>Having more kids in western cultures contributes significantly.
I wonder how much longer before the idea of limiting people's reproduction is on the table.
Someone who never has kids can probably drive a Hummer and spend every weekend jetting off somewhere, and their lifetime carbon footprint will still be many times lower than someone who has several children.
I understand that developed country carbon footprints are vastly higher than developing countries, but there are countries that are developing rapidly yet still have fertility rates of 4 or 5 children per woman. We can be pretty sure that those people aspire to having a western-style carbon footprint (and to be fair, why shouldn't they) either through migrating to a developed country or their own country developing.
When do we start saying that we need to limit the number of people who can exist? I don't see how it could ever be practically possible (outside of a regime like China, and even then it backfired horribly) but it if it could somehow be enforced it would probably be the best (and fairest) thing we could do.
Side note: for those of us who worry about this stuff, it can be hard to comprehend how little the average person cares about it. We have these TV shows in the UK which show people going through the process of buying a holiday home (British people are obsessed with houses/real estate to the point where watching other people buy a house is a recreational activity). The other day there was a family with 4 kids buying a holiday home in Florida. So they're planning to spend the rest of their lives jetting their whole (large) family across the Atlantic a few times a year. As someone who feels kinda guilty every time I fly, it just left me thinking that I'm wasting my mental energy on caring about this stuff when other people care so little.
Isn't that basically a good thing though? I'm not wishing for humanity to die out, I just think that the best way to minimise net human misery is to have a smaller population. If it's happening naturally then all the better.
As "native" developed country populations decline, I can see increasing tension as developing country populations continue to grow rapidly.
There's also the small problem that our accepted economic models seem to rely on perpetual growth.
Many populations are probably auto limiting themselves because we are walking the threshold of resource availability. Another kid means less food in your other kids' mouths and less chance of survival.
I wonder how much longer before the idea of limiting people's reproduction is on the table.
Someone who never has kids can probably drive a Hummer and spend every weekend jetting off somewhere, and their lifetime carbon footprint will still be many times lower than someone who has several children.
I understand that developed country carbon footprints are vastly higher than developing countries, but there are countries that are developing rapidly yet still have fertility rates of 4 or 5 children per woman. We can be pretty sure that those people aspire to having a western-style carbon footprint (and to be fair, why shouldn't they) either through migrating to a developed country or their own country developing.
When do we start saying that we need to limit the number of people who can exist? I don't see how it could ever be practically possible (outside of a regime like China, and even then it backfired horribly) but it if it could somehow be enforced it would probably be the best (and fairest) thing we could do.
Side note: for those of us who worry about this stuff, it can be hard to comprehend how little the average person cares about it. We have these TV shows in the UK which show people going through the process of buying a holiday home (British people are obsessed with houses/real estate to the point where watching other people buy a house is a recreational activity). The other day there was a family with 4 kids buying a holiday home in Florida. So they're planning to spend the rest of their lives jetting their whole (large) family across the Atlantic a few times a year. As someone who feels kinda guilty every time I fly, it just left me thinking that I'm wasting my mental energy on caring about this stuff when other people care so little.