That alone is a prohibitive requirement. I think society could solve two problems with one here, but clearly not with current market factors. Society could subsidize child care - thus increasing employment, GDP (ultimately), and family formation.

This is just a hypothetical example.

lsd5you2• 8 years ago

Unfortunately this amounts to unreciprocated virtue. Ultimately I believe all the demographic optimism will be confounded as we are effectively selecting for women who are broodier (and similar for men). Having met women who 'just love' the feeling of having a baby inside them. It's not something learned.

vincnetas• 8 years ago

I missed that opportunity. Now my only option is to populate earth (mars and everything else if possible) with better humans than i am.

pixelbreaker3• 8 years ago

http://vhemt.org/

qrbLPHiKpiux• 8 years ago

To think one persons’ action on not having one or two kids will save the planet. Must think highly of themselves to think it will make a difference.

kawsper3• 8 years ago

Do you recycle?

Ygg22• 8 years ago

Do you recycle anything other than tin and glass?

tobyhinloopen2• 8 years ago

I bet you also don't vote :)

ForHackernews4• 8 years ago

You're not just avoiding the environmental impact of your hypothetical children, but also grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren and so on.

gnode3• 8 years ago

Or very lowly of themselves, making a selfless decision that is so personally significant, yet by itself so objectively insignificant.

Although in the interviewee's case, it seems she personally didn't want to have children anyway, and considers environmental concerns to be a justification for that preference.

lost_my_pwd• 8 years ago

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

chubs• 8 years ago

I used to work with a guy who said he used to have this mentality, and now he's older and childless, he deeply regrets it.

pixelbreaker3• 8 years ago

'childfree'. He only says he regrets it to make you feel better about having one.

davidy123• 8 years ago

There are also a lot of people who regret having children, which causes a lot of misery too. Children are certainly a gap-filler for a lot of people, but imo there's nothing wrong with being content with other people having them, and plenty of ways to interact / benefit from them (aka "society.")

irpapakons• 8 years ago

I am skeptical of people who make such statements. If he deeply regrets it, what exactly would he expect his children would do to improve his life? It's not the children's job to save the parents from their emotional loneliness and give their life meaning. Children grow up and are their own people. If he deeply regrets how his life turned out, he would probably be unhappy even if he had children, or worse inappropriately demanding, placing his needs on the children.

pasta• 8 years ago

"having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight) and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year)."

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3kn5z9/stop-telli...

thesumofall• 8 years ago

What if that not born child makes the critical breakthrough discovery?

ForHackernews4• 8 years ago

What critical breakthrough discovery?

We're not going to magically fix climate change.

wiz21c• 8 years ago

From the study :

"For the action 'have one fewer child,' we relied on a study which quantified future emissions of descendants "

Now imagine people taking the plane, say 40 times in their life : 401.6 = 64 and living car free half during, say 40 years : 2.4 0.5 * 40 = 48 => total = 64+48=112.

So by changing the way of life, you can make as much as your "one child fewer" proposal. What I say is that the "one child" scenario is not much better than changing the way we live.

hycaria2• 8 years ago

And very piously hope that the said children will be as ecologically minded, because society as it is is definitely not going that path. Everything in society will encourage away from a simple life.

klokoman• 8 years ago

Good job, more space for people who don't care about the planet or anything outside their tribe

notjtrig• 8 years ago

That's what I'm thinking, my 7 year old is very pro environment. It's easy to offset his carbon footprint as a child and he's been interested in conservation from a young age. 10/10 would recommend

viach• 8 years ago

According to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

She won't save the planet acting this way

tobyhinloopen2• 8 years ago

Fine, but people that don't give a shit still reproduce. Result: More kids that don't give a shit, and less that do.

She could better have 10 kids, so her kids can "out-vote" the kids that don't give a shit, and they can put their head together to make a real change.

cornholio3• 8 years ago

If voting habits were genetic we could replace natural selection with electoral selection. In a sense, Europe experimented with that in the first half of the 20th century, didn't go well.

smaudet2• 8 years ago

This is the false assumption that your offspring think like you do - sure, it definitely helps, but if you want to have kids and operate in this way, you have to work a lot harder than just sending them to school.

For a lot of people, they will have more effect doing things today and informing future generations than they could by having their own kids.

That being said, if anyone is at all serious about carbon footprint reduction, the message should be clear - your job in life is less about how many kids you have, and more about how many other people you can stop having kids.

Birth control is one big step, desensitized sex is another big one (more porn!), even more effective would be a child tax or even limit. A tax is more humane and would allow those who have generally lived better to produce more, anyways, than those idiots who 'dont care'

mavdi3• 8 years ago

You're incorrectly assuming that a shit giving parent will have shit giving kids.

microtheo• 8 years ago

We should develop a model, but wouldn't it be more efficient to have children and educate them rather than letting others influence our future?

LandR• 8 years ago

Why on earth is the decision of a random woman not having children on the BBC?

daenz• 8 years ago

Great point. It seems to suggest that her decision is important for other people to hear and also consider. Either consider as in "I should save the environment and not have kids too" or as in "Wow, this is a warped perspective."

ignoramceisblis2• 8 years ago

Headlines and articles essentially identical to this one have occurred a number of times throughout the years, like you point out, largely focusing on one person or a small group of people.

I'm unsure how much viewership and engagement they expect to get from these articles, but they obviously think it's a story that other people should at least read (if not live by). At the expense of other matters, naturally.

Ambroos2• 8 years ago

Hm. I always think these statements are a bit weird and somewhat trying to hide something else.

I don't want children because I really don't want to have children. I think children are a ton of work and I really don't think I'd get enough out of it to make it worth the investment. It's a bit of a rational look at things, but that's how I feel about it too. Being gay complicates the whole process anyway.

I often get weird responses from people if I tell them this, as if I gave them a slap in the face, so I get why people would hide behind the environmentalist point of view.

nspattak2• 8 years ago

I couldn't agree more. IMO, not wanting children for one's personal reasons is perfectly fine, there is no need to make it look like there is a higher noble reason behind it.

IMNSHO what is completely unacceptable is having children just because you "have to".

hycaria2• 8 years ago

But people really rarely ask this noble question to themselves. Why the need for numerous children considering our planet's state ? Isn't one enough and better for the environment ?

usrusr3• 8 years ago

Not hiding, because there is a world of a difference between "because of x" and "exclusively because of x".

Emphasizing that one argument of many is a defensive act, inspired by the almost universal subtext that parents are somehow better human beings than the childless.

Ambroos2• 8 years ago

OK, I can see that. For me the environmental impact is a nice bonus, but it's never something I'd mention as a reason for not wanting children.

glaberficken• 8 years ago

I think age, or the stage of life you are at changes the way you think about these things radically. The same way we think we know everything when we are in our teens and the whole "adult" world is clueless. When we are young adults (20 to 35) we tend to think we will never want children, but some people later find that they change their mind. I personally believe you should follow your natural instincts (easier said than done).

usrusr3• 8 years ago

I fully expect life at advanced age to be more fulfilling with children than without. Even complaining that they never return your calls would probably beat asking unpleasant what if questions. But is that really worth adding a multiple of your personal footprint to the problems of all future generations?

sshine• 8 years ago

I've fluctuated in this way through the decades. Instead of promoting my current stance, I've come to promote not having a single, unchanging factor (convenience or ideological).

Having hardcore opinions on anything causes stagnation, so I pick them carefully.

pixelbreaker3• 8 years ago

I'm not having children because they are awful creatures, and even worse the grow up to become adult humans.

I am doing it for selfish reasons, it's cheaper not to have them and the entitled shits would never look after me in retirement, so why bother?!

melicerte2• 8 years ago

We are the result of our choices ;-)

haglin• 8 years ago

100 billion could, without problem, live on this planet using nuclear energy and vertical farming.

melicerte2• 8 years ago

100 Billion, all farting at least once a day, and you might have the biggest global warming ever.

ganzolo• 8 years ago

Just making up to 2 children is having a similar impact. 2 is just bellow population renewable rate. Is everybody was having 2 children world population would slowly shrink.

The real deal nowadays are people having 3 or more children. Once you realize that we are consuming 1.5 times what the earth can renew every year, it is a complete non-sense to make more than 2 children.

DanielleMolloy2• 8 years ago

Every time I hear a rational, intelligent person expounding why they decided not to procreate, I have to think about the opening scene of Idiocracy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwZ0ZUy7P3E

Don't get me wrong, everybody is free to make their own decisions (and I would be the last demanding from anybody to go through parenthood), but sometimes it seems as if intelligence is not an evolutionary advantage.

There are whole subcultures of people who spend their life breeding, while especially the DNA lines of intelligent, working women just seem to end there. And it does not help that there are all these seemingly rational argumentation lines against children, e.g. about environmental impact. If you can pass on your education (and maybe some intelligence-related DNA), it may help society more overall in the end. Think of a big birthday party of an educated grandparent you may have visited - this procreation thing is an exponential function.

js83• 8 years ago

I get it. But it's their children battle. (Not to mention that Idiocracy is not coming, general intelligence seems to be not decreasing, despite the claims to the contrary.) Why should the people who decide not to have kids be held responsible for the failure of evolution? They didn't invent or promote the mechanism..

In my view, to say "you should have kids because then stupid people will win" is as much a rationalization to have kids like "I do not have kids to avoid environmental disaster" might be a rationalization for something else.

lsd5you2• 8 years ago

This is just wishful thinking. There is evidence that base intelligence is decreasing. It is just improvements to education (and possibly fudged statistics) can mask the effect, for a while at least.

DanielleMolloy2• 8 years ago

I'm not blaming anybody, everyone has freedom to decide. It is better to be no parent than a parent who never wanted to be in this role.

I want to point out that the evolutionary mechanisms are always active, and intelligent humans rationalizing against procreation (something that primarily educated humans seem to do) are part of the evolutionary game.

zzzcpan• 8 years ago

Right. Smart people can teach other children, help other children and so on. There is absolutely no necessity to procreate to let stupid people win. And might be even stupider and very inefficient to waste time selfishly on your children, if you really don't want stupid people to win.

kawsper3• 8 years ago

I think of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcx-nf3kH_M

beenBoutIT• 8 years ago

Intelligent men and intelligent women ultimately have to make a realistic assessment of their odds of meeting an intelligent partner with a compatible personality type, and come to the conclusion that they will ultimately either settle or die alone. I don't know any guys that I would consider extremely intelligent that haven't totally abandoned the childish dream of finding an equally intelligent woman. It's on par with never starting a career because you're expecting to win Powerball Lotto. Less-intelligent people literally have perfect intellectual matches everywhere they look, and they can realistically expect to find 'soulmates' that they can marry. Intelligent people are lucky if they can find an intelligent friend to really communicate with and someone else that they can tolerate long enough to marry and procreate with separately.

redblacktree• 8 years ago

I've been exposed to this exact attitude in the past. (in fact, from a previous girlfriend. I apparently met her bar for intelligence; she did not meet my bar for caring and empathy) I've given it a fair amount of thought over the years, and I'm always dumbfounded that she didn't stop to consider just how arrogant and one-dimensional this attitude is. There is more to a person than "intelligence," however you choose to measure that.

boblivion• 8 years ago

Well if she finds having children not to be attractive, that's fine. But I doubt that further decline of birthrates in the West will stop overpopulation.

gnode3• 8 years ago

Overpopulation isn't ultimately the problem, but rather over-consumption of finite resources. If people consume resources in an unbounded way, then population doesn't matter. The energy consumption of someone in the US is roughly 30x that of someone in Bangladesh for instance. With advances in technology, particularly in automation, we will be able to industrialise to a greater extent, and consume more.

abstractmaths• 8 years ago

It's an interesting question of whether someone (e.g. my future childhood)) will produce more value than they consume.

Obviously, selfishly, my own child is inherently invaluable to me. But that kid could also grow up to make a positive change in the world, or at least make the change which leads to a positive change in the world.

On the other hand, consumption in Western countries is already and increasingly way too far in excess of what's necessary or healthy. So if my kid ends up simply getting by in life, even raising them to be "eco-conscious" wouldn't be nearly enough to offset the normal bite each person takes out of the environmental pie. And that's just trying to break even.

I'm optimistic about this and do plan on having kids, but the goal is to raise them to make a real positive change in the world, at a high level. That way the cost they incur on the world will be seen as a worthwhile investment, not a waste of resources!

givan• 8 years ago

Why people are so short sighted and focus only on the numbers instead of seeing the root cause?

The root cause is how we live and treat our enviorment, our society with it's consumerims uses mostly non regenerable energy sources to produce mountain of useless junk that breaks fast or it's out of fashion, driving big polluting cars and eating lots of meat that leads for deforestation to provide land for the crops that are eaten by billions of animals that are slaughtered every year and many other irational things the modern man is doing to it's planet, it's home.

Reducing the numbers while keeping this insanity going will no help much, it will only slighly delay the inevitable.

smaudet2• 8 years ago

Uh, and who do you think does all those things in a society?

Population reduction is not sn overnight fix, no, but it is not in effective practiced at scale. Even a 5 % reduction in population over the next couple years would likely offset any flagrant increases in resource usage (equally distributed across earth, of course).

Enough people die every second to make simply not adding to the human population a viable solution.

And it will happen anyways, if enough smart people don't exist, laws of the universe are such that all the stupid ones will get into a resource war and kill each other off.

jimmytucson• 8 years ago

Millions of species flourish and procreate without destroying the planet. Their populations rise and fall in harmony with other species and the resources nature provides. Only one species is destroying the planet, and it’s not because we’re acting like animals (procreating and such).

It’s because we’re acting like humans.

We grow food where it’s not supposed to. We survive disease, natural disasters, shortages. We live too damn long—not only as a species but as individuals. Think of one natural check or balance we haven’t either turned off or are actively working to. Even minor inconveniences like boredom or unwanted facial hair we’re putting coal to flame to destroy.

If you want to save the planet, have lots of babies, live a simple life, and die young. And if you’re wondering where I got this from, watch Disney’s The Jungle Book. It’s all you need to know.

mavdi3• 8 years ago

die young

No thanks, I'll just not have babies.

fractalwrench• 8 years ago

HCOL areas probably make this viewpoint more common than it otherwise would be. It's hard enough living in Bath as a couple on the median wage, and having children makes things very difficult financially.

Choosing between living in a really nice city and having kids is a difficult choice.

simonsarris• 8 years ago

"Don't have a lot of kids, it's bad for the environment" is an objectively pro-dysgenic argument.

People with a low IQ will not understand the argument and no one with low conscientiousness will care about it. "Don't have kids, for sustainability" is just an argument that the children of low-IQ low-conscientiousness people should inherit the Earth.

It's an unsustainable practice. It's also the answer to the commentor below asking, "If you're not having children, who are you saving the planet for?"

Smart people need to have more children. Areas of the earth that pollute terribly by dumping garbage into rivers, etc, need to stop. Rich nations need to stop feeding poor nations until they have refugee-creating population explosions, and people need to get over how mean that sounds if they actually want to save the planet.

jbob2000• 8 years ago

I am reminded of a charity that was posted to HN recently. They were helping mothers in Africa birth children. I asked what they were doing to help the children after they were born, and the reply was that other charities would fill that gap.

So ignorant. It's just blind heart-fullness. Yeah, let's help bring more children into poverty! It was refreshing to read your comment and I hope that other technologists apply critical thinking to their charity.

js83• 8 years ago

"Don't have kids, for sustainability" is just an argument that the children of low-IQ low-conscientiousness people should inherit the Earth.

I'll play devil's advocate and say, maybe they should. Who do you think has a lower ecological footprint - a homeless alcoholic or a successful scientist? There is even a theory that posits that intelligence evolved in order to increase entropy faster.

I have nothing against intelligence; it's a gift, as far as I can tell. But the claim that intelligent people (with few exceptions) are somehow going to live more sustainably is just ridiculous.

ignoramceisblis2• 8 years ago

I don't think it's ridiculous. Assuming that one component of "intelligent behavior" is the ability to think "further into the future," that is, not purely beholden to feeling good in the here and now, intelligent people are more likely to make more sustainable choices (if only for their own sake).

quantumofmalice• 8 years ago

Intelligence and conscientiousness are > 50% heritable. Political attitudes, including environmentalism, are also highly heritable. Adult intelligence is between 70-80% based on genetic factors.

Articles like this are encouraging the most intelligent and highly conscientious of us not to have children and, in the long run, will destroy the planet rather than save it.

The right attitude is one of stewardship: we have a sacred duty to preserve the planet and a sacred duty to produce intelligent, thoughtful children to enjoy that planet and to carry on our work.

amriksohata• 8 years ago

Save the planet? Its what humans are doing on the planet rather than having more humans, just because a small number of people dont want children to save the planet is not going to stop all the other humans from polluting it. Its an ineffective solution, its better to have fewer children and educate people on meat pollution and carbon output.

What I fear most is intelligent people having fewer children creating a even dumber society.

stmfreak• 8 years ago

Save the planet for whom?

I guess I should appreciate when people choose to leave more resources for my DNA to exploit. I plan to make the most of the sentience that my genetic ancestors wrested from the muck.

dmritard96• 8 years ago

I negotiated with my wife to only have biological children below the replacement rate barring unexpected twins, etc. If we want more kids than this, we will adopt.

'I’m not having children because I want to save the planet'

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