Red meat has a huge carbon footprint because cattle requires a large amount of land and water.
https://sph.tulane.edu/climate-and-food-environmental-impact-beef-consumption
Demand for steaks and burgers is the primary driver of Deforestation:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/marcel-gomes-interview
If you don’t have a car and rarely eat red meat, you are doing GREAT 🙌 🙌
Sure, you can drink tap water instead of plastic water. You can switch to Tea. You can travel by train. You can use Linux instead of Windows AI’s crap. Those are great ideas. Also, don’t drive yourself crazy. If you are only an ordinary citizen, remember that perfect is the enemy of good.
The prevalence of people telling everyone not to have kids in the context of our current culture is weird.
Alt-right: “Hey we’re trying to have as many kids as possible so there’s more of us, and less of you. Do us a favor and don’t have kids.”
Evidently a lot of people on the left: “Sounds good dude.”
May I propose a reasonable alternative? If you don’t want to have kids, cool, don’t have kids. If you want to have kids, have the financial and social security to do so responsibly, and a partner who wants the same thing, then have kids (but also go vegan, ride a bike, and raise them to do the same).
Aka, you do you.
I’m certainly not going to bring kids into this shitty world when I have no confidence whatsoever that they will have a good life. Things are going downhill FAST and there’s absolutely no reason to believe that situation is going to change. It’s going to be bad enough with just me having to live with this shit for another 20-30 years (assuming nothing kills me before that).
Those are all fair points and something I think about as well. You do you.
Also, I don’t think anybody honestly believes the argument that it is immoral to have children “without their consent.” The idea that you cannot do anything to someone else without their consent is a very useful idea in 95% of situations, and this is clearly one in which it does not apply. I did not consent to being born, but I would have if I could. Imagine a bureaucracy in which to apply for a passport, you needed to have an existing passport. It just doesn’t work. I can see the logic, but the idea has failed on a functional level. You can apply this to anything and make fake disingenuous arguments for any cause: “I don’t think we should elect a president unless they’ve already been president before. I think it’s a role where you absolutely need to have prior experience.” “You need to consent before being born. Since it’s impossible to do so, I guess it’s just immoral to have children.” See: Catch-22.
It is more difficult to have children now than it was 20, 40, 60 years ago. Some people feel the need to further justify their decision by convincing themselves that would be immoral to do anything else.
Yeah I’ve debated with antinatalists who used that argument. It’s definitely an absurd stance on the face of it, though some aspects are worth considering. For example if you struggle significantly with cognitive disorders, and life is hell for you, you might want to ask yourself if it’s a good idea to bring someone in the world who very likely will experience a similar hell. And of course socioeconomic concerns matter too. I’ve only ever had entry-level jobs, and owning my own house kind of feels like a distant dream, so having children is practically infeasible. Plus the whole living in what’s shaping up to be an all out fascist dictatorship thing.