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.

@AprilMizzel But OP isn't advocating depopulation -she is talking about a personal choice regarding parenthood in the face of climate breakdown as a wellbeing issue. Not eco-fascism.

If we look at the United Nations’ population estimates and medium projections, 64 countries and territories had already passed peak population in 2026.

These projections not only include assumptions about birth rates and life expectancy, but migration, too. We’ll address the sensitivity of these assumptions later.

link to source and maps
https://ourworldindata.org/which-countries-have-already-passed-peak-population-and-when-will-the-rest-do-so

In the map below, you can see which countries they are. Almost all of them are in Europe and East Asia, which have seen rapid reductions in fertility rates and persistently low rates since then. Many Eastern European countries have also seen large numbers emigrating, adding to the decline.
There are a few other, more surprising, countries that may have passed their peak, too. Thailand in Southeast Asia — which dropped below two births per woman in the early 1990s — now has a rate below 1.2. Uruguay in South America has also seen fertility rates drop to an average of 1.4 births per woman.

Many of these countries have only just passed the peak. But some, such as Japan and Italy, peaked more than a decade ago. If we include the UN’s projections to the end of the century, the decline is substantial. South Korea and China’s populations could more than halve. Italy could shrink by more than 40%. Spain and Thailand, by a third.

In the coming decades, many more countries are expected to join them.
By the 2050s, much of South America is projected to have passed the peak. By the 2060s, much of South Asia may do so. This includes the world’s most populous country today: India.

In the map below, you can see which specific countries these are. Using the interactive timeline, you can see how this evolves over different time periods.

These projections of population peaks are based on the UN’s “medium variant” projection, and sensitive to its assumptions about three things: fertility rates, life expectancy, and migration. All of these things are hard to predict 50 years into the future.
Recently, we published a tool that allows you to see how future populations would change if these assumptions were different.

Not so. Fixing climate change needs billions of like minded people to happen. It’s not a one charismatic autocratic genius leader gets it done. It’s been a grass roots movement of millions so far to get the environmental protections we do have. This is a situation where every voice counts, we each may be just a drop, but enough drops make a rain storm.

So what? It’s only the first time in decades. It’s not the first time in history, or even in living memory. It’s never been a given that each generation would be more happy and prosperous than the one before, what gave you that idea?

It is the entire basis of the post-war settlement.

I agree.

Equally, being detached and cynical about the situation is not helpful to anyone, it's a moral emptiness that has it's roots in the culture of consumerism that caused all of the issues to begin with!

What actually needs to be reviv

I'm aware of what she has written - and she is free to have kids or not based on what ever criteria she wants.

But there is a section of population control who are hevaily influenced by eugentic movement in USA that is now wrapping up those old ideas in green concerns for their own reasons. Always worth looking why people are saying what they are and how reliable their "facts" are.

Also frankly there a lot of posters who come on MN to insist that only stupid women have kids - that they haven't seen though the lies or don't realsise it's hard work are too thick to understand climate science.

If OP doens't want kids - for whatever reason that 's fine - she's lucky to live in a socilety that mostly and increasingly deems it entirely her bussiness and choice.

She is also free to judge others that make different choices - and indeed imply every parent even climate scientists who have kids are wrong - but doesn't mean the reasoning is sound or that we all have to agree with it.

What actually needs to be revived is a kind of moral sincerity, we need to find ways of engaging with each other and working towards redeeming what's wrong, cynicism and despair only leads to inertia IMO.

Some scientists are predicting societal collapse by 2050 due to the impacts of climate crisis - mass migration cause by extreme weather, food and water scarcity and the resulting wars over these resources. There is nothing to suggest population collapse will happen sooner.

At what point in history would it have seemed like a good idea, objectively, to bring children into the world?

Quite. The year 536 in south west England a volcano blocked out the weather for 18 months destroying the crops (they didn’t understand what it was so just assumed the end of the world). So there was a famine. We were regularly being attacked by Vikings who raped and murdered costal dwellers.Then the Black Death arrived and killed about one third of the population irrespective of age.

This has all happened before. We’ve had a blessed few decades. That is not normal for humans.

What does it take to wish you weren't born then? If immense suffering won't do it then nothing will. If people love suffering that much why bother even trying to save the planet?

Never. It's always sucked-that should tell people something but apparently it goes right over their heads.

😂 well that’s a new one.

I think the world will be a really, really tough place in 30 years. Of course, children brought up in that situation will know no different and I’m sure will still experience satisfaction and joy, albeit in very changed circumstances to now. I do worry about today’s children, they will grow up in plenty and grow old in hardship 😞

The average global temperature has increased by a grand total of 1.2 degrees since 1850.

I hope this is a useful reply to your question, here goes (not an expert but I do handle scientific literature in my work)

I was interested where this idea of the carbon cost of having children came from and it seems to be from a journal article published in Environmental Science Letters. That article assumes that the children and grandchildren of people alive today will in the future still drive combustion cars and heat their houses using fossil fuels (just with modest efficiency gains). In reality we are much further along the path to decarbonization than that in western countries altogether so I think it overestimates the carbon cost of children.

Furthermore, it's illogical to blame the current generation for two generations worth of future emissions (why can't I just blame my grandmother for everything and edit my personal carbon footprint to zero? It's just a weird way to slice the data and doesn't fit with anything else we do in the CO2 budgeting space)

Mitigating climate change is at least in part about allowing the human race to continue on earth, which obviously requires future generations. It's also about avoiding desperate societal collapse (which would certainly happen if one were theoretically able to crunch population growth down to zero starting tomorrow).

We shouldn't be bringing our children up to have the same carbon habits as their parents. Progress is being made on this but it's bloody slow so far.

Edit: typo

And to answer your question about fear for your theoretical children's future, I think it isn't as bad as you fear. We have probably said goodbye to the scenario where we keep warming to 1.5 degrees C but the model where the world sees 8 degrees of global warming has also been retired. Global efforts, feeble though they are, have already averted the most catastrophic scenario.

It's a fine line to tread between concern and optimism where the climate is concerned and we all have to find our own line through that. Climate deniers exploit both ends of the spectrum (from shut up and drink cocktails in the sun to the clinates fucked anyway we may as well keep burning it via).

Some people will choose to express their hope for just climate solutions by having children and some people won't. Personally I did (two decades ago so with different information at my fingertips) and I think I'd make the same decision again today.

Furthermore, it's illogical to blame the current generation for two generations worth of future emissions (why can't I just blame my grandmother for everything and edit my personal carbon footprint to zero? It's just a weird way to slice the data and doesn't fit with anything else we do in the CO2 budgeting space)

I have always thought the same thing. Our carbon footprint is individual.
Counting the children we have as under our own is ridiculous.

Pets should be counted more. Did you know that pet food for dogs and cats account for 30% of all meat consumption in western countries! And that a dog is 800kg of CO2 emissions per year? That is the same as two round trip flights to Europe per year, or driving a petrol car 3,000km in a year.

@NullaEffugium no kids no carbon footprints. If you choose to have kids you're adding to global warming. Unless you adopted.

What about pets?

@Goldenbear
No, having a pet does not have as large a carbon footprint as having a child. A child's lifetime emissions are vastly higher—often by orders of magnitude—due to decades of resource consumption, transportation, education, and healthcare, whereas an average dog emits about 770 kg of (\text{CO}_2\text{e}) per year and a cat emits roughly 310 kg. 1, 2, 3]

Comparing Annual and Lifetime Emissions

• Pet Dog: Emits an average of 770 kg \(\text{CO}_2\text{e}\) annually (though large dogs can exceed 2,500 kg depending on diet and size).
• Pet Cat: Emits roughly 310 kg \(\text{CO}_2\text{e}\) annually.
• Human Child: Estimates suggest having one fewer child reduces a parent's broader generational emissions footprint by 58 tonnes of \(\text{CO}_{2}\) per year of life, driven by a full human lifespan of high-level consumption and societal infrastructure.

You clearly don't understand climate Science though.

https://theconversation.com/why-parents-shouldnt-be-saddled-with-environmental-guilt-for-having-children-189933

Is climate change really a reason not to have children? Here’s four reasons why it’s not that simple
These ideas have gained traction through the efforts of activist groups such as the BirthStrike movement and UK charity Population Matters.

....
When broken down like this, the carbon footprint of having a child is much less drastic and no longer stands out compared to other consumption choices. According to one estimate that follows this logic, each parent bears responsibility for about 45 tonnes of additional CO₂ emissions. This is the same as taking one transatlantic return flight every four years of one’s lifetime.

This is a moral philphovy view point
https://justice-everywhere.org/general/why-it-can-be-ok-to-have-kids-in-the-climate-emergency/

If you don't want kids - don't have them.

I have also seen articles and studies claiming we should stop having pets due to carbon impact and plans to mitiagte.

https://grist.org/culture/the-climate-paradox-of-having-a-dog/

https://earth.org/environmental-impact-of-pets/

Again have pets if you want but they do have an impact.

Wait until you discover that the world isn’t flat! 🤯