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”.
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.