137
Young Europeans more likely to quit driving and have fewer children to save planet
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
137 points (97.2% liked)
Futurology
1759 readers
79 users here now
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I’m not European nor am I that young, but I share the same sentiment. Commuting by car isn’t good in a lot of aspects and kids are too expensive. Also having kids in this climate seems extremely stressful. Not only do you have to worry about extremely invasive tech, but you also have to worry about the changing climate and the (what seems like) global cost of living crisis
Indeed, anyone can make up quotes about anything, without providing any substance to a discussion.
If you need it spelled out for you, I'll help: life was never easy, but it never stopped people from stepping up to it and taking the responsibility for it. That includes having kids. Being "afraid of having kids" because of some external issue seems like a bad excuse from people who just don't want to accept the responsibility.
Saying it’s our responsibility to have kids it’s implying it’s our responsibility to endlessly expand and multiply. That is the domain of viruses and creatures that exceed the environmental carrying capacity of their species
Not necessarily. We can still encourage people to have kids but keep it close to replacement rate (2.3 kids per woman)
But isn’t it the fact that we have so many people coming into the middle class with middle class resource usage that causes planetary resource overruse? Either we need less people in the middle class, or 7 billion ppl have got to go back to pre industrial levels of consumption
No, we need less people living with the north american standard of consumption. This is not the same as "middle class".
What a fucking stupid argument. How is it anyone's "responsibility" to have a kid? Please spell it out.
Here's my argument: it sounds hard and I don't wanna. Explain to me how I'm irresponsible. JFC 😂
What is your plan when you get to old age?
Use the hundreds of thousands I would have otherwise spent on kids to live my best life until I die? duh
Understand that we are talking here about a scenario where the global fertility rate drops significantly (less than one child per woman), like what is happening now in South Korea, Spain, Italy, ok?
Given that scenario and the economic collapse that would be coming with it, what would you be spending on, exactly?
Has it occurred to you that all that money that you have been saving and putting in some pension fund will likely not be there if there are no younger people to keep the economy going?
Also: what is stopping you from "living your best life" now that you are young?
Lastly
Yeah, that is not a thing in Germany. Decent public schools, decent health care system, government gives you 250 euro per kid per month, no car dependency, which means that kids are a lot more independent a lot earlier in life... having kids does not cost that much.
There are already way, way too many people on the planet.
And most of them are in Asia, old and about to die in 25 years or so.
The population on China and India is still growing. Have birth rates dropped below replacement levels?
China is already declining.
Yes, India is already below replacement levels and dropping further.
Thanks for the sources. Interesting to see that "The number of new births a year has nearly halved since 2016" in China.
That's what demographic collapse looks like. Birth rate drops a cliff because the population finds itself suddenly without people in fertile age.
Lol 1950 was a great time to have kids, ever heard of baby boomers? The war boosted the economy, lots of people owned houses and started families. Same after world war 1, there were the "roaring 20s" before the great depression hit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers
It is always a great time to have kids.
Ever heard of global carrying capacity?
Ever heard of demographic collapse?
Yes, and I'd rather go through demographic collapse instead of global resource shortages that lead to massive amounts of death and suffering.
So what you're saying is this all could have been avoided if people had less children in the 1400s?
"This all", good and bad, could/would happen anyway...