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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: 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.