The only way this is shocking is if you're unaware of how awful it is being young right now. Almost everyone I know has changed the number of kids they want over the course of the last 5 years....
The only way this is shocking is if you're unaware of how awful it is being young right now. Almost everyone I know has changed the number of kids they want over the course of the last 5 years. Personally, I use to want 2 kids. Then my partner and I went to college and now have massive amounts of student loans which mixed with insanely high rent costs and a 2 bedroom house in my area running around half a million dollars means we're never going to be able to afford kids. Mix that in with the dark future of climate change and having kids seemed more like a punishment for us and any kids rather than creating a family. We just can't afford it.
Listen. I know this is super rude and also biased because I live in one of the most expensive areas in the US, but I just googled average American income and laughed out loud at the idea of trying...
Listen. I know this is super rude and also biased because I live in one of the most expensive areas in the US, but I just googled average American income and laughed out loud at the idea of trying to afford living on that. And then I remember that half the population is living below that.
Imma twist the knife: Because of the growing wealth gap, the further you go below that average, the more the number of people living at whichever wage increases. It's like some horrible, immoral...
Imma twist the knife:
Because of the growing wealth gap, the further you go below that average, the more the number of people living at whichever wage increases. It's like some horrible, immoral logarithmic curve ascending to ultimate oblivion by way of poverty.
and then consider the rest of the world, this is not an isolated problem, it´s a global one. Everyone has to think without borders on these problems, it´s insane not to. Also, since we live in a...
and then consider the rest of the world, this is not an isolated problem, it´s a global one. Everyone has to think without borders on these problems, it´s insane not to.
Also, since we live in a world where money is power, those with money bare a heavier responsibility as well. Often it´s the other way around, and people get more comfortable the more money they have, which makes a lot of the problems we have even worse.
What a very financial viewpoint. What about not wanting to bring a child into the hellscape that is our current world? We're still systematically disenfranchising everyone who isn't a straight...
What a very financial viewpoint. What about not wanting to bring a child into the hellscape that is our current world? We're still systematically disenfranchising everyone who isn't a straight white male pretty much everywhere in the world, we can't manage to convince the world that we're going to fucking burn up and die within most of our lifetimes if we don't start spending a relatively tiny amount of money on fighting climate change, corporations are becoming increasingly more important than any individuals, politics is a constant fight for basic human rights decades after we won those rights back, and we seem to be headed in the same direction that 1984 predicted ages ago, to name a few non-financial issues with the world.
There's a big difference between "maybe we'll get into a nuclear war" and "we will all die in 50 years if we don't act now", ignoring all the other points.
There's a big difference between "maybe we'll get into a nuclear war" and "we will all die in 50 years if we don't act now", ignoring all the other points.
To be fair "maybe we'll get into a nuclear war (tomorrow)" is a lot more pressing for a great many people than, "we will all die in 50 years if we dont act now (or so some people think)". Not...
To be fair "maybe we'll get into a nuclear war (tomorrow)" is a lot more pressing for a great many people than, "we will all die in 50 years if we dont act now (or so some people think)".
Not trying to explain the behavior away or justify it. That's just why there are people who are less concerned about it than they may have been about impending nuclear war.
But it will significantly impact most people's daily lives due to its tendency to destabilise parts of the world; and it isn't a discrete event like a nuclear war. It's an ongoing, progressively...
Climate change by itself won't cause our extinction
But it will significantly impact most people's daily lives due to its tendency to destabilise parts of the world; and it isn't a discrete event like a nuclear war. It's an ongoing, progressively worse cancer which will disrupt most of Earth's ecology & biosphere, acting to the point of causing a Cretaceous-equivalent mass extinction event.
Who in their right mind wants to raise a child in such a hellscape.
what's interesting to me is how badly some places are going to get the inevitable deluge of people compared to other places. places like china, mid-india, and basically all of europe are likely...
But it will significantly impact most people's daily lives due to its tendency to destabilise parts of the world; and it isn't a discrete event like a nuclear war. It's an ongoing, progressively worse cancer which will disrupt most of Earth's ecology & biosphere, acting to the point of causing a Cretaceous-equivalent mass extinction event.
what's interesting to me is how badly some places are going to get the inevitable deluge of people compared to other places. places like china, mid-india, and basically all of europe are likely going to bear the brunt of the oncoming migration and somehow have to deal with it; australia and neighboring states are probably going to have to decide whether or not to condemn a ton of tiny islands to certain extermination or take on their peoples; a lot of african nations are probably going to see upheaval and the middle east as a whole is likely to be partially depopulated if the worst projections play out.
but, if you are so fortunate as to live in the US or canada right now, it's entirely conceivable that you in your lifetime won't see much if any of the worst of what this will offer beyond its extent in your backyard. people in florida and the louisiana coastline might have to move or cities might need to build massive seawalls, and you might also see people flee the wildfires out west and the heat that's going to become quite serious in short order--but as a whole? that probably won't be anything compared to the rest of the world.
We're already preparing to inhabit Mars in small numbers. There's no way we'll see Earth become less habitable than Mars, and to make things easier we're already here. I'm not saying that the...
We're already preparing to inhabit Mars in small numbers. There's no way we'll see Earth become less habitable than Mars, and to make things easier we're already here.
I'm not saying that the climate change apocalypse will be a fun time. Millions or billions of people will die - but it's not the extinction of the human race.
One of the reasons why i decided to not have kids is because of environmental awareness on my part. Having kids is the most impactful footprint you can make on the environment. If i ever do decide...
One of the reasons why i decided to not have kids is because of environmental awareness on my part. Having kids is the most impactful footprint you can make on the environment.
If i ever do decide to take on the responsibility to foster a child, adoption is my go to choice, it probably helps the earth out to since it costs a lot of money to have children "in the system". There are a lot of wheels that has to turn, which is why it is expensive, the more wheels, the larger the footprint.
You know, even if it's somehow a barometer of "despair", I can't help but feel this is a positive thing, environmentally—at least. We do at some point need to transition from a growth-based...
You know, even if it's somehow a barometer of "despair", I can't help but feel this is a positive thing, environmentally—at least. We do at some point need to transition from a growth-based capitalistic society to one that is environmentally sustainable, with correct prices on resources & outputs and their effects on our planet. Right now, population growth is one of the requirements for our capitalistic economy & society.
"It's a national problem," says Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California.
It's only a national problem if you want to continue to grow infinitely from a finite set of land & resources. Given what we know about how badly climate change is going to hit, soil loss, species extinction, and all the other things wrong with the world; it's not difficult at all to see we're overpopulated—by a pure measure of "is our population sustainable given the planet's health".
So maybe, just maybe. This is a good thing. It's a shame it's just being forced due to younger generation's financial instability, and not a collective desire to become a more sustainable species, though.
Provided population decline exists in tandem with an 'all of the above' approach on clean energy, rapidly weaning ourselves off of gasoline, reforestation programs, etc; I think every little bit...
Provided population decline exists in tandem with an 'all of the above' approach on clean energy, rapidly weaning ourselves off of gasoline, reforestation programs, etc; I think every little bit counts. We should give it everything we've got to do our best we can to mitigate, and then mend what's left to the best of our ability.
Sadly, people just don't seem to care. We're too callous of a species. I wouldn't be surprised if "peak lifestyle" has already passed. By most metrics, it already has; and it seems like many in the younger generations know this. Who wants to raise a child in a world where they'll have a worse life than you, while you have a worse life than your parents?
We care too much about money, and not enough about each other or the planet.
really varies by the city, to be honest. in a lot of california it seems to be mostly driven by cost of living and housing values and shit like that; in new york city it's sorta-foreign investment...
Where is the demand coming from, if not from new humans on earth? Immigrants? Chinese investors? Urbanizing youth reversing their parents and grandparents flight to the suburbs?
really varies by the city, to be honest. in a lot of california it seems to be mostly driven by cost of living and housing values and shit like that; in new york city it's sorta-foreign investment but also there's also an issue of housing barely being able to keep pace with the number of people in the city; in a lot of canadian cities it's one part cost of living but also driven by things like massive foreign investment, and so on. there's not really any one thing you can boil it down to specifically.
The only way this is shocking is if you're unaware of how awful it is being young right now. Almost everyone I know has changed the number of kids they want over the course of the last 5 years. Personally, I use to want 2 kids. Then my partner and I went to college and now have massive amounts of student loans which mixed with insanely high rent costs and a 2 bedroom house in my area running around half a million dollars means we're never going to be able to afford kids. Mix that in with the dark future of climate change and having kids seemed more like a punishment for us and any kids rather than creating a family. We just can't afford it.
Listen. I know this is super rude and also biased because I live in one of the most expensive areas in the US, but I just googled average American income and laughed out loud at the idea of trying to afford living on that. And then I remember that half the population is living below that.
Imma twist the knife:
Because of the growing wealth gap, the further you go below that average, the more the number of people living at whichever wage increases. It's like some horrible, immoral logarithmic curve ascending to ultimate oblivion by way of poverty.
and then consider the rest of the world, this is not an isolated problem, it´s a global one. Everyone has to think without borders on these problems, it´s insane not to.
Also, since we live in a world where money is power, those with money bare a heavier responsibility as well. Often it´s the other way around, and people get more comfortable the more money they have, which makes a lot of the problems we have even worse.
What a very financial viewpoint. What about not wanting to bring a child into the hellscape that is our current world? We're still systematically disenfranchising everyone who isn't a straight white male pretty much everywhere in the world, we can't manage to convince the world that we're going to fucking burn up and die within most of our lifetimes if we don't start spending a relatively tiny amount of money on fighting climate change, corporations are becoming increasingly more important than any individuals, politics is a constant fight for basic human rights decades after we won those rights back, and we seem to be headed in the same direction that 1984 predicted ages ago, to name a few non-financial issues with the world.
From a moral standpoint I just can't justify it.
There's a big difference between "maybe we'll get into a nuclear war" and "we will all die in 50 years if we don't act now", ignoring all the other points.
To be fair "maybe we'll get into a nuclear war (tomorrow)" is a lot more pressing for a great many people than, "we will all die in 50 years if we dont act now (or so some people think)".
Not trying to explain the behavior away or justify it. That's just why there are people who are less concerned about it than they may have been about impending nuclear war.
But it will significantly impact most people's daily lives due to its tendency to destabilise parts of the world; and it isn't a discrete event like a nuclear war. It's an ongoing, progressively worse cancer which will disrupt most of Earth's ecology & biosphere, acting to the point of causing a Cretaceous-equivalent mass extinction event.
Who in their right mind wants to raise a child in such a hellscape.
what's interesting to me is how badly some places are going to get the inevitable deluge of people compared to other places. places like china, mid-india, and basically all of europe are likely going to bear the brunt of the oncoming migration and somehow have to deal with it; australia and neighboring states are probably going to have to decide whether or not to condemn a ton of tiny islands to certain extermination or take on their peoples; a lot of african nations are probably going to see upheaval and the middle east as a whole is likely to be partially depopulated if the worst projections play out.
but, if you are so fortunate as to live in the US or canada right now, it's entirely conceivable that you in your lifetime won't see much if any of the worst of what this will offer beyond its extent in your backyard. people in florida and the louisiana coastline might have to move or cities might need to build massive seawalls, and you might also see people flee the wildfires out west and the heat that's going to become quite serious in short order--but as a whole? that probably won't be anything compared to the rest of the world.
We're already preparing to inhabit Mars in small numbers. There's no way we'll see Earth become less habitable than Mars, and to make things easier we're already here.
I'm not saying that the climate change apocalypse will be a fun time. Millions or billions of people will die - but it's not the extinction of the human race.
One of the reasons why i decided to not have kids is because of environmental awareness on my part. Having kids is the most impactful footprint you can make on the environment.
If i ever do decide to take on the responsibility to foster a child, adoption is my go to choice, it probably helps the earth out to since it costs a lot of money to have children "in the system". There are a lot of wheels that has to turn, which is why it is expensive, the more wheels, the larger the footprint.
You know, even if it's somehow a barometer of "despair", I can't help but feel this is a positive thing, environmentally—at least. We do at some point need to transition from a growth-based capitalistic society to one that is environmentally sustainable, with correct prices on resources & outputs and their effects on our planet. Right now, population growth is one of the requirements for our capitalistic economy & society.
It's only a national problem if you want to continue to grow infinitely from a finite set of land & resources. Given what we know about how badly climate change is going to hit, soil loss, species extinction, and all the other things wrong with the world; it's not difficult at all to see we're overpopulated—by a pure measure of "is our population sustainable given the planet's health".
So maybe, just maybe. This is a good thing. It's a shame it's just being forced due to younger generation's financial instability, and not a collective desire to become a more sustainable species, though.
Provided population decline exists in tandem with an 'all of the above' approach on clean energy, rapidly weaning ourselves off of gasoline, reforestation programs, etc; I think every little bit counts. We should give it everything we've got to do our best we can to mitigate, and then mend what's left to the best of our ability.
Sadly, people just don't seem to care. We're too callous of a species. I wouldn't be surprised if "peak lifestyle" has already passed. By most metrics, it already has; and it seems like many in the younger generations know this. Who wants to raise a child in a world where they'll have a worse life than you, while you have a worse life than your parents?
We care too much about money, and not enough about each other or the planet.
really varies by the city, to be honest. in a lot of california it seems to be mostly driven by cost of living and housing values and shit like that; in new york city it's sorta-foreign investment but also there's also an issue of housing barely being able to keep pace with the number of people in the city; in a lot of canadian cities it's one part cost of living but also driven by things like massive foreign investment, and so on. there's not really any one thing you can boil it down to specifically.