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: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwZ0ZUy7P3E" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwZ0ZUy7P3E</a><p>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.<p>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.
Hm. I always think these statements are a bit weird and somewhat trying to hide something else.<p>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.<p>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.
"Don't have a lot of kids, it's bad for the environment" is an objectively pro-dysgenic argument.<p>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.<p>It's an unsustainable practice. It's also the answer to the commentor below asking, <i>"If you're not having children, who are you saving the planet for?"</i><p>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.
<i>"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)."</i><p><a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541" rel="nofollow">http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541</a><p><a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3kn5z9/stop-telling-people-not-to-have-kids-to-save-the-planet" rel="nofollow">https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3kn5z9/stop-telli...</a>
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.<p>What I fear most is intelligent people having fewer children creating a even dumber society.
Why people are so short sighted and focus only on the numbers instead of seeing the root cause?<p>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.<p>Reducing the numbers while keeping this insanity going will no help much, it will only slighly delay the inevitable.
Save the planet for whom?<p>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.
According to this: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons</a><p>She won't save the planet acting this way
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.
It's an interesting question of whether someone (e.g. my future childhood)) will produce more value than they consume.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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!
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.
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).<p>It’s because we’re acting like humans.<p>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.<p>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.
Fine, but people that don't give a shit still reproduce. Result: More kids that don't give a shit, and less that do.<p>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.
Intelligence and conscientiousness are > 50% heritable. Political attitudes, including environmentalism, are also highly heritable. Adult intelligence is between 70-80% based on genetic factors.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>Choosing between living in a really nice city and having kids is a difficult choice.
I'm not having children because they are awful creatures, and even worse the grow up to become adult humans.<p>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?!
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.