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
Just another hypocrite trying to lecture the rest of us. I have a message for Mr. Reider: Your line of reasoning is how genocide begins, so please take a long walk off a short pier.
With concrete flippers !!
See if he can walk on water with those on. !! Get rid of his Gob simplex.
Walking on water only proves he can’t swim 🙂
Any article that begins or is captioned “Science proves…” is not worth reading.
Move him to a posting in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.
Riedel is a fair example of the basic misanthropy of the green blob. People don’t count as part of “nature” that they worship.
Think of all the CO2 a baby emits!
And methane!
You think cows emit a lot of methane, well you haven’t been around a teenage kid on a taco binge.
😉
Hah! My bean soup can meet and beat your taco binging teenager any time, any place!
One of my nephews considers the perfect recipe for gas to be fish, beans, and milk.
…and don’t forget popcorn!
The only philosophy that, if universally adopted, would lead to the extinction of the species.
Malthus thought all this in the early 19th century before the Industrial Revolution and came to a different conclusion . Population had grown but people had not starved, though the food supply was not increasing at the same rate. So he studied economics. Quote from article by Lauren F Landsburg. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Malthus.html
“The observation is, indeed, so stark that it is still easy to lose sight of Malthus’s actual conclusion: that because humans have not all starved, economic choices must be at work, and it is the job of an economist to study those choices.”
The Travis Reider should visit a library while on his tour of universities and look up Malthus in the index.
One has to remember that population growth is one of the ways that the GNP goes up, and this is necessary for the 1% to take their “fair” share.
And one of the ways GDP per capita goes down. And how does your evil 1% “take” their fair share exactly?
Do you have an answer for how to rework the U.S. Social Security model for zero population growth without collapsing?
I know that it is a popular collectivist fantasy that wealth is a zero sum game, and that the wealthy got their riches by taking it from the poor, but the truth is that wealth is created. And most of the 1% did not steal or inherit their wealth, they created it. You’ll have to find something else to blame for your failures.
“Travis Rieder, PhD, is the Assistant Director for Education Initiatives, Director of the Master of Bioethics degree program and Research Scholar at the Berman Institute of Bioethics. He is also a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Public Health Advocacy within the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.”
Source
For Rieder “ethic” seems to be a foreign word.
Ethics is just a nice way of saying your price is higher than anyone elses …
When they bring in the Ethics Philosophy PhD, it is time to turn and run.
BTDT.
We can only hope that people who believe this “children are bad” crap will indeed refrain from having children. Our world will be better off when the brightest people with common sense continue to have children – natural selection, my friends.
More children you have, more chances that your DNA will continue to exist after Climate Crash 🙂
Unfortunately, they mean “other people’s children are bad”
Why does NBC give this clown the oxygen of publicity?
Could it be because “NBC” stands for “Nothing But Clowns”?
Dunno.
100 points ! 🙂
To give us a laugh or to make us cross !!
I have to insist that since this guy believes people are bad for the planet, he should voluntarily decide to leave the living. I can recommend a means of suicide, if he is serious about his beliefs.
Oddly, I concur. All who think the way he does should be the first volunteers.
I will gladly get out of the way of those lemmings. I will, in fact, cheer them on.
Let Gore lead the charge. Please.
Maybe you will think I am a bad person but I am ethically bound to intervene to prevent a suicide.
The despair that people to suicide is often temporary. Hope is abundant.
There is abundant reasons to think that mankind is not doomed by AGW.
Yes I always find it strange that those telling us there are too many people never seem to think that includes them.
take less of the pie so I can have. more.
His analogy of releasing a murderer from prison knowing he intends to kill people with having children is both telling and chilling. PsychoGreenie.
Release a killer, or have a kid. You may think both are bad things to do, but …
If I have children, they may in turn have children and I will be somewhat responsible for their carbon footprint and its damage to society (bad/guilt).
But the released killer will act to ultimately reduce societies’ carbon footprint by eliminating the carbon use of of those he kills (good).
But if even one of my progeny is a psychotic serial killer that eliminates more people (& associated carbon feet prints) than the number of his/her carbon using brothers & sisters then I will have been a success (best/proud).
I TO AM A CLIMATE PHILOSOPHER.
I see it this way: There’s good carbon and there’s bad carbon; being a killer is bad carbon while being a resourceful human being is good carbon.
We aren’t going to change the carbon content of the world whether we kill or give life. But obviously, it’s better to be a life giver than a life taker.
Let the “climate philosophers” embrace the killers all they want, for to implement their policies would indeed have the overall impact of reducing foodstuff production, sending millions to an early grave through starvation.
It appears that climate philosophers are the worst possible carbon and we should avoid them like the plague.
His analogy is absurd – it only works if you know the murderer will kill. But who releases a murderer knowing that?
releasing a killer reduces the carbon footprint of get victims. which is apparently a good thing for the environment.
release enough killers and the carbon footprint of the world would go so low as to create a Paradise.
“Climate change ethics” is a bigger oxymoron than “military intelligence”.
The author and those who agree with him are embracing a level of nihilism that borders on xenocidal.
Travis Rieder has kids. He should have his kids, himself, and his wife (or whatever) sterilized immediately, along with all members of his klan.
The Sierra Club generally aligns with the sentiments of curbing population growth in first world countries. But paradoxically it doesn’t oppose immigration from poorer countries, which increases the carbon footprint of the world population. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Club#Population_and_immigration
Let’s save the environment for termites and cockroaches!
From the article: “As we face the very real prospect of catastrophic climate change”
In the entire history of the Earth, CO2, has not caused a runaway greenhouse effect (CAGW), including when CO2 levels were *much* higher than today. So why should we believe something like CAGW is going to start now?
THANK YOU! What is it with these idiots persevering with this steaming pile of BS! There IS NO CATASTROPHE looming from human CO2 emissions.
Whatever happened to just laughing and laughing, and laughing!
Next!
Liberalism used to believe in the perfectibility of man, and they were willing to kill him by way of achieving that goal. Now, they believe in the perfectibility of the planet, and they are still willing to do whatever is necessary.
I wish I’d had more kids after reading this. I think what most people who want to limit the number of children someone has fail to understand is that societies that reach that goal begin to die. Their culture, their beliefs, their economy, everything.
I find this statements by Rieder to be utterly fascinating: Once my daughter is an autonomous agent, she will be responsible for her emissions.
Shouldn’t he have been more responsible for his OWN emissions in the first place?
Sorry, Rieder, I simply cannot get into this state of self-hate and idiot’s angst in which you and your cronies are wallowing. If it weren’t for your parents’ parents having kids, you wouldn’t be here today. And yes, considering everything, we just might be better of without your brilliant lack of common sense.
Didn’t his “emissions” create his children?
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Why, yes. Yes, they did.
Simple truth: If I were never born, then I would never care, one way or the other, whether I had been born or not. And so I am not hesitant in admitting that I think a lot of birthing happens irresponsibly and for the wrong reasons. My issue would be social and societal, rather than environmental.
But then again how do we separate social from environmental absolutely? We really cannot. Handle the social/societal responsibility aspect, and the environmental effect will follow in accord.
Eugenics used to be a big thing when ‘scientists’ of the day were able to ‘prove’ the earth would run out of food 50 years ago. Now it crops up again when ‘science’ “proves” global warming will cook the earth. Didn’t work out the first time, it won’t now either.
having a child, especially for the world’s wealthy, is one of the worst things you can do for the environment.
I could be wrong but this seems to say “if you are rich you should not have heirs so you can leave all your money to Greenpeace” or some other econut group.
More “do as I say not as I do” and “I want this so you are required to want it too.” Ask China how their heavy handed attempt at population control is working for them so far.
Humans are in the process of creating an Earthly paradise. Here is Freeman Dyson’s take on it.
The objective evidence is that humans are good for the environment when they are prosperous enough that they don’t have to rape it just to stay alive. What’s good for humans is good for nature. Ergo, fossil fuels are good for nature.
If he really wants to reduce population growth, the easiest way is to allow cheap energy to flood the third world. Sparking economic development and raising people’s standard of living.
Yep. Birth rates are more influenced by economic factors than by anything else. link
Who pays for this guys plane tickets?
UN carbon credits?
Needs rephrasing-
Climate Philosopher and parent Travis Rieder has some of the worse advice or views any human beings should possibly support.
Spending billions/trillions on a non problem that can be spent on more worthy projects … is one of the worst things you can do for the environment.
A startling and honestly distressing view is beginning to receive serious consideration in both academic and popular discussions of climate change ethics
Nothing new here; it has been the animus of enviro ideologues since the Club of Rome garbage.
I do not want to reduce energy consumption as it impoverishes the poor.
I do not want to further impoverish the poor to save the planet.
I do not want to save the planet, it is not under threat.
Rieder is a classic example of Gang Green.
Funny how antisocial our socialist comrades are.
From the beginning the CAGW scheme has had strong overtones of Eugenics Reborn, this fool is most happy to preach his humourless stupidity. However too spineless to practice what he preach.
His daughter has my deepest sympathy, perhaps she can use his public raving to obtain a restraining order.
When will he snap and attempt to rectify his “mistake” in permitting her conception and birth?
Of course before I get too grim on this waste of skin, perhaps what is on display here is basic modern Liberalism, a most progressive disease, a major symptom being the ability to believe 6 impossible concepts at any one time.
I agree. Progressives should be banned from pro-creating.
I have a strong suspicion that Mr Rieder is a dipstick, traveling under pretences of being a self-propagating human.
Population control isn’t new or usually controversial but there is something that must have gone over my head, why is the birth control only for rich?
If you look at the demographics, action on population control can’t avoid being both racially and ethnically targeted. White, European-sourced peoples have negative growth rates.
Like CO2 : national volumes of the developed, European and American worlds are stable to dropping. China is the global problem, and India to come.
The environmentalists and global warming alarmists cannot avoid becoming anti-non-white and anti-non-European-sourced. They are in their facts already. Some must already recognize their dilemma. Only those “in denial” can speak at COP23 on co2 and population growth as things requiring universal effort. One-third of the world has already done its bit. The inconvenient one-third.
I can’t imagine, though, the liberal progressives speaking clearly as to who has to do what. It would make them look like the antihuman, collective, authoritarian elite savages they like to portray skeptical conservatives are. I expect the subject to change to the need to affect an equitable redistribition of the “limited” consumption capacity of the world.
Wait a minute …. isn’t that the socio-economic dream of hardcore Marxists and World Government by the Elites?
Two points:
1) When has it ever been a great time to have children (as least by this measure) ?
2) Who takes advice from people whose own parents were morally corrupted enough to have children ?
without 72 virgins as a prize, he won’t get many takers…
And what do you do with 72 virgins, if you aren’t allow to …. well… you know….. have children !!
Spend your time “talking” with them.. ????
I’m cringing at the very thought !!!!
Seems the “lower realms” could exist after all.
being as how these virgins have 72 distinct pronouns, i don’t think reproduction is even possible.
This is an extremely good idea. I’d even go as far as approving the use of my tax dollars to fund it.
Tbink about it, tbose dimwitted enough to believe this, and foolish enough not to check the validity of these claims, would be dissuaded from breeding. What’s not to like?
There is a point to this article.
When you have 90-100 million more each year you are looking at potential problems.
It is a real shame that the first thing you see in refugee camps is kids.
If you can’t feed one why have others?
Because we can feed our own???
Third World Shit-holes that refuse to embrace the Free Market have starving children…
But why do you think you see kids? Partly it is us because the media love showing them to grab your attention and sympathy and partly because their fathers are fighting in whatever needless conflict has created the refugees.
Using his own logic shouldn’t he consider murdering his own daughter?
As a teacher, it’s not uncommon to have young people in my classes who possess a negative self-evaluation. Their idea being that “the world” would be better off with out them; a forlorn misconception taught by their personal history (a rough ride?) that they are bringing nothing to the trade. You know, life? Me and you, all of us together? The “doom” narrative from the “Environmental Industrial Complex, INC.” is diabolical. The media feeds kids a constant harangue to “do” something, usually stupid, to control things they have no control over.
What’s immoral is for women in 3rd-World countries with per capita incomes of $1~3/day to have 4~8 children, when they can’t even feed 1 child…
This immorality is perpetuated and worsened from the largess of industrialized countries that have sent $trillions to 3rd-World countries over the decades, which simply empowered 3rd-world tyrant dictators to hold power, and allowed people in abject poverty to have far too many children…
There are roughly 100 countries with fertility rates below 2.1, which is the minimum rate required to sustain population growth… The US fertility rate is currently 1.8. In Japan, where I live, it’s just 1.4…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate
I’ll never be able to understand Leftist “logic”…
Well, there is always the time travel thought experiment where Herr Rieder could go back in time and kill his own progenitors, thereby negating his own existance. One zealot less in current spacetime. Good for the planet? Ennh, zealots can be rehabilitated.
I have 6 kids and proud of it. My father had 11 kids, and he was proud of it. We’re all contributing members of society, the world is better off for our existence, not worse off. If you only fixate on the negative impacts of our existence, of course you end up with an incorrect conclusion.
“trying to convince students not to have children for the sake of the planet” Quite frankly I think it is better for society if these addled brained young people do not have any children. They would have made sure their children learned what a burden they are to the earth and they would just end up being miserable.
It’s happening: Republicans’ fertile future / Through the past three decades, conservatives have been procreating more than liberals.
Don’t worry, these young addle-brains can’t afford to have them anyway. They’re too busy sitting in Starbucks in their skinny jeans bitching into their laptops about how no one will pay them what they’re worth.
They’re being paid, right? So, what’s the complaint? One’s monetary worth is what one gets paid. Reality sets this price, NOT fantasy bolstered by bitching.
Philosophical worth is established by philosophical commitments, like doing things the best you can out of principle, or being on time, or being consistent at what you do, caring about how you do what you do, having integrity, pride, dedication to tasks, getting things done right, just because there is a sense of moral/ethical/aesthetic worth that PRECEDES the monetary worth that eventually comes to reward it.
Eventually somebody notices habits based on the practice of philosophical worth, and they will want to pay money for these values PRACTICED already as a standard of who the person is, what their signature is, the type of mark, impression, air that this person consistently leaves.
People who complain about wanting to be somewhere else different than where they are, or who complain about NOT being paid what they are worth often times have no clue what I just spoke of. Their births are a waste of resources and a burden on others who understand such basic principles.
Harsh, you say? Well, I said it. If I offend, then try to look beyond this one post, and tune into others that I might write that resonate better with you.
Humans are part of the planet. The planet created us and our impacts are a result of our existence. We don’t destroy the environment, we are part of it.
Just like the first photosynthetic organisms that created real climate change billions of years ago by filling the atmosphere with oxygen. They weren’t “bad”, in fact they created the ability for life as we know it.
So humans have come about through no fault of anyone. Though our existence and impact will determine what exists in this planet in another billion years after we are long gone.
David P. Goldman published “How Civilisations Die” in 2011. He pointed out that Europe, Russia, Japan & the Muslim world are facing demographic collapse. This is most obvious in the case of Europe, with its rapidly ageing population & a birth rate below replacement level. However, birth rates are declining even faster in the middle eastern Muslim world. The present-day “youth bulge” in the Muslim countries will be temporary (it’s the result of the high birth rates of a *previous* generation, after all), & by 2050 the population of the Islamic world will start to shrink. By 2100, Europe & its Muslim adversaries will both be near extinction.
Geopolitical demography rules! Muslim countries that achieve a high rate of adult literacy jump from infancy to senescence without passing through adulthood. Like their Iranian, Algerian and Tunisian counterparts, Turkish women reject the constraints of Muslim family life as soon as they obtain a high school education. The shock of sudden passage from traditional society into the modern world has produced the fastest-ever fall in fertility rates in the Muslim world.
Iran, whose fertility rate fell from 7 children per female in 1979 to less than 1.8 today, has the fastest-aging population of any country in the world. Turkey has an average total fertility rate of 2.18, or just at replacement, but the split between ethnic Turks and ethnic Kurds will make Turkey’s present geographic configuration untenable.
The Kurds’ courage and military prowess leave Turkey in a quandary. Any effective action against ISIS enhances the Kurds’ political standing and advances the day when they will have their own state including the northwest of Iraq and the southeast of Turkey, as well as the southwest corner of Iran and a large swath of northern Syria. But Turkey cannot abandon the NATO alliance, which stands as a guarantor of its territorial integrity. It has no choice but to play both sides, playing the public role of an alliance member while covertly sabotaging the effort to destroy ISIS.
Spengler at Asia Times
Notice that none of those people advocate for a complete stop to military intervention on the single basis of saving the planet from the military own carbon footprint. Worse, the entire US trillion dollar military industry is geared to confiscate resources, minerals, oil, gas from Eurasia and now Africa while the green agitprop peddles restricting ordinary citizens’ lifestyle.
“Once my daughter is an autonomous agent, she will be responsible for her emissions. But that doesn’t negate my responsibility.”
I feel really sorry for his daughter when she realizes that daddy didn’t really think he should have had a child. Should do wonders for family relationships and her self esteem but then she clearly doesn’t count as he is too busy pontificating to the rest of us peasants.
Thanks eric for this article. Progressives in the U.S. and Germany in the 20s and 30s believed, among other things, that only the fittest should be permitted to have children. Just like Travier, these people were convinced that eugenics was a moral imperative backed by consensus ‘science’. They worked tirelessly to bring about state enforced sterilization programs for those they deemed ‘unfit’. Travier belongs in the trash bin of history along with all the born-again fascists of today.
Don’t forget Svante Arrhenius
“He was the first scientist to describe the greenhouse effect, and is believed to have coined the term, predicting that rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) would cause the earth’s temperature to rise. His equation showing the effect of temperature on reaction rates is still called the Arrhenius Law. He was also a proponent of “racial biology”, part of the then-accepted science of eugenics.”
Source
“Arrhenius involved himself in the eugenics movement by joining the Swedish Society for Racial Hygiene, a group focused on researching and promoting the benefits of controlled reproduction in humans (Broberg & Roll-Hansen, 2005). This society was formed in 1909 in an attempt to popularize eugenics and encourage policy changes to promote eugenics (Bjorkman & Widmalm, 2010). Arrhenius was not only a member; he was on the board for the society (Broberg & Roll-Hansen, 2005). The society gave lectures and handed out pro-eugenic pamphlets to the public,”
Source
How f’d up do you think his daughter will be, knowing what he really thinks of her existence?
Misanthropic, Malthusian with a hint of genocidal – all the wretched idiocy of of Paul R Ehrlich recycled.
For the truth of global population statistics on a brighter more pro-human note see Hans Rosling:
Hans Rosling fantastic videos. Thanks
If I wasn’t already too old to start a family, I’d make a bunch of kids just to be contrary – because that’s how human nature works. It did with Michelle Obama and her diet ideas, too.
This belief in a ‘finite planet’ and a requirement to limit human numbers was completely disproven in the 1970s by Julian Simon. See https://www.wired.com/1997/02/the-doomslayer-2/
He pointed out that the key thing improving the human condition, and the non-human environment, is human ingenuity. This has enabled us to have an ever-increasing number of humans on a planet, while at the same time improving their living conditions, and improving the environment for all other living creatures.
You would think that this makes no sense. How can a ‘finite planet’ continuously expand to provide more for everybody? But Simon pointed out that it is the raw materials which are limited – resources are what humans can make from them, and human ingenuity enables an infinite number of things to be made. The Ancient Egyptians had a lot of silica in the form of sand – was this a resource they could make computer chips from? Not at that time, but nowadays it is. In this way the condition of everything on the planet improves. And, of course, at some point we will no longer be planet-bound….
I wonder why no one ever remembers Julian Simon nowadays? I assume that the environmentalists have been successful in suppressing all of his ideas…..
Here here! Echoed in Peter Diamandis’ book: “Abundance”.
One of my secular saints, along with Norman Borlaug.
Yes, Simon said that the problem with using GDP to measure things is that when a child is born, it lowers, but when a pig is born, it rises…
Here in the US where divorce was and is popularized, just how much of the GDP depends on divorce?
Recall the popular interpretation of the greatest GDP benefit: a rich old man hospitalized dying of cancer being divorced by his 3rd wife.
So the GDP in the US depends not on materials production but human consumption. The stock market seems to be controlled by wishful thinking abetted by algorthyms underlain by continuous war. The perfect inegma.
The question is who decides who is poor or rich. In the land of the blind One eye is king.
It is to be deeply regretted by all that Mr Travis Rieder’s parents failed to take his well intentioned advice.
“Scientists say……” is a BBC ‘starter’ for an item of invidious crap delivered by a leftist.
If you do what us denyers do and actually LOOK AT THE FACTS AND EVIDENCE, what you find about population growth as shown by Hans Rosling is simple and clear: it is GROWING ECONOMY that slows and stops population growth:
And what drives growth of economy? LOW PRICE FOSSIL FUEL ENERGY.
Stop sabotaging economic growth with global warming politics and energy rationing.
Then population growth will level off and with it energy use.
These enviro-na3is show their true colors more and more every time they open their mouths.
Those of you who intend your progeny to be Earth and land bound can level off your population. My children know the future of their large families is in space colonies and seasteads.
Good plan – I’ll send my mother-in-law to join them!
she will be responsible for her emissions. But …..
=====!!
the word “But” negates the previous sentence. he is saying his daughter will not be responsible.
in effect he is saying his daughter will remain a child without responsibility. rather the responsibility rest with the parent.
what about. God’s responsibility? he kicked us out of the Garden of Eden for tasting of the fruit of knowledge. or what about the serpent?
it isn’t like his daughter. has a lot of choice. she didn’t. make battery technology such a difficult nut to crack. nor did she create humans that are unable to survive without. technology due to our almost complete lack of fur or fang.
Actually, before kicking out, God asked Adman and Eve what happened, despite he knew very well. He certainly expected them to take responsibility, but instead Adam accused Eve, and Eve accused the serpent. Hopeless bunch.
And Now, Griff expect to be allowed in Eden again by accusing oil and coal companies, and the whole capitalist system that tempt him into useless stuff like computer, TV, doomsayer in newspaper. Same Hopeless bunch
There are always have been this kind of lunatics around
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathar_Perfect
The new thing is they are taken seriously by moronic medias like NBC, CNN, Grauniad…
how does the author know the child he didn’t have was not the one that would have solved global warming and saved the world?
for all the author knows, by not having that one child, he has condemned the planet.
Travis Rieder would be reviled and his ideas scorned, in any public discussion with sane, rational adults.
That he is given a paid speaking tour, should be a giant clue as to the real agenda of those who are promoting Rieder’s thoughts.
Utter and complete insanity.
Hmmm… the dinosaurs died out because they were too big for their environment, weren’t they? I mean, they didn’t build enormous buildings like we do. All that’s left of them is birds, you know. So is Rieder trying to tell us we’re dinosaurs? (I’m being facetious, y’know.)
Mr. Rieder wallows publicly in hatred of his own species. He gets paid to make these misanthropic speeches, but his hypocrisy (daughter) is obvious.
50 years ago, before the Age of the Internet and World Wide spiderWeb, this kind of thing would only appear in magazines or bookstores, occasionally in a newspaper, but now, it’s all over the place. The more you see of it, the more it seems to show a hatred of species, but to what end?
Mass murderers aren’t something new. The emperor Qin Shi Huang was the “builder” of China’s Great Wall. Anyone who died while working on it was buried in it. Mao Tse-Tung let 32 million Chinese people starve to death because he thought Lysenkoism was a wonderful idea. Stalin followed Lysenkoism first, resulting in the deaths of 20 million++ Russians and Ukrainians from starvation. Pol Pot engineered the destruction of Cambodia’s society by teaching children to murder their own parents – two million ++ of them.
Rieder’s vapid and very offensive attitude promotes mass murder. Let him rattle on. The more we see and hear, the further we can separate ourselves from that insanity. If these so-called progressives (they aren’t really) ant mass population deduction, they should volunteer for it first. Then we can see just how dedicated they are to that cause.
Insights into mass murder of history does not end there: the UN actually subsidizes mass murder. It works like this: a rebel opposed to the power group professes democratic beliefs, gets a river of funds and arms from the western world with the understanding that his government will be more’ western friendly,’ and after a million dead and another million displaced, the UN divides the country and/or installs yet another concentration camp across the border in a neighboring country which gets yet more western funding.
The ‘democratic’ government then divides the spoils among his supporters and gets a two-fold reward: a 20 year relaxing opposition-free reign due to depopulation and unlimited Green Card Visa for family and friends to the US.
I have been banned from posting nearly everywhere.
I’ve been declared a super fund site. I’ve got 5 kids. Sorry planet.
Bless you.
I just want to say that the productive, science-advancing people of the west are the ones who hear this message and may act on it, contributing the demographic disaster currently underway. “The Death of the West” by Pat Buchanan was prophecy. On the bright side, I don’t think the leftist who are most likely to act on this advice will be missed and it is becoming less likely they will be replaced on the voter roles with low-skill foreigners.
Ehi. Give a look at http://www.gapminder.org site. You can find an animation that shows that “expectancy of life” grows even if CO2 emission grows.
So, logically, if we stop reproducing eventually there will be no one to save the planet for. So we might just as well live it up and go out in a blaze of over the top lavish living that would make Caligula blush.
the idea is, if we stop reproducing eventually there will be no one to save the planet FROM.
Well, until some critter eventually find convenient to turn all oxygen back into CO2, inverse reaction of some other critter finding convenient to turn all CO2 into O2 and fossil fuel deposit long ago. Or some asteroid fancy to replay Chicxulub impact.
Twenty years ago I met a young woman a graduate of James Cook University who told me that she would never have children because “Humans are a plague on the planet and I won’t contribute to a plague.” Humans may be divided into two categories. Those who produce more than they consume; and those who consume more than they produce. The members of the latter category had better hope that the members of the former category continue to breed.
If she didn’t end her own life, preferably through the biggest killing of human she could, was it because she somehow wasn’t a plague, or wasn’t human?
Did she support massive weapon distribution to insane people? release of mass murderers ? poisoning of well with abortive (more effective that outright poison, since people dying would quickly stop drinking the water? massive abortion of girls (and of boys as well, but not so much important) ? destruction of all the precaution that now reduce pregnant women death toll from previous “good old” days ?
I bet she didn’t.
Just because something is bad for the environment doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.
OR, just because a bunch of eco-fascists say its bad for the environment, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.
I have to be somewhat of a contrarian on this issue. I think that preaching the grandeur of human population growth can lead to equally distorted views about human dominance and importance, no less dire than the view that humans are cancerous to the planet.
Frankly, I could stand more spatial consciousness in the design of cities, where fewer people lived, … where roads were wider to accommodate all functions — turn lanes and bike ways, for example, without one’s function ever being used for the other’s function (e.g., bike lane used for parking space).
I would appreciate a world where grocery-store isles were wider, shelves were less cluttered — organized so that your hands could reach to grab products without displacing other products because of how packed together retail shelves are, … where fewer people spent more time maintaining more neat space between fewer pieces of “stuff”, …. where major thinking tended towards clearances that allowed flow of movement, rather than how many objects could be crammed into a given space (because space is typically viewed ONLY as a container of “stuff”, rather than as an avenue of movement and flow).
Yeah, I see red flags, when people start proclaiming the grandeur of human numbers. But I also see red flags, when people think too much of themselves as destroyers. We are BOTH creators and destroyers, and there is a proportion of both these activities that makes the human presence on Earth a positive thing.
More behavior-based extinction mechanisms promoted by progressive greenies.
The re-directed self-loathing of these people has pretty much extended to the entire species.
It seems that this is a worldwide Propaganda!In germany they wrote the same(Im sure that i also read it some months ago).
Look here:
http://www.bento.de/gefuehle/kinderwunsch-warum-wir-der-umwelt-zuliebe-aufhoeren-sollten-kinder-zu-bekommen-1813533/#refsponi
Bento is a part of the most famous german Magazin DER SPIEGEL-Bento is for young people…
Problem with this is that even if you succeed in killing all humans nothing would stop mother nature from continuing her own atrocities. Mother nature has caused unimaginable amount of destruction with mass extinctions, ice ages, asteroid impacts and other crimes. Not to mention the cruel and immoral world of animal kingdom. To achieve total world peace we would need to destroy entire planet, but even that wouldn’t be enough because of the likelyhood of other Earth-like planets in the universe. We would have to find a way to destroy the entire universe. That would be the only way to bring true peace and justice in the universe. It will not be easy, but we must do it. It is the moral thing to do.
So much for “saving the planet” for the children…..
Well, just a world of Thanks! as posters across the US have discovered as I have that the major new outlets on the internet have cut off commenting. NYT, MSN and the rest have eliminated posting except for one or two innocuous articles to stop the negative flow from the incensed public.
Remember Bait and Switch selling? It’s back.