• xenith
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    12 years ago

    There’s a lot of great reasons to not have kids but they’re often not accepted by the family, friends, culture, or society as a whole that may he pressuring someone to procreate.

    I personally don’t believe that people who highly value reproduction are abstaining because of climate change. The impending environmental (and economic) collapse are both relevant and more acceptable excuses for those who were on the fence or never bought into the notion that pooping out babies is the point of life.

    • @null_radix@lemmy.mlOP
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      12 years ago

      yep many great reason not to! But the point here is that climite change is probably not one of them

      If you think privileged modern Americans shouldn’t have children now because of quality-of-life issues, you implicitly believe that nobody in the Third World, or nobody before 1900, should ever have had children. This isn’t necessarily wrong. There’s a group of philosophers called “antinatalists” who believe nobody should ever have kids because life is suffering. These people are at least consistent. If you’re not one of them, I think the quality-of-life argument for not having kids now is pretty weak.

      • xenith
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        2 years ago

        The difference between deciding whether to have children in a past less-than-ideal situation and now while considering climate collapse is hope.

        People believed that things could change and get better, and that their own child could help shape a better world.

        People who are currently choosing not to have children due to climate collapse don’t see a future where anything but extreme suffering and death is possible. They don’t agree with the author’s assessment that it’ll be bad for people growing their own food but we’ll maybe be OK, and personally I don’t either. We’re here because the rich and powerful decided that short term gains for the few matter more than basic humans needs for all, and that governing notion is only accelerating. No one is going to help or save us.

        Sure it might not be an extinction level event, but I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to create life that has to experience a “might not be an extinction level event.”