Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova, Marc Morano – Climate philosopher Travis Rieder has been touring the country, trying to persuade university students not to have kids – and promoting ideas for restricting childbirth, including tax penalties against people who decide to have a child.
Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?
Standing before several dozen students in a college classroom, Travis Rieder tries to convince them not to have children. Or at least not too many.
He’s at James Madison University in southwest Virginia to talk about a “small-family ethic” — to question the assumptions of a society that sees having children as good, throws parties for expecting parents, and in which parents then pressure their kids to “give them grandchildren.”
Why question such assumptions? The prospect of climate catastrophe.
…
Rieder and his Georgetown collaborators have a proposal, and the first thing they stress is that it’s not like China’s abusive one-child policy. It aims to persuade people to choose fewer children with a strategy that boils down to carrots for the poor, sticks for the rich.
Ethically, Rieder says poor nations get some slack because they’re still developing, and because their per capita emissions are a sliver of the developed world’s. Plus, it just doesn’t look good for rich, Western nations to tell people in poor ones not to have kids. He suggests things like paying poor women to refill their birth control and — something that’s had proven success — widespread media campaigns.
In the 1970s and ’80s, a wave of educational soap operas in Latin America, Asia and Africa wove family planning into their plot lines. Some countries did this when they faced economic crisis. The shows are credited with actually changing people’s opinions about family size.
For the sticks part of the plan, Rieder proposes that richer nations do away with tax breaks for having children and actually penalize new parents. He says the penalty should be progressive, based on income, and could increase with each additional child.
Think of it like a carbon tax, on kids. He knows that sounds crazy.
…
Read more: http://www.npr.org/2016/08/18/479349760/should-we-be-having-kids-in-the-age-of-climate-change
There is no evidence the world faces a climate apocalypse. All such claims are based on broken climate models which have never demonstrated predictive skill.
But people who act on Rieder’s well meaning but in my opinion scientifically unsound advice may be opening themselves to a lifetime of misery.
The West is full of unhappy couples who waited too long to have a family, thanks to the financial and social pressures of modern life. An entire industry has arisen to try to help desperate couples have a child, many of whom need medical assistance because they are too old to conceive naturally. Adding to the financial and social pressures prospective parents face will exacerbate this tragedy.
When his prophesied doomsday passes uneventfully, Rieder may have the integrity to do what James Lovelock did, and apologise for being wrong. But by then, for most people who listened to and acted upon Rieder’s advice not to have children, it will be too late to undo the harm.
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I sometimes wonder what would happen if North America traded places with Africa. A complete human population swap. We would leave behind the First Nations of course. It leads me to conclude that it doesn’t matter where you are as much as what you do when you get there.
Incidentally African countries still have high birth rates, even as the rates from China and India (the world’s 2 most populous countries) have dropped. Japan has a birth rate of 8 (per 1,000 people) while most African countries are in the 40s. Most western countries are in the 10-15 range.
I see that the perna-wrong Ehrlich has a heir-apparent.
The anti-life agenda of the modern western statist is across the board — from celebrating abortion to any form of non-procreative sex , ie : mutual masturbation .
I guess he hasn’t gotten the memo. World population is near a peak and we are heading for a decline in our lifetime possibly.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/01/11/overcrowding-nah-the-worlds-population-may-actually-be-declining/
Seems we should be encouraging educated, wealthy, intelligent couples to have more children.
If there is any “surplus” population, it is the troughers who live on the backs of the producers. Society needs farmers, miners, etc, it does not need parasites, such as Climate Philosophers.
There is no evidence the world faces a climate apocalypse. On the other hand, there is some significant evidence that Western Civilization is in danger of collapse from, among other things, not having enough children! Read David Goldman’s “How Civilizations Die”. https://www.amazon.com/How-Civilizations-Die-Islam-Dying/dp/159698273X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471702404&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=David+Goldman+how+Civilizatioms+die
Paul of Alexandria—I suspect the declining birth rate in most western European countries is the reason the PTB are encouraging all this immigration–bodies to work, pay taxes, and support the “pensioners”
w/o kids there is nobody to work to pay his pension/social security.
He who has the smallest carbon footprint, wins. His fondest climate hope is to die young.
Moron.
’nuff said.
And then there’s always forced abortion.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), an organization promoting “the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity,” prepared a report for the UN’s 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference that called for “reducing population in the interest of the environment.” At the conference itself, Zhao Baige, China’s vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission, pointed to China’s policy of forced abortion as a necessary means of controlling CO2 emissions. “”I’m not saying that what we have done is 100 percent right,” she said, “but I’m sure we are going in the right direction and now 1.3 billion people have benefited” (Xing, “Population control called key to deal“).
Where one-child policy (i.e. forced abortion) reflected the psychosis of the ruling minority, selective-child policy (i.e. Pro-Choice) reflects the psychosis of a general population (and a ruling quasi-religious minority).
I had a very earnest young woman turn up at my door asking me to sign a climate action petition of some sort. So I talked about what was concerning her, got the usual responses. I tried reason and even proposed a look at data and got no traction, she looked at me like I was some kind of neanderthal.
Her parting shot was angry and she told me that while I was uncaring she intended to do her part in that she never intended to have children.
I decided to take the high ground so I wished her well with her decision, further more I wished for her a long and happy career and life and to be blessed with good taste and the opportunity to purchase and enjoy all the expensive trappings her heart could desire.
She looked confused and asked me why I was being so nice to her, after all we had a fundamental disagreement on all that she held dear.
“Ah” I said “I am playing the long game. In your case my descendants will be able to pick up a lot of really nice stuff at your estate sale for pennies on the dollar”
Ha! Nicely played! She’s probably going to be thinking about that conversation for the rest of her life.
Very funny, but also very sad — the CAGW indoctrination of the young generation really amounts to mental cruelty.
The population control fetish has a long and depraved history culminating in selective-child. I guess women and men having been making the politically incorrect choice. It’s for our Posterity.
To paraphrase Spiro Agnew — Malthusian misanthropic malcontents.
Things get curiouser and curiouser as the crazies find their voice.
This is the third such story in the past couple of days.
Travis Rieder has gone over to the ‘Voluntary Human Extinction Movement’. Yes, there is such a movement in today’s world (http://www.vhemt.org).
I wish the members of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement much success in not breeding. 🙂
Unfortunately no. Several years ago they held a convention and proudly posted pictures of their kids! Like progressives/leftists the world over, they don’t understand the concept of ‘hypocrisy’.
Are there any Shakers left?
I do remember reading an account some years ago that the Shakers were no more. Someone could have restarted them since, though.
When we Nationalists take power, we will mass-produce genetically prefect white babies using a special breed of pig. A healthy 1,500ppm will be the goal. Chosen ones like Rieder, inconsolable. Maybe he can move to Israel and not have babies or energy there.
Gattaca?
Why should we trust anything a girly-man says who can’t seem to wipe the remnants of a Fudgsicle from his mouth and chin?
Since we are not to have the children to fund our pensions must we commit suicide rather than retire?
Perhaps so. That would reduce our lifetime carbon footprint even further.
How are we to deal with those too spineless to do the decent thing? Recreational homicide or state-sponsored cull? Will the exceptionally gifted and energetic be spared or will it be: “Time’s up. Die”? And if they are to be spared, can the sick and the unemployed be terminated early to compensate?
Or perhaps we”re not seeing the joke in Travis Rieder’s modest proposal. He left off the /sarc tag or something.
Just bring back cigarette smoking into the movies.
The Left hasn’t been able to kill Western Civilization. Yet. But they might talk Westerners into not creating future generations. It will take a little longer, but it will be just as effective.
Reider seems to keep himself ensconced in his ivory tower totally separated from reality. The low growth rates that he proposes have been a recognized problem in Europe, the US, Japan and China for many years. China recently ditched their “one child” policy once they recognized where they would be heading in the future based on verified models. The developed world has been at negative growth for decades. Reider seems intent on putting the developed world into a highly negative death spiral, while the developing world’s population grows at a rate in excess of their rate of economic development. The result of such disastrous policies, in my opinion, would be a shrinking developed world struggling to feed an overpopulated Third World run by a cabal of globalist elites who are totally isolated from the starving masses which their policies created. Reider’s policies would herd the human race into the most dystopian future imaginable.
We can debate endlessly whether climate is a real threat – clearly contributors to this forum think not However it is also clear that increasing populations are a real threat to the sort of stable, comfortable, well resourced lifestyle we enjoy in most of the west.
A time will come when technical and scientific progress is unable to offset the pressure on resources as less well endowed nations aspire to middle class western standards of food, energy, housing, material wealth, travel etc. More space will need to be devoted to the provision of these better standards with increasing urbanisation. Except in countries with very low overall population densities there will be less countryside for all to enjoy. Water resources will be under threat, raw materials will be under pressure, pollution is likely to increase without major changes to recycling and control technologies etc.
Compared to climate change from carbon emissions, the consequences of uncontrolled population growth are far more severe, more immediate, and much easier to forecast with confidence.
Human beings are nothing more than animals with sophisticated skill sets. Uncontrolled population growth cannot continue unabated into the indefinite future and will end in a sharp unpleasant correction at some point as human beings compete for a critical (food, water, energy, materials etc) resource.
A far better strategy would be to recognise the impending stresses and fix the issue thoughtfully before it turns into a real and insoluble problem.
..Your kind of worthless rant has been claimed many times in the past and failed each time and it will continue to fail in the future…The ingenuity of Humans will never cease..
No. Best to let the future deal with their problems. It’s not out job, any more than it was the job of the people of 1900 to deal with ours.
You are free to let your sophistry die with your generation.
I recall the test tube thought experiment from microbiology classes 50 years ago (and subsequent revisions).
The thought experiment: Start with a test tube filled with nutrients and one bacteria. Assume each bacteria splits every minute. After half the food in the test tube is gone, how long before all the food is gone?
Standard answer is one minute.
Revised answer – slightly longer since they will start to cannibalize each other and eat the dead as food becomes scarce.
Soylent Green anyone?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green
Total fool. Seems to be unaware of the law of unintended consequences.
Where one-child policy (i.e. f-orced a-bortion) reflects the psychosis of the ruling minority, selective-child policy (i.e. P-ro-Choice) reflects the psychosis of a general population (and a ruling quasi-religious minority).
If the “Climate Philosopher” thinks excess of people are the problem, why don’t he commit suicide to help “save the planet”? 😀 ahahah
Well, yeah. Seriously, why not indeed? But there’s the left in a nutshell: do as I say, not as I do. That’s why they all drive internal combustion cars, take vacations suing jet aircraft, consume produce and other goods delivered by truck, etc etc.
Stinking bare-faced hypocrisy is absolutely the order of the day.
I think that the term “Climate Philosopher is an Oxymoron. Philosopher comes from the Greek for “lover of wisdom. There is precious little of that in current ‘Climate Science’.
If you want to have fewer births in the world educate all the women of the world,if you take a look were the fewest childern are born, it is in most advanced countries.
Material girls realizing the stereotype attributed to boys.