don't have babies

paul wheaton wrote:About 12 years ago I went to an eco event and I thought it would be fun to record the regional experts responding to my question "what is the best thing a person can do for the environment?"  A few of the answers were "don't have kids" but for every one of those there were five answers of "die" or the variation "dig a giant hole in the ground, get in, and then die."
Answers about not having babies, and dying, added up to about 95% of all the answers.  So dark.

paul wheaton wrote:The average american carbon footprint is 30 tons.The sentiment about "don't have babies" is rooted in the idea that each person just has an awful footprint. [...] This "better recipe" breaks the math behind "don't have babies."  

paul wheaton wrote:
First, I think that if every american read my book ( https://permies.com/bwb ) then we would probably be carbon negative.  I think the level zero people would shift things down to 15 tons, the level one people would shift things down to 5 tons, and the rest would be carbon zero or carbon negative (possibly to the point of covering the footprint for several dozen people).
 

Most humans don't make decisions based on rational information processes.

paul wheaton wrote:

Most humans don't make decisions based on rational information processes.

I think that they do it because they want goodies and luxury and monies.  It just happens to also be good for the environment.

Mamalana Bliss wrote:As a mother of 5, I am grateful to have had each one and wouldn't take it back. My children have grown up or are growing up in pemraculture. They understand and follow the ethics and principles. If I didn't birth them at home, raise them to be regenerative, or support them emotionally to be self confident, then maybe they would part of the problem. To me it’s far more important to have children that are raised in the culture of permaculture than to not have children. I have dedicate my life to Regenerative Parenting. To me that is the answer. Otherwise we could end up either in a distopian dictatorship where our reproductive rights are oppressed or we have Idiocracy, where the smart people stop having children and those who don't care or are dumb keep having lots and lots of children.

Alan Burnett wrote:I'm dismayed by the idea that someone who truly cares about the future would consider their duty to avoid having children.

Alan Burnett wrote:There will be a next generation, and they will carry the values imparted to them,

Alan Burnett wrote:Classic game theory says that you make the play that maximizes the chance of victory,

Alan Burnett wrote:My kids will grow up and enter the world as a reflection of my values.

Alan Burnett wrote:What I fear is that people with pro-social values are so uncomfortable by the problems facing our species that they choose not to raise a family.

Alan Burnett wrote:Humanity has gotten through many tough times. Could they be so tough that you would choose not to contribute to the next generation?

Alan Burnett wrote:Would you suggest everyone do the same?

Alan Burnett wrote:I believe anything short of total nuclear annihilation and humanity will continue on, generation after generation, finding joy, forming relationships, having children, continuing on as we always have. It's going to happen whether or not you have children.

Alan Burnett wrote:There's also a self-indulgent piece to becoming a parent. It's pretty cool to have a little toddler that looks like me and wants to be like me. It's practical to have a helper happily following me with a basket while I pick green beans. It's gratifying to build a climbing structure or a sandbox and watch my kids have fun with it. We each get one shot in life, and becoming a parent is a pretty classic part of the human experience.

Alan Burnett wrote:To anyone who would want to influence the next generation with their values, but is discouraged because of their personal contribution to overpopulation, please consider becoming a foster parent.

Tiago Simões wrote:How many of your own values have been imparted to you by your own parents? In my case, maybe quite a few, but very far from all of them. And judging by the adults I know well enough to know their relationship with their parents, it's a very hit-and-miss situation. Curiously (and this might not be statistically significant), the people I know who have strong nature values and also have grown up children are less successful than average in imparting their values on to those children. Don't know why, it's just a recurrent pattern I've seen.

Tiago Simões wrote:In my mind, the word "victory" pressuposes an adversary. If you're placing your set of values in a situation where victory or loss are the expected outcomes, your expectations will push the situation into a conflict/competition between your values and the adversary values, where one side wins and the remaining side(s) loose. I see this as a natural consequence of the choice of perspective.

Tiago Simões wrote:
One, while your kids will grow up with you, there is no guarantee that they will still agree with your values when they grow up. Yes, you do your best for them, but not only can you (and your kids) make mistakes which upend entire worldviews for each other, but also there is more than one "right" set of values, and they are not always compatible with each other.
Two, this attitude has a lot of potential for encouraging "moral laziness", if you take my meaning. While values should be upheld when challenged by difficult situations, they should also be thoroughly questioned internally, preferably in a time and place of Peace. This is what keeps them sharp, and also what allows us to find subtle but crucial mistakes. If you don't question your values, sooner or later your kids will!

Tiago Simões wrote:The way I see it, a person who has real, deep pro-social values, and lives truly by them, can probably influence everyone around them, regardless of being part of their family or not. These kinds of values have a tendency to be contagious

Tiago Simões wrote:The next couple of centuries might well be a lot tougher than what you seem to imagine.

Tiago Simões wrote:Then again, they might not. In any case, the choice of not having biological kids of your own does not seem (to my eyes) the same as not contributing to the happiness and well-being of the next generation. If a person sees an excessive number of human beings in the region where they live, not making more seems a sensible choice. Just as, if you live in a large farm in a sparsely populated region, having a few more humans around makes sense, I think.

Tiago Simões wrote:For a while, until we become something else or go extinct, I believe the same. But this apparently seems to contradict what you said earlier, that it would be important for people with pro-social values to have kids. Have I missed something?

Tiago Simões wrote:Please forgive me if I sounded too harsh at times. Again, I thank you for your words, because they helped me to write as well.

Josh Hoffman wrote:
We are moving in the other direction. We are soon to have 6 kids. I am pretty certain our little property can support them all, and their families, if they have them. If expansion is needed, it is available for cheap because we are not near a large city.

Tiago Simões wrote:

Josh Hoffman wrote:
We are moving in the other direction. We are soon to have 6 kids. I am pretty certain our little property can support them all, and their families, if they have them. If expansion is needed, it is available for cheap because we are not near a large city.

Why is land available for cheap there? Small town, lack of industry due to the national and global economy.

Is it always available everywhere away from large cities? This would be a case by case basis but normally the answer is yes as long as the property is not in the middle of several large cities.

What about in other countries? I have been to a dozen other countries but I did not ask myself these questions when I was there. I would mostly understand the USA and in particular, the southern USA from TX to the east coast.

Will it remain like that when the cities' unsustainability makes them gradually unlivable, and all those people start getting out? Yes, the county seat here is 5k people. The county consists of 10k total. Winston county consists of 610 square miles That is 391,000 acres. If it was an island, those acres, split evenly would be 39.1 acres per person.

Historically, how did people do that "expansion" thing? What did they displace when expanding? I would suppose here they would have displaced wildlife and Native Americans. On the wildlife front, we are overrun with deer and other animals due to the decline in the population that feeds themselves from the wildlife, due to city dwelling. The convo on the Native Americans is best served on a different thread, I imagine.

And in the far future, how can we make sure the future generations will prioritize Nature Care over Lots of Kids? We can't but I think the serious nature care folks (95% in the OP) are advocating no kids so I am advocating lots of kids with an understanding of nature care. The alternative is that all the displaced hillbillys, like me, will still be here (my offspring) after the nature care folks die off with no kids.

Which part(s) of your worldview are likely to remain relevant in the long run, and which will become a hindrance? In comparison to which other world view?

How can any of us tell whether the values we inherited from our parents/ teachers/ chosen books/ etc remain relevant here and now? We cannot.

My thoughts on all this, to quote some guy with a much bigger beard than mine, is: "The opposite of a bad idea is usually another bad idea." The world we live in is always more complex, more nuanced, more unpredictable than we would like. No simple answers anywhere. I think Wendel Berry says that industrial America can take a solution to a problem and divide it evenly into 2 more problems. For example, CAFO animal waste was his context.

Tiago Simões wrote:I still feel this subject is being discussed with too little attention to the large scale patterns.

Even Paul's quote turned into a meme, while entirely true in a strict sense, only remains true in its proper context: yes, one human can change into a net positive force for the planet, but that argument breaks down at some point. 500 trillion humans, no matter how permie-esque they try to be, simply can't fit in this planet. Especially not if they still want some places to remain "zone 5".

So yes, some of us, like Josh, live in places with few other humans. Others, like me, can't reach a single trace of actual wildlife in a thousand mile radius.

But what was Paul's post about, really? Does it have a single answer, or like so many other things, "it depends"?

Josh Hoffman wrote:
I think it is the modern city (for the most part) that is unsustainable, and not the population numbers. Not to mention the national and global economy, talk about exploitation.

Tiago Simões wrote:Does it have a single answer, or like so many other things, "it depends"?

Tiago Simões wrote:Others, like me, can't reach a single trace of actual wildlife in a thousand mile radius.

Jerry McIntire wrote:

Tiago Simões wrote:Others, like me, can't reach a single trace of actual wildlife in a thousand mile radius.

I hope you are able to move soon. But really, there is mo place without wildlife for a thousand mile radius. In the most densely populated cities, there are birds and fish and insects and squirrels and ...

Randy Gibson wrote:The U.S. fertility rate dropped to its lowest level in U.S. history, according to new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics said in a new report that the final data from 2023 showed the fertility rate declining by 3 percent from the year prior, to 54.5 births per 1,000 females aged 15 to 44.

That’s the lowest rate on record.

paul wheaton wrote:I enjoy the idea of a gert village.  About 30 to 40 gerts on 200 acres.

And I enjoy the idea that the united states has thousands of gert villages.  Each a slightly different flavor.


I enjoy the idea that when we have thousands of gert villages, each with 30 to 40 gerts, we can see dozens of books/movies/vids sharing ideas about how to optimize this path.  Studies about HOW great this path is.  And the idea of being a gert is known by every american.  And this path is just the beginning for solving a long list of global problems.


I enjoy thinking about all this.  For the person that wrote the post (above), I might be able to talk about this if a few hundred of these villages exist.  Until then, it would just sound like crazy talk.

Tiago Simões wrote:

My stumbling block here (relating to the babies vs no babies theme) would be, how would a gert village deal with its own population growth?

how would a gert village deal with its own population growth?