Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart – Climate Philosopher and parent Travis Rieder is back, demanding that other people refrain from having children for the sake of the planet.
Science proves kids are bad for Earth. Morality suggests we stop having them.
We need to stop pretending kids don’t have environmental and ethical consequences.
by Travis Rieder / Nov.15.2017 / 7:17 PM ET
A startling and honestly distressing view is beginning to receive serious consideration in both academic and popular discussions of climate change ethics. According to this view, having a child is a major contributor to climate change. The logical takeaway here is that everyone on Earth ought to consider having fewer children.
Although culturally controversial, the scientific half of this position is fairly well-established. Several years ago, scientists showed that having a child, especially for the world’s wealthy, is one of the worst things you can do for the environment. That data was recycled this past summer in a paper showing that none of the activities most likely to reduce individuals’ carbon footprints are widely discussed.
The second, moral aspect of the view — that perhaps we ought to have fewer children — is also being taken seriously in many circles. Indeed, I have written widely on the topic myself.
…
Consider a different case: If I release a murderer from prison, knowing full well that he intends to kill innocent people, then I bear some responsibility for those deaths — even though the killer is also fully responsible. My having released him doesn’t make him less responsible (he did it!). But his doing it doesn’t eliminate my responsibility either.
Something similar is true, I think, when it comes to having children: Once my daughter is an autonomous agent, she will be responsible for her emissions. But that doesn’t negate my responsibility. Moral responsibility simply isn’t mathematical.
…
I am certainly not arguing that we should shame parents, or even that we’re obligated to have a certain number of children. As I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t think there is a tidy answer to the challenging questions of procreative ethics. But that does not mean we’re off the moral hook. As we face the very real prospect of catastrophic climate change, difficult — even uncomfortable — conversations are important. Yes, we should discuss the ethics of making babies with care and respect; but we should discuss it.
Travis Rieder travels the USA lecturing at universities, trying to convince students not to have children for the sake of the planet. Rieder frequently speaks of his own daughter in the context of the moral dilemma of having children.
I believe Rieder when he claims he opposes the shaming of parents, but some of the people he preaches to might not be so restrained. If Rieder convinces enough students that parents are destroying the planet, if the small minority of students who are unhinged violent activists get excited about this issue, this anti-child philosophical ugliness could end with far worse than “shaming”.
You know, if Rieder’s grandparents hadn’t had kids, then his parents wouldn’t have either, and neither would he, assuming he understands the kid-having process.
So now the cry isn’t “think of the grandchildren” it is “don’t have any children to think of”.
Huh?
After some point the mental disease that is radical environmentalism leads the patient to believe that “The Planet” is some kind of superior sentient entity and people stop to be relevant for them.
I agree. This is humophobia at it’s extreme. The most radical environmentalists believe that human life is the worst form of pollution and that only the removal of humans from the planet can cure environmental degradation, yet none of those radical environmentalists seems to think of themselves as a problem or expresses a willingness to be part of the solution.
[The mods wonder if one is guilty of humahumourphilia if one feels like laughing at the humophobia exhibited by such thoughts. .mod]
Strange isn’t it? How well to do people can do this. Good leaders lead by example.
Notice that he directs his message to whites, who have a below replacement birth rate.
The real problem is 3rd world birthrates, especially Africa, which he utterly avoids mentioning.
His true agenda then becomes obvious.
I remember one young environmental “activist” who compared developers to rapists, and declared that just as it was OK to kill someone who was about to rape your mother, it was OK to kill someone who was about to “rape” mother earth.
If academics and radical greens and one-percenters would like to stop breeding, all the same to the rest of us! At the rate the Left is embracing biologically dysfunctional sexual “alternatives,” it’ll all be moot anyway.
This guy will love me im 48 with no kids coz i couldn’t find a woman who wanted to have sex with me lol but on the other hand he’d hate me coz i have a 69 mustang v8 so i have a mighty big carbon footprint. To be honest i think i prefer my car to kids lol
Its like the stories you hear of ice addicts being so far out of their minds that they think the life maintaining pulse beating through their arteries are worms eating them from the inside so they try to rip them out.
Poor, sad and very, very sick little people.
To go to the religious idiom, it seems to me that perhaps Satan is alive and doing a roaring trade these days. He seems to have ISIS up and running, although going through a period of ‘consolidation’ currently. Mugabe has been a great little earner for a few decades. Cranking up Kim Jong Un towards nuclear war seems an interesting punt and there are all the other usual scams and scumbags he has in play. But the big one at the moment is the intellectual destruction of the West and CAGW is a premium grade investment in that respect I am sure. If the old so and so can pull that one off then it might just be the best one since WW1 & 2 and if it really delivers the best since that great scam, the ‘free fruit give away’ back in the beginning.
What bit about ‘God given intelligence’ don’t the CAGWarmists understand.?
He may have an out. “having a child, especially for the world’s wealthy,”. maybe he was born poor. 😉
He’s got a poor mind-set, that’s for certain.
“Several years ago, scientists showed that having a child, especially for the world’s wealthy, is one of the worst things you can do for the environment.”
Wow, that is designed to so appeal to the proletariat. Nothing but class warfare from the socialists. This fits perfectly with the educated/wealthy consume more, which is evil, routine promulgated by the UN.
“Once my daughter is an autonomous agent, she will be responsible for her emissions. But that doesn’t negate my responsibility.”
This is so twisted, as they try to correlate having children with freeing murders. As CO2 is plant food and we need more not less, and any way this is connected to false and absent global warming, the use of fossil fuels, or CO2 emissions is patently wrong. This is the face of evil. These people are antihuman and, as such should be the first to not have children, maybe even imprisoned for conspiracy to hurt the human species.
I agree, Higley7. It is a crime against nature to will the destruction of your own species.
‘Several years ago, scientists showed that having a child, especially for the world’s wealthy, is one of the worst things you can do for the environment. ‘
Whether true or not, the fact is humans’ first duty is to humans, not the environment. Eschewing your own species for ‘the environment’ is sick. Recommending fewer offspring of your own species is sick.
In the mid 1960s I attended a talk at Cambridge University where one of the speakers opined in response to a question that the optimum population of the UK would be about 35 million. The current population is 70 million plus!
Do politicians qualify as the world’s wealthy since they usually vote themselves pretty big salaries?
Ahh … then a murderer released is a benefit to the grandchildren ,,, and ethically bound to continue reducing the planet’s carbon footprint. Further, keeping the murderer in a situation where he/she is restrained from reducing the population is an ethical wrong, the responsibility for which lies with the jailers not the murderer. No?
Follow the “logic” of the radical environmental movement to the end and you easily could come to the conclusion that murder, reducing the surplus human population, is a moral act.
I asked a kid (around 10 yo) once what he wants to do when he gets older.
“I want to study bio-chemistry”
Yes, that is a great field to get into. i said.
“Yeah. I want to develop a virus or a bacteria that will eliminate humans from the earth.
There are to many people on the planet destroying the environment.”
At first I thought he was joking and laughed.
I could tell he wasn’t joking. Then told him western populations are decreasing in numbers third world populations are still growing.
He was shocked and very upset as though I was lying and destroying his ambition in life.
I wonder how that kid turned out?
“think of the grandchildren”
===========
perfect! global warming will. only really be a problem in the future. so if no one has any children, global warming will not hurt anyone..
as such there is no reason to rid of the v8 in the garage. get rid of the children and thus save the grandchildren.
JohnWho: You make an excellent point. Why do we need to “think of the grand children” when we won’t be having any?
Thanks Wally, here it is
“Although culturally controversial, the scientific half of this position is fairly well-established. Several years ago, scientists showed that having a child, especially for the world’s wealthy, is one of the worst things you can do for the environment. That data was recycled this past summer in a paper showing that none of the activities most likely to reduce individuals’ carbon footprints are widely discussed.”
This is consistent with the current left mantra that white people should not have children because of their in born defects.
Idiots spout nonsense every day. They should be ignored, left flat with no listeners, readers or attention in lieu of their nonsense being weighted with credibility, even as clickbait.
[snip]
You are correct snip is exactly what he should do. With enough of folks with his attitude after while they are gone and we win.
“Yes, we should discuss the ethics of making babies with care and respect; but we should discuss it.”
You should discuss it with the 3rd world countries having 8-10 kids per family, or worse, some of those crazy countries where polygamy is rampant and one man has 30-40 kids. And then all these people want to immigrate to the first world where the climate idiots will want to accept them as climate refugees. There is no problem with birth rates in the first world.., well actually there is since we are not replacing ourselves. So not our issue. Educate the rest of the world and their populations will stabilize too.
Sounds like Fundamentalist Mormons FLDS which exists in the good ole USA
Isn’t that a bit different. Only the alpha male is allowed to father children?
Lots of “wannabe but never will be” alpha males among climate scientists and far leftists, though
Notice what he says though – “especially for the world’s wealthy”. The whole “carbon footprint”, and more insanely, “global footprint” idea means that if you live in a well-off country like the US, and especially if you are even middle-class, then your “footprint” is going to be much, much larger than someone in a 3rd World country. Consequently, if you have children, then their “footprint” is also going to be much larger. From the ecofascists’ viewpoint (and that is what he is) then, for the betterment of the planet, only poor people should have children.
‘only poor people should have children’ and never become rich or even middle class. And they will all vote socialism so they can stay poor and have more children. Sounds great doesn’t it.
On the one hand, we are told we’re not having enough babies…..so we have to import third world illiterates, with no education….
..and on the other hand…..this!
Solution, have babies, but don’t educate them
Oh dear. You sound like you need some time in the Scold-O-Mat 9000 (the Shaming Carousel is still in maintenance).
+97
Good post. But nothing will stabilize before the west is completely overrun with third world overspill.
And then of course there will be no idiot greenies and global warming morons as the new arrivals will throw them off buildings, continue to reproduce in far greater numbers and environmentalism will be completely gone and we may well have a serious problem for the planet. The biggest problem of course is that some groups have more children than they can support and educate and nature has a pretty nasty way of dealing with overpopulation. I am not sure why we think humans are exempt from that law of nature.
Poverty, not wealth, is the enemy of the environment
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/poverty-not-wealth-is-the-enemy-of-the-environment/ (and lots of other places).
Amazing the Times actually printed that…
Earthling2
How about looking at it this way.
Third world population increase seems a problem, although I’m not convinced it is considering how little poverty stricken third world individuals consume (see Bruce Cobb’s similar observation below) but forget that for the moment.
As I understand it, many, but not all families within the third world, are large because of three fundamental reasons:
1. The child mortality rate is high.
2. Life expectancy is low
3. The elderly had large families when they were young to overcome 1. & 2. so someone would support them in their old age.
A possible solution to some of the problem, would seem to me, to provide provision for the elderly so there is no need to have large families. Combine that with the efforts being made to combat child mortality and significant steps could be made. Healthcare for the rest of the family would ensure longer life expectancy and education might stop drunk young men running round with inflated, free condoms on their head.
Now, I do hear a lot about healthcare, including child mortality solutions and, of course, lots about free contraceptives. However, assuming the considerable influence the Catholic Church has in many developing nations, in particular Africa, condoms, birth control pills and abortions will be institutionally outlawed.
In effect, almost any method to ‘manage’ the procreation process will be stymied at every turn by religion and ignorance. Nor have I even touched on indigenous tribalism, status, wealth (a few goats and a mangy cow?) and of course the natural inclination of ignorant males to believe that having children, specifically males, is a sign of virility. Which is, of course, complete bollox, if you’ll pardon the innuendo.
What I’m saying is that, instead of trying to deal with, or even educate ignorant African males, who I understand frequently have the IQ of a western 11 year old, into responsible procreation, how about recruiting the elderly, and taking care of them to eliminate the root cause of the problem.
We could of course also allow them to dig for, and burn fossil fuels to self generate industry, wealth and education rather more quickly than giving them solar stoves for their mud huts, but that’s an entirely different subject.
And the questionable ethical stance on procreation and abortion by the Catholic Church with it’s reprehensible history of child abuse and extravagant wealth and adulation of same, despite what Jesus promoted, is yet another subject for another time.
Earthling
“Educate the rest of the world and their populations will stabilize too.”
You have nailed it. Absolutely.
With education goes modest prosperity, and fall in fecundity.
Auto
E2: You go to hell.
You have no right to tell Black people how many kids to have or not have.
At least it will be tad warmer there than here…and they are charging me a carbon tax while its frozen solid here for 6 months of the year, so I want a refund! What’s next, a tax on the Oxygen we breath? Don’t laugh, I never thought they would get a Carbon Tax ever approved in most jurisdictions.
Apparently one only needs to look at the NFL and NBA players who father multiple children with multiple mothers on a grand scale not providing a responsible parent in the rearing process to guide the children.
That hasn’t been true for over a generation.
PS: Under polygamy, there may be one man have 30 kids, but there will also be a dozen other men who never have kids because they can’t find wives.
Exactly! And those ‘dozen other men’ are the ones trying trying to escape Africa for Europe or North America. Or joining ISIS, or some other terrorista organization. Generally causing the mayhem in that part of the world and then the snowflakes here in the 1st World want to let them all in here based on either as a climate refugee or a persecuted religious minority. Bleeding hearts generally get a knife in the back, through their heart. And sinks the entire ship we are all in.
Al Gore has four children. Do as I say, not as I do.
Then He must eliminate 3 of them?
Perhaps we should have a Dystopian society like Logan’s Run
no parenting…30 and out
How did you find out about the Shaming Carousel?
How many does that Suzuki froord have? And how many grandchildren?
David Suzuki has FIVE children and FOUR homes. He has also spoken the same kind of jive in regards to how many children the plebeians should have. He believes Canada is “full” (36M people), but never complains about the 300,000 plus refugees (including those recent “refugees” from the U.S.) and immigrants allowed into the country every year. How many grandchildren does he have – no idea.
Four children, a house that consumes as much electricity as a small town, a fleet of limos and suvs to transport him to his private jet at the airport, which takes him to the latest “climate conference” where he can tell US what WE have to do about OUR “carbon footprint.
IOW, the ULTIMATE HYPOCRITE.
Multiple houses that each consume as much electricity as a small town.
Yes,
It could end with unhinged people getting guns and shooting up schools and churches…
Oh wait…
too late…
(due respect and condolences to those who tragically lost someone in Texas)
Or, unhinged people who, while exhaling CO2 at almost 40,000 ppm, rant that CO2 is a pollutant!
Oh wait…
too late…
Seriously, the only way to eliminate possible unhinged people would be to eliminate everyone but you and me, and I’m not so sure about you.
(due respect to the originator of that general line of thinking)
By extension then it would seem to be their moral responsibility to get rid of any children they do have.
And any children their parents had.
/grin
yes, you both have a point. not that I’m advocating for shaming people that don’t off their their kids or “get rid” of themselves (I wouldn’t ever do that) … but it is important that we have the discussion about weather or not it is a good idea for people other than me to follow through with the idea.
Since his is a philosophical view, I’ll take the flip side. Have kids, plenty of kids. There is a greater chance that one of yours, mine, or someone else’s will come up with a solution to the problem. And the more minds we throw at it, the greater the chance of a solution.
That is what we “owe” future generations, a chance to solve their own problems.
And may the future generations be equipped with BS detectors.
Well said!
The thing I find striking about his “philosophical view” is that it seems so utterly devoid of hope. There seems to be a complete blind spot, when it comes to the concept of betterment.
Actually the way he speaks seems the opposite of a “pep talk”. If he was a coach his team would never win a game.
The world’s greatest and only unlimited resource, is people.
My hunch is he’s evading the very real challenges that being a parent presents – actually having to be a better person, by casting them as some sort of global existential thing. He needs to knuckle down and figure out how to be the kind of person that welcomes these wonderful creatures – children, into the world as the most honoured of guests
Or shirking your suicide responsibility
If anyone had any doubt that Warmists are anti-human, you should have no doubt now.
Amen.
Not just Anti-Human, ANTI-LIFE in general.
Their evil, lying, decéitful vendetta against the fundamental building block of all life on Earth..
…. should tell everyone just how much they hate all forms of life.
Self-hatred manifests itself in various ways, one of them being hating their own species for no reason other than its existence.
Problem is, 8 billion sounds like a lot and it likely goes beyond what the mind of an AGW’er can count or visualize. If one were to take 7.5B people today and squeeze them into a box, that box would only be 0.1 cubic miles in size. Barely visible from anywhere. I think life is more scarce now than high CO2 prehistoric times.
Humanity is nothing more than a temporary parasitic infestation of the planet so all of this is really moot.
I guess natural selection does work. Global warming alarmist can breed themselves into extinction and this farse can be put behind us and we can really learn how our planet works.
Unfortunately, they’ve taken academia and are brain-washing YOUR kids into their insanity. They don’t need to breed – they just co-opt.
That was close to my thoughts.
Any faith (such as Tipping Points making AGW Dangerous) should have the right to express itself and evangelise.
But if it dies out because it’s unpersuasive or can’t create a viable society then…
Bye. Bye.
Not a faith of use.
Ideas with evidential support would be persuasive or self-regenerating by greater effectiveness.
AGW is doomed eventually. The world isn’t created that way.
So, why do these leftist want to ban guns, wars and prolong their own life if our very being is so bad?
CW: they want control of who lives and dies. IOW: Play God.
Because Tone Deafness, which is caused by too much time in Prog Echo Chambers.
Personally I am happy to see articles like this, as it demonstrates that they STILL haven’t figured out why they’ve been losing elections since 2010.
Why does he have to travel the US? He gives the same basic speech at each college. He could simply do it interactively. Think of all the CO2 he is creating.
Does it pay as well?
Shhh. It might be best if the alarmists didn’t reproduce.
co2isnotevil
The problem is, they will. That’s the socialist way. Do as I say, not as I do.
I thought straight sex was pretty much a nono these days?
Leo Smith
At my age, any sex is a NoNo. At lest that’s what my wife tells me.
She’s just looking after your health 😉
A more despicable thought process could not exist. Proves the point that greens are evil, nihilistic, selfish, negative, brain dead, lice infested, Birkenstock wearing dim bulbs with the moral and social intelligence of cannibalistic baboons. (All due respect to baboons, of course)
Just so you understand. This concept that human beings have negative value ALWAYS leads to horrible things. It is not that far of a leap from people like this to the Khmer Rouge. When one says that humans are parasites, babies are immoral, and overpopulation is the worst threat, the question must be asked what the solution might be. People like this will give platitudes about legislation and voluntary participation but that is not what they think on the inside.
The truly horrifying thing with most of these despicable piles of offal (no disrespect meant to offal) is that they always envision someone else making the sacrifice.
Maybe a little over the top but you’re basically right. There’s more than a hint of totalitarianism here. It wasn’t that long ago that the Nazis wanted to control reproduction and eliminate those they considered of less value.
Remember that this drivel came with a hat tip to Breitbart. Need we say more.
There is no such thing as over the top when dealing with a despicable thought process such as the original writer possesses. People like him need to be ridiculed, cornered, minimized and ostracized.
Absolutely
our – self-elected – elite seek a global human population of 500-750 million,
The high number is just less than 10% of current population.
Most of the survivors will be slaves – or harem members – for the [tiny] ‘elite’.
If they get their global government, with sky-high energy prices, so much of the Northern hemisphere needs to migrate to warmer places [like Africa] – as climate refugees.
(By the by, how much sympathy, let alone welcome , might I [from the northern hemisphere – South London in fact] should I expect when – if I live for another thirty years, and the cycles cool the climate, and the World government says I am in the way – but I want to keep my (then) ninety-something year old bones warmish – seek to float across to, say, Morocco??)
Auto – hypothesizing late at night.
By almost every appreciable measure, the environment in the United States has improved dramatically over the last 40 years while our population has grown. What this guy means to say is that having more children is the worst thing you could do for the irrational fear that liberals have over the environment.
This stupidity is as old as the hills. Zero Population Growth or ZPG in the 70s, pushed by Paul Ehrlich, now called the “Population Connection”, still pushing the lie. Fact is, in the US the birth rate is something like 2.1 per couple, below the replacement level, and in the EU counties it is well below replacement. Western Civilization and access to cheap energy from fossil fuels has reduced the need for very large families. Most of the growth these days is from immigration.
In the single-family farm society before the great fossil fuel revolution of the early 1900s, families needed many children to offset the effects of infant mortality, low life expectancy and to produce workers to carry on the back breaking farm work required every day.
If these anti-human fools really wanted to reduce population, they wouldn’t be talking to college kids who already know how to avoid childbirth. They would be pounding the drum for cheap clean coal plants and electrification in the poverty stricken areas that are still not up to the 20th century, let alone the 21st. They would be spending some of that “aid” money that ends up in kleptocrat pockets for fossil fuel infrastructure that will end up paying for itself as new markets and new productivity opportunities awaken in these areas.
Population growth is only a problem for those who hate people.
They know the facts you set forth. The great thing that warmunism gives them is the chance to insist that the world has too many brown babies. They always hated colored people. Now they have a reason.
My slogan is that: “Environmentalism Is the Last Socially Acceptable Form of Racism”
Thanks, Walter. Make them own it.
What a crock. It’s not up to the Greenies and Socialists to decide who has babies and when. These people are absolutely mad.
Being this toad’s daughter must be pure hell on Earth! She has my full sympathy.
PMK
And certainly , he should never be left alone with any children, anywhere.
His sort of polluted mind unleased on young minds could cause serious mental or even physical trauma.
If their interest is to reduce mankind on earth, why don’t they start themselves as good examples ?
I wonder how many “unexpected” children will come out of COP23 !
Après soirée trysts?
More or less my retort to the voluntary human extinction movement: “You First.”
I think that warmunists should take Rieder’s advice not have children. They can be the Shakers for our time. In the 22nd Century, no one will know who they are. Too bad they won’t produce any nice furniture.
It has only been a matter of time before we come to this fallout from the illegitimate hysteria over climate change. Population control, eugenics, sterilization programs, destructors of economies, etc have been in and never quite out of fashion. They wait in the wings for end-of-world nutter movements.
Thomas Malthus in the 17th – 18th Century, Jevons in the 19th (using up coal so fast the industrial rev will soon stop from lack of fuel), Club of Rome haters, ‘Pop Bomb’ Erlich, they all have the same psychotic misanthropic symptoms. It is an illness. In every case without exception they have been diametrically wrong, and yet there seems to be a small percentage of highly persuasive people with this pathology that can sway hundreds of millions without the need for proof – the string of 100% failures notwithstanding.
The population will level off in mid century at ~9million, we are 85% there. The way to get there is through spreading prosperity and real education, not the ersatz ed these control freaks have been creating to numb brains – killing off people and keeping them ignorant is not a solution. Linear thinking makes their arguments seem logical and I’m sure my post is likely to bring them out of the woodwork if they are about.
Greening of the planet and prosperity – a Garden of Eden earth – would be ours if the sick minds perpetrating all this can be vaccinated against. Hopefully Dr. Trump is in the house long enough.
I think you mean 9 billion (world population).
This.
I agree with everything you say except the part that it is an illness. It is not an illness. It is a choice, and a sociopathic choice at that.
BTW, what the hell is a “Climate Philosohper” ?!?
I believe that would be one who sees shapes in clouds.
I could be wrong.
plus one
A climate philosopher is someone who spends more time staring at dust motes than doing actual work.
They work at trying to put reality inside of computers, but it’s always a virtual failure.
A person who thinks their own opinions are philosophy.
“Climate Philosohper”
≠==!
aka Vroomfondel
https://youtu.be/Q9qsvKe81IA