Do you REALLY want to help fight climate change?

[GliderGuider]

Don't.
Have.
Children.

...and convince your friends to do likewise.

Family planning: A major environmental emphasis

A study by statisticians at Oregon State University concluded that in the United States, the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environmentally sensitive practices people might employ their entire lives – things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.

The research also makes it clear that potential carbon impacts vary dramatically across countries. The average long-term carbon impact of a child born in the U.S. – along with all of its descendants – is more than 160 times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh.

In this debate, very little attention has been given to the overwhelming importance of reproductive choice, Murtaugh said. When an individual produces a child – and that child potentially produces more descendants in the future – the effect on the environment can be many times the impact produced by a person during their lifetime.

Under current conditions in the U.S., for instance, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent – about 5.7 times the lifetime emissions for which, on average, a person is responsible.

Here's the paper:

http://blog.oregonlive.com/environment_impact/2009/07/carbon%20legacy.pdf

And a commentary on it, by the true heir to George Carlin and Bill Hicks:

I'm rather proud to have kept 20,000 tonnes of CO2 out of Mama Gaia's atmosphere.

[tonyt53]

1. I highly, highly doubt those numbers. 20+ years in alternative and renewable fuel experience here.

Several European countries have populations that are in decline. The US, without continued immigration, will hit that in about 20 years.

[GliderGuider]

2. It obviously depends on the date the calculations are pinned to.

The study was based on 2005 data. By 2015 the per capita CO2 emissions of the US had dropped by about 15% from 2005, so the carbon legacy of an American child today would drop from 9441 to just over 8000T.

The world's average CO2 output per capita went up 6% in that time, so the carbon legacy of the planet's children is still increasing overall.

The paper also calculates optimistic and pessimistic scenarios for American CO2 emissions, including one in which emissions drop to 0 by 2100.

The actual numbers are all speculation, of course. The point is that reproductive choices are more important to long-term emissions than lifestyle choices.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. This is nonsense

If Americans had had fewer children 50 years ago, it might have been helpful. We have a problem now, and unless you have a time machine you’ve been keeping a secret… we need to address the problem now.

At this time, “population control” won’t help all that much. US Total Fertility is already slightly less than 2.

[GliderGuider]

4. Why do we need a time machine?

This isn't about helping today or tomorrow.
It's about keeping the world from going to shit over the next two or three generations.

I don't think that we have more than a single generation left, but for those who do this is just good, compassionate forward planning.

[OKIsItJustMe]

12. We need < 350 ppm CO₂. This will not get us there

Cutting emissions is not sufficient. We actually need to be carbon negative. Within decades.

However, if you want to cut your CO₂ emissions, change your diet.

[center]http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet
[/center]

[GliderGuider]

15. Nothing is going to get us there.

Nothing. Not refraining from having kids, not planting trees, not moving low-carbon energy, not changing our economic system, not changing our political system, not sitting in circles meditating, drumming and singing Kumbaya.

We have just over 485 ppm CO2eq in the air at this point, and it's going to stay there until we stop burning fossil fuels - which will happen once the world population has crashed by 75% - which will happen due to climate-induced food and water supply disruptions, pandemics and a global economic collapse.

I've accepted that civilization as a coherent, quasi-global system is not going to survive more than another 30 years. I'm mostly against bringing yet more innocent, defenseless children into the maelstrom of disintegration.

[OKIsItJustMe]

17. That’s a different concern…

…and one that I share.

Let’s not pretend that it will address climate change.

[GliderGuider]

19. What should we pretend will address climate change?

Because from what I've seen, nothing we have come up with yet has a snowball's chance in Congress.

[OKIsItJustMe]

20. “… a snowball's chance in Congress”

As opposed to population control? (Seriously?)

[GliderGuider]

21. I don't actually think population control will do it.

Last edited Wed Jun 1, 2016, 01:49 PM - Edit history (1)

I'm just against kids generally, so I use any opportunity to discourage people from having them.

What else do you have?

[OKIsItJustMe]

22. As I see it

In the end, the only means which might be effective is some sort of carbon capture and sequestration; whether it be biological, chemical, mechanical, what-have-you, it will be some sort of CCS. It would be the only way to remove CO₂e in a “timely” manner.

Of course, to be effective, it would need to be at a very large scale.

[GliderGuider]

23. Yes, that's how I see it too.

The scale is what makes me quite sure it's not going to happen.

In order to get from 410 back to 350 ppm we'd have to remove about 320 billion tonnes of CO2 from the air, in addition to removing whatever we put in, which right now is 35 billion tonnes/year.

If we just removed the 35 gigatonnes per year that we emit, the existing concentration would remain. As a result we'd probably see a +3C rise over time, since the full Earth System Sensitivity as reconstructed from the paleo record is higher than the Charney sensitivity that is typically used.

No, the scale is utterly unrealistic.

[sue4e3]

16. Boy this would really piss off some one who wanted to be planet conscious and eat meat

[GliderGuider]

18. Yes,

Meat eating is a big issue for those of us with severe metabolic syndrome who are also ecologically conscious and animal-empaths.

I consider my metabolic ailment to be the cruelest irony that the universe could have possibly inflicted on me.

[thereismore]

26. Logic. Use it. nt

[The2ndWheel]

5. We're not quite the collective yet

People still have their own individual desires to have or not have kids. Then for every kid one couple doesn't have, there's another couple that has two kids, or three, or four. You can tell them not to, but, they'll also tell you to keep your opinions to yourself.

That's one of the variables in this climate change issue. Why do people today have to pay for what other people previously did? Because a bunch of people have had a bunch of kids, I can't have kids if I want them? That doesn't seem fair. Then good and bad comes into play, which is different for different people.

We're prisoners of history, slaves to the future, and trapped in the middle with our own wants and desires.

[GliderGuider]

6. This individualism is also reflected in the sovereign rights of nations

That keep uniform and uniformly enforceable legislation from being implemented, even in the face of a global existential catastrophe.

As you say, we are trapped.

[Boomer]

7. "Why do people today have to pay for what other people previously did?"

And there you have it in a nutshell: why our species will never react in time to even moderate climate change. No one will sacrifice for the vaguely threatened future common good until climate change is directly devastating their lives, and by then it will be too late.

I don't have children, but that decision wasn't made because of climate change. It was entirely a personal decision. Few people will deny themselves this fundamental psychological/emotional desire on the off chance it will help avert climate change. It must be a shared sacrifice undertaken by many before people would consider it to be "fair" and not an intolerable imposition on their basic rights.

[Duppers]

8. "Back hole"! Stanhope was cool until he said that.

That say-anything-for-a-laugh is offensive to most women and could ruin the overall point. Gee, how would he like to be sodomized? That's my ONLY problem with his clip. The baby-bearing front hole can be easily fixed or at least easily protected.

Otherwise, big

[GliderGuider]

9. I don't think Stanhope really gives a fuck about offending people.

Front hole or back.

It's not like he's a politician.

[Duppers]

10. Obviously. And i knew that.

He's a commodian who's not really interested in convincing anyone.

I just had to register my complaint.

[GliderGuider]

11. No worries.

I understand.

I'm not interested in convincing anyone either, but I'm not terribly funny about it...

[Fumesucker]

13. Exactly, leave the stupid, ignorant and uncaring to have the children

That should work out.

[GliderGuider]

14. It's not going to make any difference at this point who has the children.

reproductive habits are not going to change in the single generation or less that this cycle of civilization has left.

Not until things begin to come apart - at which point the ones who are aware of what's happening - the intelligent, informed ones - will be the first to stop whelping, lest they bring a defenseless child into the maelstrom.

[sylvanus]

24. Kinda funny now!

Most of the folks crying the loudest and pouring their hearts out for changing energy use and ringing the bell for climate change, all have kids or even grand kids.
I have neither, for a reason. We new this 30 years ago, cry me a river and drink a beer. I believed the science then, sorry it took a bunch of kids for you to catch up.

[GliderGuider]

25. There's a wise person behind that handle!

Unfortunately the net birth rate (births - deaths) in the US is still around 4.5/100,000.

It's shameful that in this day and age a large, modern nation like the US still has a positive net birth rate.