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from the just-harness-the-children's-energy dept.
Travis Rieder has defended his assertion that families should consider having less children to lessen the impacts and suffering caused by climate change:
Earlier this summer, I found myself in the middle of a lively debate because of my work on climate change and the ethics of having children. NPR correspondent Jennifer Ludden profiled some of my work in procreative ethics with an article entitled, "Should we be having kids in the age of climate change?," which summarized my published views that we ought to consider adopting a "small family ethic" and even pursuing fertility reduction efforts in response to the threat from climate change. Although environmentalists for decades have worried about overpopulation for many good reasons, I suggest the fast-upcoming thresholds in climate change provide uniquely powerful reasons to consider taking real action to slow population growth.
Clearly, this idea struck a nerve: I was overwhelmed by the response in my personal email inbox as well as op-eds in other media outlets and over 70,000 shares on Facebook. I am gratified that so many people took the time to read and reflect on the piece. Having read and digested that discussion, I want to continue it by responding to some of the most vocal criticisms of my own work, which includes research on "population engineering" – the intentional manipulation of human population size and structure – I've done with my colleagues, Jake Earl and Colin Hickey. In short, the varied arguments against my views – that I'm overreacting, that the economy will tank and others – haven't changed my conviction that we need to discuss the ethics of having children in this era of climate change.
Consider reading the article before commenting, or turning off your computer to conserve energy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Tuesday September 13 2016, @06:46AM
All experience shows that anywhere where people have sufficient resources and sufficient education, fertility rates go down automatically. Going for direct population control is like building dams against the overflowing bathtub, instead of closing the valve filling it.
He's right, however, that we need to change our economy so that it doesn't need continuous growth. But that's not restricted to population growth. What good does it do if you reduce the number of people, but each single of them consumes so much more that the total consumption continues to grow?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @07:29AM
There is some aspect of evolution that you are not accepting.
Prior to birth control, sex drive was effectively a proxy for desiring offspring. It was selected for. There was no advantage for those who specifically desired offspring. This has changed.
Evolution is not necessarily a slow process. It's only slow when there is no significant fitness difference. For example, if space aliens showed up and ate all the people lacking blue eyes, we would instantly have a population of purely blue-eyed people. When a trait is already in the population and it offers dramatically higher survival odds, evolution happens mighty quick.
Perhaps you deny that personality is inheritable? This has been proven otherwise; DNA is even linked to political affiliation!
There exist people that want children, not just sex. There exist people who want huge families. Evolution selects for their DNA.
From an evolutionary perspective, successful use of birth control is roughly equivalent to death. (slight difference if you help blood relatives succeed in having offspring) There is no larger environmental influence on humans today. The selection is massive because the fitness differences are massive.
In other words, this effect you see on fertility rates is quite temporary. (you've only ever seen white swans, so therefore they must all be white) Population will rocket upward as those who don't desire offspring are quickly selected out of the gene pool. There is nothing that can be done to stop this; it is a certainty. Evolution routes around everything you do to stop it. Even draconian government measures can't stop it; those who bypass the controls will be rewarded with exponential growth until stopped by the holding capacity of Earth.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday September 13 2016, @08:40AM
Your view is quite debatable. First off, evolution does not work as you describe it. It is well understood that higher-order selection is happening, i.e., not individuals but higher units like group, even societies, are subjected to selection. This means that within a group it can be quite detrimental to have everybody have a lot of kids. If fertility is kept at bay, offspring can be better brought up, helping the group to better compete with other groups. Second, traits we are discussing here, are not inherited as simple as you make it believe. For example, the wish to have kids is certainly not inherited (what is heritable of that at all) mono-genetically. Probably most of the behavioral traits have a strong environmental component. This implies that offspring might not exhibit the trait.
From a phenomenological point of view it seems clear that fertility has mostly become a matter of choice (well, for the non-basement dwellers, you guys just get out of there) which in turn is highly influenced by knowledge and upbringing. Which in turn implies that long-term stable populations are possible.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @09:19AM
Higher-order selection won't save your type. You need to be really careful about ideas like "detrimental", because living in squalor is still an evolutionary win. For higher-order selection to help, your group needs to invade some other group (let that group not breed, or just genocide them away) and then make use of the resulting room for growth. It's been attempted, sometimes with success. The first-world nations rarely play offence; the most recent is probably when Hitler decided that Slavs had nice land worth taking. Normally first-world nations play defence, taking in numerous people from third-world areas.
This idea that "offspring can be better brought up, helping the group to better compete with other groups" is flat-out wrong unless you are conquering and killing. Evolution cares not how wealthy you are, as long as you survive and reproduce. The kids in Eritrea fighting over a rotting goat hide are alive, and that is all that counts.
I wrote nothing about anything being mono-genetic. This is no requirement. It doesn't apply to height, yet the men in Denmark are getting taller. It doesn't apply to skin color, yet obviously the natives of Ireland are pale and those of Zimbabwe are not. The fact that some offspring might not exhibit a trait is of little importance. That too just doesn't matter; it's an insignificant detail. Think of the big picture. People with the right traits do exist, and they are massively selected for. Evolution is unavoidable.
Choice is not a matter of choice. It's in your DNA. Let's put humans aside for a moment, because the emotions make people deny reality even when it should be obvious. Consider dogs. Would you deny that the Chow acts differently than the Golden Retriever? Consider non-human apes. The common chimpanzee looks an awful lot like the bonobo chimpanzee, yet... they sure act differently! Personality is greatly in DNA. Now back to humans: Remember that we can tie political affiliation to specific genes. The fact that you may be liberal or conservative is significantly in your DNA. We can also tie one's degree of religious intensity to specific genes. It's simply illogical to suggest that one part of the body, the brain or the mind, would somehow be immune to evolution; the burden of proof is on those who think this part is exempt from evolution.
Even "upbringing" isn't immune to evolution, and no I don't mean memes. You are raised by a human with a personality that is largely under the influence of a genome that is subject to evolution. Parents who raise kids in ways that lead to grandkids will have their DNA propagate into future generations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @02:01PM
Even "upbringing" isn't immune to evolution, and no I don't mean memes. You are raised by a human with a personality that is largely under the influence of a genome that is subject to evolution. Parents who raise kids in ways that lead to grandkids will have their DNA propagate into future generations.
Aaaaaand this is where you go off the deep end, my friend. Be consciousness and free will an illusion in the end as they may, you seem to be making quite the fatalistic argument. Counterexample: my ex-parents are batshit white supremacists, while I find their views disgusting and have pretty much become a Democrat.
I also know where you're going with this, so let's just nip it in the bud right here. Next you're going to put forward the classical racist theory straight out of the 18th century that mooooooooslims and negroes Just Are™ inferior, because DNA. Probably also some variation on “with Jews you lose,” right? Go ahead and deny that's where you were headed. Both of us know better. And if you don't see why that's problematic, you're too far gone to the alt-right.
The reason I know better is because both of us know there's no point in establishing what's already known. People of African ancestry suffer different problems in different numbers, for example sickle cell anemia and cancer. This is common knowledge. Why would you go to the length to conjure up chows and golden retrievers to demonstrate this? No, that is not all you intend to say.
In your previous comment up there, you belie a superficial understanding of genetics. I had thought this stuff was quite basic information given to every high school student, even in the back assward US of A. But that is the power of the pseudoscience of the alt-right. You know just enough science to come across as empirical and reasonable. You're not being rational; you're rationalizing. Once you cherry pick the evidence you need to support your position, you reject all conflicting information.
That's not science, my friend. That sort of thinking makes you merely as good as a witch doctor in the Congo. Perhaps your ancestors weren't as evolved as you'd like them to be?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @09:32PM
You're complaining that my argument has unpleasant social implications, so therefore it must be wrong. This is not how facts work.
Essentially, this is the liberal version of the creationist argument: evolution would deny God, so therefore it must be wrong. Your argument is every bit as broken.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @10:25AM
There's an important aspect of evolution that you are neglecting. Evolution is ultimately not about the species, but about spreading information. In case of humans, the information that gets passed on is not just in the genes, but also in the memes. Memes can easily supersede genes (our behaviour is not determined by our genes, unlike for lower animals), and they can be passed not just along inheritance lines. And a meme that causes more well-being for the individual will succeed versus a meme that harms the individual (that's why religions have to resort to afterlife; their memes can only succeed because they make you believe that you'll be better off from them after death, even if before death it doesn't look like it).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @09:12PM
Elephants, Chimpanzees, and killer whales all have memes. Humans aren't so special.
Be careful how you judge "well-being". What matters for evolution is not what you might prefer. Squalor is fine, as long as you reproduce and your descendants reproduce. You can be uneducated, malnourished (stunted growth and intelligence, but not dead), enslaved, and diseased. If this doesn't prevent reproduction, it's all fine.
The individual succeeds if they produce numerous offspring (or greatly help blood relatives to do so), and they experience harm if they fail at this. Nothing else counts.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:37PM
Thje meme evolution is not determined by the number of offspring. The meme evolution depends on how well you can spread the meme. Nobody listens to a loser (with the usual meaning of the word). Therefore a meme that makes you lose out will have a harder time to spread than a meme that makes you win.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @07:51AM
That's brilliant! Except for it plays into the Idiocracy Theorem where those that care the most about what type of world they are living for the kids probably won't have them. Guess what that does to total consumption for those that do (disclaimer- I work with people who average 4 kids between them)?
If you aren't going to have the kids, someone else will. The total number of single mothers continues to rise in a fashion proponents of climate change should easily recognize.
You aren't going to hand-wave this away with more education and appeals to reduce consumption.
No snowflake ever feels responsible for the avalanche.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @10:40AM
Idiocracy is not a theorem, it's a movie. Hollywood. Fiction. Not real.
That's completely unrelated. A single mother with two kids does not contribute more to the numbers of future humans than a married mother with two kids.
If I am going to have kids, that other person will, as well. It's not as if that person would first check out whether I have kids, and only decide to get some if I don't.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @12:48PM
Idiocracy may only be a film, but it is a fine example of life imitating art.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @03:04PM
[[Citation needed]]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @03:02PM
Idiocracy is an idea expressed through a movie. If there is a discussion about limiting the number of children, who should breed, and "population engineering"; you do understand how it applies, right? Or do you need a venn diagram to explain it?
That's completely unrelated
How droll! You do realize that single motherhood tends to be self-perpetuating, right; which means more kids in total? Otherwise the totals would remain relatively stable.
Not to mention kids from single mothers tend to experience lower rates of education and higher rates of poverty, so if someone is discussing education and increasing affluence as a means to reduce population, single motherhood is front and center.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @03:06PM
The thing about Idiocracy is that it claims that the society of retards is the result of natural selection and genetics. So it's wrong in a pedantic way. I still think it's ultimately correct because culture can change that rapidly, and it's culture that gets passed down. Culture can also spread. We are on the verge of embracing anti-intellectualism on a dangerous scale. Instead of Idiocracy, it's entirely possible that the West is headed for another dark age.
A single mother with two kids does not contribute more to the numbers of future humans than a married mother with two kids.
You are correct. Some single mothers make a mistake with a guy, even involving marriage some times. I don't press for details because it's none of my business, but just what I hear. Those tend to be happy with just the one kid since they realize that's more than enough for one person to handle.
However, what you underestimate is career mothers. We have a perverse welfare system that will take care of you 100% as long as there's a baby under some cutoff age in your home. So, what's a career mother to do? Can't stop the tykes from growing up. The answer is to keep popping out babies about once every 2 years to keep the benefits coming.
In the latter case, mothers actually teach their daughters how to become career mothers and many actually expect that the daughter will follow in their footsteps. It's quite horrible, but I don't know how to help it without suggesting eugenics. It wouldn't even need to be race-based eugenics (not directly). Just require an income of 70,000 for each child license. You make 140,000? You get two children. Maybe there would need to be some kind of escrow requirement, too. That will never fly.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday September 13 2016, @01:07PM
Are we so sure of that? For example, India's population is growing at about 2-3 times the rate of China, and China's downright draconian one-child policy that was in place for 35 years probably has something to do with causing that.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 13 2016, @04:35PM
He's right, however, that we need to change our economy so that it doesn't need continuous growth.
The thing is, our economy doesn't need continuous growth now. The basic function of the economy, making sure people have the stuff they need, works pretty well whether or not there is continuous growth of some sort. But it'll need to grow in some ways, if we want to improve ourselves, our lives, and fulfill any number of ambitions many of us have.