WWSD

have kids?

Perhpas the question should be rephrased as, is it responsible to the planet to have kids?

Looking at the current state of the planet and realizing that we humans are probably to blame for many of our ecosystems woes, is having more humans a good choice for our planet and for the future of our species?

I have heard many times that limiting one's self to having only two children eliminates the burden of overpopulation but upon further consideration, two children simply increases the burden.

If a couple has two kids, they don't just die right afterward. They live to see thier children grow up and have children themselves. From two people we have spawned 6, assuming that the children follow suit and also have two each. Now we have 8 humans taking up resources, using energy, burning fossil fuels, putting garbage on the curbside, and doing other things that may not be so wonderful for the planet.

This seems irresponsible to me. I have no kids BTW. I also don't dislike kids, in fact I think they can be great. But I don't feel as though I want any. So its not that I hate children that I think its irresponsible.

Aside from the potential for total ecosystem collapse and the horrible extinction of the human species as a result, is it irresponsible to potential future beings to bring them into a world as generally crappy as this one? We don't live in a very pleasent world, is it responsible to, in a way, force a new being into it?

Yes, yes, if my mother hadn't decided to have me I wouldn't be here etcetera etcetara so let it be written so let it be done.

And my reply is: If I had not been born, I'd never know. This is both for good things and for bad. If I had not been brought into this world I would have never known beauty, but I would have never known the abysmal depths to which one can sink.

I blame no one for having kids, and I certainly don't harbor and animosity etc for the parents among us. I was just in a conversation about this with someone who is trying to have another child and we both wondered if it is a good choice in a more global sense to bring another one of us into this world.

I've been to <a href="http://www.vhemt.org" target="_blank">www.vhemt.org</a> as well and thought the points brought up there are relevant.

OK, here goes, let's see what fun we can have!

[ March 15, 2002: Message edited by: WWSD ]</p>

JL

You have good points, but as an atheist I feel like having kids will sorta be like an afterlife for me. Not in a literal sense, but as a way to leave a legacy of sorts behind after I die. Perhaps I'm just selfish, but I feel hopeful we'll work the ecological issues out in the future. Colonize Mars or something. Besides, I don't think the world is crappy. I'm in love with the struggle. Utopia seems pretty sterile and boring to me.

Alonzo Fyfe

I do not think it makes sense to talk about responsibility to anything that does not itself have desires.

If it is not the type of entity capable of wanting anything, then it is not the type of entity that cares what you do, whatever you do, and you can do no wrong to it.

JL

You mean a fetus or the environment?

kctan

Well the entity might not have desires et al but its well being means the well being of those with desire et al.

You can do no wrong to it but you just did wrong to yourself. Refering of course to the environments not fetuses.

How much will you care if I were to release enough sarin into the environment to envelope the whole world ?

bd-from-kg

WWSD:

There is no dilemma here to wrestle with, because your initial premises are completely wrong..

In the first place, humans are not overrunning the earth. According to the best current estimates total world population will peak sometime around the middle of this century and thereafter will decline.

Second, there is no evidence that the world’s resources are particularly stressed by the current population “load”, or that it will be by the maximum load.

Humans are not “ruining” or “destroying” the environment. In the more prosperous areas the environment is actually improving, quite dramatically in some respects.

Third, our personal decisions won’t affect the areas where serious environmental damage is occurring. The Brazilian rain forests, for example, are not being destroyed because Americans are having too many kids, or because of anything else Americans are doing. Unless you propose to invade Brazil and take it over, there really isn’t much we can do about this situation. The same is true in Africa. As a practical matter the only thing that we can do to help is to encourage these countries to follow sensible (i.e., free-market) economic policies, which will both slow population growth (and eventually reverse it) and give them the resources to deal with their environmental problems.

Fourth, your analysis of the effect of having two children is just dead wrong. If every woman chose to have no more than two children the actual effect would be a very rapid decrease in the population. Even if every woman actually had two children the result would be a slow decrease in population. Even in advanced countries with very low child mortality and high life expectancy, there has to be an average of about 2.1 children born to each woman to maintain a stable population. Since many women won’t have any children for various reasons, that means that a great many women must have more than two just to maintain current population levels.

In fact, in the U.S. and virtually every European country the birth rate is already well below the replacement level. Other countries that have become prosperous more recently are rapidly approaching the same condition. The real problem is how to keep the population from dropping precipitously as the world becomes more affluent. Unless, of course, you regard the existence of humans to be undesirable in itself regardless of environmental considerations. In that case current trends should be extremely heartening.

Viti

bd-from-kg...there are thousands of children in the US who go to bed hungry every night, around the world there are millions starving.

We seemingly can't feed, house and clothe the population we have, so I think the original post made valid points even if you disagree.

I would, however, like to see references for both sides, I have not researched the population question personally; do any of you have good starting points?

JL

I'd wager here in the US its for economic reasons people go hungry rather than any physical inability to supply food.

Mostly Lurking

I think I heard somewhere once that the United States alone can produce enough food to comfortably feed the entire world. A lot of Americans would have to eat less, but they wouldn't be starving because of it.

Don't quote me on this though, since I don't remember where I heard this, and certainly don't have the data to back it up.

[Edited to fix typo]

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: Mostly Lurking ]</p>

Pomp

LadyShea,

I would, however, like to see references for both sides, I have not researched the population question personally; do any of you have good starting points?

The UN's <a href="http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/concise2001/C2001English.pdf" target="_blank">Report on Population and Development</a> might be a good starting point. I'm reading through it now.

Regarding hunger in the US, the <a href="http://www.un.org/popin/specialized/fao.html" target="_blank">Food and Agricultural Organization</a> of the UN has a <a href="http://apps.fao.org/lim500/wrap.pl?FoodBalanceSheet&Domain=FoodBalanceSheet&L anguage=english" target="_blank">page</a> where you can run a balance sheet by region and year showing food production and consumption. I ran a few for the US in recent years and we produce far more than we consume.