To think the human race should respectfully die out?

[RomeoLikedCapuletGirls]

I’m not being goady as I’ve genuinely thought about this over the past few years as the following issues have come to the fore:

Climate change
Industrial meat industry
Pandemics

I’ve tried being vegan but always revert to eating meat for health. I’ve come to the conclusion that it was a much needed part of our evolution. The problem is of course the intensive whole scale nature of it, and the suffering it causes. Even the plant industry causes a lot of damage to the environment and ecosystems. The sheer numbers of humans needing feeding is the problem.

Again, with climate change. It’s a question of over-population. The more of us there are the more we deplete our earth’s resources we deplete. Limiting consumption is simply not working so we need something else.

And although we might crack Coronavirus, there’ll be another virus along soon to challenge us. And it’ll spread quickly because there are so many of us.

I’m not advocating mass suicide of course!

Just that we encourage our offspring to not have children until we have either died out or at the very least reduced our numbers to such a point that we are just one species amongst many, living on this planet and not causing the disproportionate amount of harm to the environment and other animals.

There’s nothing to argue that the human race should continue forever.

@RomeoLikedCapuletGirls

I think some posters are being a bit strawmanny. I’m certainly NOT advocating for anyone to prematurely die.

What I’m saying is that our desire to continue reproducing doesn’t justify the amount of suffering that it causes (mass slaughter of animals, mass deforestation and all that entails).

Who knows how many planets there are in the universe that support life? And we have collectively fucked it up.

But we can’t stop because we believe in human exceptionalism. We even create silly stories about God creating us in his own image! How big-headed is that?!

We need to stop having kids. It’s a lose lose situation because our kids are going to suffer from the consequences of over-population anyway.

Or we could stop eating meat, driving and flying everywhere and ordering cheap, mass made shit from China that we don't need. That would solve the problem too.

Obviously these are huge changes and sacrifices, and I'm not pretending I'm better than anyone else in this regard. It just seems to make more sense to at least try those things before opting for intentional, self-imposed mass extinction.

Or we could stop eating meat, driving and flying everywhere and ordering cheap, mass made shit from China that we don't need. That would solve the problem too.

It wouldn't be enough. The only way we could solve the problem without extinction would be to revert to a primitive, self-sufficient lifestyle using only the things we could produce with our own hands - no electricity, no gas, no coal, no petrol, no motorised transport, no plastics.

You're actually right in my view, but then I don't feel that many of our species are covering themselves in glory at the moment!

We need to stop having kids.

How would you bring it about?

If you don’t want any anyway it’s no hardship, but most do, I’m wondering what you’d use to make it happen

Or we could stop eating meat, driving and flying everywhere and ordering cheap, mass made shit from China that we don't need. That would solve the problem too.

Let’s face it. That’s not going to happen. And then we shall make it a lot worse for future generations. and then we’ll be forced to stop reproducing through sheer hardship. Wars over resources, famine over failed crops and economic depression.

If we stop having kids voluntarily there’ll be a lot less suffering and we will get to keep a certain standard of living.

We are animals...our drive is to reproduce...animals go extinct.

All those people saying bigger families in developing countries aren’t an issue because they consume less? You do realise that the middle class is growing at a huge rate in many countries.

I'm not sure people appreciate the extent of the difference in carbon footprint between the world's richest and poorest nations.

"Many countries in the world still have very low per capita CO2 emissions. In many of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa – such as Chad, Niger and the Central African Republic – the average footprint is around 0.1 tonnes per year. That's more than 160 times lower than the USA, Australia and Canada. In just 2.3 days the average American or Australian emits as much as the average Malian or Nigerian in a year. " (from ourworldindata.org/per-capita-co2).

It simply does not make sense to focus on nations with small carbon footprints reducing their birth rate rather than on nations with enormous carbon footprints drastically reducing their consumption.

Interesting.
We can all go back to being hunter food gatherers then. Except the farming genie is already out of the bottle and those of us who know how to do it will continue and feed ourselves.

If we rightly controlled reproductive rates globally, we could eventually reduce the population to a sustainable level.
Unfortunately, the drive to reproduce is so primal that it’ll never happen without coercion and oppression.

It's really old now (1994) and I don't know how much further work has been done to update the figures etc, but this suggests there is an 'optimum human population' of around 1.5- 2 billion, although they do say that figure is based on cultures and technologies not changing radically.

It's all really, really interesting, if also incredibly depressing.

@MarshaBradyo

We need to stop having kids.

How would you bring it about?

If you don’t want any anyway it’s no hardship, but most do, I’m wondering what you’d use to make it happen

As a thought experiment,

1.Roll out Vaccination programs across the world

1. Remove NHS fertility assistance well before those kids would need it. Scare stories about private ivf etc or even active financial ruin of the larger companies

1. chemical steralision through childhood vaccines. Not all, you'd decimate the economy but say 1/3"rd and randomly across all supplies so there was no pattern or bias. Whichever had the highest take up across the counteries.

@RomeoLikedCapuletGirls

Or we could stop eating meat, driving and flying everywhere and ordering cheap, mass made shit from China that we don't need. That would solve the problem too.

Let’s face it. That’s not going to happen. And then we shall make it a lot worse for future generations. and then we’ll be forced to stop reproducing through sheer hardship. Wars over resources, famine over failed crops and economic depression.

If we stop having kids voluntarily there’ll be a lot less suffering and we will get to keep a certain standard of living.

But surely it's more likely to happen than people literally stopping having children?

I agree OP. We're amazing! But we're also incredibly selfish and insular.

You people are scary. I’m shocked that some of you are actually walking around with these thoughts in your head.

Blimey Sleeping! I think I’ll stick with education and reduction of benefits past two dc ;

@Lordamighty

You people are scary. I’m shocked that some of you are actually walking around with these thoughts in your head.

They're only thoughts. I wouldn't worry about people enacting them. It's easy stuff to say when it's all theoretical, easier still if you don't want kids anyway (which obviously isn't everyone, but some).

The earth has out up with a lot worse than humans

We might destroy ourselves but the earth will be fine

Maybe a call to samaritans would help OP

We don't need to stop having children - we just need to have fewer of them.

This could be through a carrot rather than stick method. What about a financial incentive for people who had no or only one child? To make this fair, it could be on a per birth basis so you wouldn't be disadvantaged if you had twins/triplets.

@MarshaBradyo

Blimey Sleeping! I think I’ll stick with education and reduction of benefits past two dc ;

Haha I'm not advocating it!!

I can't actually tall, I have 3 kids. Altho I did get no3 ons BOGOFF deal

Cheered up my evening 🙁

Let’s face it. That’s not going to happen.

Let's approach this whole issue from that angle.

I don't think anyone should be telling their children not to have children. If you've had the pleasure of raising children, they shouldn't be made to feel guilty for doing the same.

@05884124807521689064216a

I don't think anyone should be telling their children not to have children. If you've had the pleasure of raising children, they shouldn't be made to feel guilty for doing the same.

And if you regretted it and wished you hadn't, I don't think you should burden your kid with that regret. If my parent counselled me not to have kids, I'd assume it was either that they deep down thought I couldn't handle it, or that they were so full of regret at having wasted their life on me