to think you can't understand climate science and want kids

[sensiblefootwear]

Hoping that people will (gently, with good evidence) tell me I'm BU.

I love children and have always wanted them. But for the past few years and especially this year I'm finding the science on climate change and the tangible effects of it (houses on fire in nearby towns, schools so hot people's children have been sent home after fainting, looming food and water shortages, etc etc) increasingly difficult to ignore and I can't help but thinking it's an incredibly unwise decision to choose to bring another life into this world.

To be clear, I'm not talking about choosing not to have children because I think it will somehow have any impact on the climate, because of course it won't. I'm talking about choosing not to have them to spare them the horror of what's to come in the next few decades.

Am I being unreasonable to feel this way? I'd really love to hear from people who genuinely understand climate science and know where things are heading, but are still staying firm in their decision to have children in the future.

Well I was burgled the other day so I'm not exactly alive with the milk of human kindness. Apparently I should just be thankful for these wonderful adverse experiences and the worst of mankind though 🙄how I'd have missed out if I wasn't born, what a tragedy.

My daughter PhD in environmental science. Will not have kids because she believes there's little time left.
Although she tells me we have not reached the tipping point in global warming, the world in general are not moving fast enough to prevent it happening. Once it does go over 1.5° there is no turning it back.
I would not consider it wise.
Thing is its not just climate change its the breakdown of society as well.

In this corner, the biosphere. We’ve spent a solid year higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius...... we’re expecting the exhaustion of all arable land around 2050, which is actually kind of moot because studies from institutions as variable as MIT and the University of Melbourne suggest that global civilizational collapse is going to happen starting around 2040 or 2050.
(Peter Watts The MIT Reader )

Weebles wobble but they don't fall down.

Technology is not going to save us, real or imaginary unless we change our behaviour, and i simply dont see that happening right now. Most who rely on technology to save us, are looking for fixes that will allow us to continue to do business as usual without paying a penalty for it?
We have to rely on changing our own behaviour and that for one is having fewer children and educating them beyond screens and into survival.

How cheering

Yep. My mum and dad were born in the late 40s and died in 2013. All of what you said, plus fat pensions (although they didn’t really get to spend those as they died early), but most of their generation have lived the best 80 years of human existence before the decline.

If you’re in that age bracket, no need to point out the conflicts, the recessions etc that happened during that lifetime- I’m not saying that they all had a rosy 80 years. Just that by many measures (economy, health, safety, longevity) they seem to have done the best out of any generation.

There is the "That's one in the eye for Death" argument too - usually made for why some people go and have sex straight after a funeral, but extrapolated out in that babies are a tangible symbol of clinging to hope for the future rather than giving into despair about it.

My daughter has already done that PhD. No one is listening.

No that's just nature-they have no choice in it.

The day I first held my second child in my hands was the day that Trump was elected and I remember wondering what awful future I had brought him to. With my third, there was some climate report saying that our children would wage war over food and water…can’t remember the details.

wanting children kind of overrides all these fears. They are happy now but of course I fear for their future. We are heading towards time of great change which will lead to war and I can only hope that I am raising good humans who will have a positive impact on the whole scenario.

I completely get where you're coming from, although I never wanted kids, but this would have been a moral dilemma for me if I had. I know this isn't the question you asked, but have you thought about fostering/adopting instead? As you're not then responsible for any suffering that child experiences just as a result of climate collapse, and you're (hopefully) providing someone with a loving home who wouldn't otherwise have one, as well as getting to experience the joy of raising a child.

I am also wondering if the 'happy ending' cognitive bias might be relevant here. I think as humans we would always a choose a life that starts poorly and ends well over a life that starts well and ends poorly, even in a (theoretical) scenario where the amount of sad and happy experiences are the same in each life, it's just the order that's different. Logically, even though it doesn't change the amount of pain experienced, the 'sad' ending possibility feels much worse.

I think people's capacity to experience joy in the darkest of situations might be worth considering. There have always been lots of very good reasons not to have children, but people do it anyway because they hope things can be better. I think there is still hope we can turn things around for the climate, though there will be tragedies and losses along the way (just as with wars and famines that have always existed). Maybe read a bit around the subject eg Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl? I haven't read it but have seen it recommended a lot.

You make a fair point
We've left it too late to avoid the dramatic changes coming. Humankind will probably survive, but society will go through massive upheavals in the next 50-100 years.

They’ll figure it out. Or they won’t.

Glad everyone doesn’t think like you or else we’d be extinct.

OP, I'm with you. And I have (older) DC.

Many of us understand the science of the climate emergency. We are becoming increasingly aware of the impact these changes will have on food production and distribution, transport and logistics, scarcity-driven conflicts over natural resources such as water, salination of freshwater sources and desalination of oceans and its impact on marine life and fishing, the collapse of AMOC, rising sea levels and the movement of displaced populations, the spread of new pathogens and future pandemics, the pressures on medicine and health care, climate initiated natural disasters, the vulnerability of housing and shelter and so on, not to mention the kind of societal breakdown that arises in the face of perceived scarcity. It is immense, so big in fact, that the recent Joint Intelligence Committee assessment titled 'Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security' has, some say, been deliberately 'buried' and kept from public scrutiny -it's that worrying.

I think that, when weighing the impact of the climate emergency on almost every aspect of life as we know it, few actually think "M'kay, all of these things are underpinned by good science: this doesn't look too great for my future offspring, but I am going to dedicate my life to alleviating the suffering likely coming our way, and shoulder the responsibility for putting future DC at the centre of this, and they'll thank me."

Instead, there is a sort of capitulation that happens when we are faced with overwhelming and conclusive evidence that we are knowingly going to put our future DC in more challenging circumstances than those in which we ourselves grew up. This is entirely understandable but it doesn't make it any 'better'. This thread has posters comparing being born into a war zone (localised, time-limited and escapable) to the altogether different scenario of tanking weather systems, and deciding on behalf of their future offspring that it'll somehow 'be worth it'. I am totally baffled by this, and can only conclude that perhaps posters who reason along these lines have not experienced sustained suffering and are, for this reason, OK with placing their DC in this situation. To suffer is awful, to be impacted by scarcity is awful. To know the suffering you're in is not just a temporary blip such a delayed flight or a bout of chickenpox, but the way things are going to be going forward -that's awful.

Yet we procreate. I get it and I hear all the stuff about it being -naturally- a selfish act; as if that makes it OK. But selfish is really all that is left when we peel away all the things we may be doing to mitigate impact in our own lives. How are we able to tell ourselves it is in our gift to make this decision on behalf of hitherto unborn children?

A hard circle to square.

This is why I chose to turn off the news to be honest.

There is so much negativity, so many rabbit holes to fall down, so many end of the world scenarios and sensationalised headlines constantly being pumped out on TV, social media, news papers etc.

During covid actually I decided I couldn't do it anymore. I stopped keeping up with the news, I hid all of the big online papers from my news feed on social media, if one slips through I hide that for future. I don't discuss situations with friends and family anymore.

I try and live as sustainably and as well as I can but I am so much happier mentally now for shutting it off.

As trivial as it sounds, take a break OP. Turn off the news and just get on with your life for a bit.

Bloody hell! Honestly the pessimism on this thread is insane. Yes, climate change is real and we need to get serious about it. The world can be a dark and cruel place but there is so much beauty and hope too. Not everyone suffers more than they love and enjoy life. Some of this stuff is a mentality problem. If you see despair everywhere then you will naturally suffer more than someone that sees hope and opportunity. Focus on what you can do to make the world a better place and be a contributor of good.

I don't know if you were on here during COVID OP but that also made me take a lot of posters on here with a grain of salt too.

When I spot a thread like this it makes me think of a local couple who have 11 children together aged 21 (eldest) to 8mo (youngest). Now, if each of these children have two or three children of their own....

Yes, it's worrying. But we do also need the next generation of doctors nurses skilled tradesmen and women etc.

You mean genuinely agree with you on climate science don’t you 🙄

@Itchthescratch I don't think it's 'negativity' or a 'mentality problem' though. It is just how it is. Some posters are suggesting a sort of 'tuning out' approach -why? The least we can do is to be present to the situation and try, hard as it may be, not to flinch. We're all responsible adults.

But two things can be true at once -there is so much joy and beauty, even in the face of the absolute shower that is the climate emergency. I love the natural world, people, and the things we create to bring pleasure to our lives: music, art, food. I love making and growing. I love my family, my friends and my neighbours. People would say I'm an optimistic, positive, upbeat and easy-going person. I work in a profession that is all about hope and confidence in a human future.

But I'll not look away or somehow pretend the climate emergency is not an existential threat to species, communities and cultures, and the cause of much current and future suffering.

or somehow pretend the climate emergency is not an existential threat to species, communities and cultures, and the cause of much current and future suffering

But you don't need to be consistently reading about it to acknowledge it though.

I don't pretend it doesn't exist, I don't disbelieve in climate change and it's effects just because I choose not to read up on it all the time. I know what I can personally do about it already and I do those things when I am able to. I don't need to send myself into a dark place mentally constantly reading up on disaster and doom though. It's on me to protect my head space if I feel necessary.

I think a lot of it depends how you cope with this sort of thing. I have a tendency to catastrophise & end up down rabbit holes and it can genuinely affect my mental health when I spend too much of my mental energy reading negative things.

It doesn't mean I don't believe in it or don't try where I can to be better / improve things. But I try to avoid the triggers where I can in my day to day life and I feel much better for it. And I am also able to think a lot more clearly and rationally when I'm not in the obsessive head space of allowing this sort of stuff into my daily reading / time.

Are the next few decades going to be hard with the climate changing? Yes

Have there been some horrendously difficult points in human history? More than I can count.

There are all kinds of reasons people might have difficult times from macro events to personal challenges. TBH macro events do not tend to have the impact of wellbeing that the personal events do.

I fully understand the problem however I believe that my children are happy. By giving them a strong bases of resilience they will face whatever comes and still be happy

@20once , yes, I think we can all agree that the outlook is hardly a tonic for one's mental health. And you're right, it's here whether we're actively tuning in or not.

I suppose I am just poking a bit at the many suggestions that OP needs to somehow 'lighten up', and quite with her doomism. To me, OP reads as quite rational and not particularly distressed, just genuinely curious: if we accept the science, then how does parenthood not scare the living daylights out of us? If we understand the projections, what on earth makes us think the call to procreate is ours to answer? How can we make it about us? I think these are sincere and sensible questions. Culturally, we centre ourselves and our hopes, dreams and experiences when we decide to make babies, when really, we ought to be taking a more child-centric view: will they thank me?

Thank you for making this point! It really irks me when people automatically suggest adopting as an alternative to having bio children.