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this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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"Karashta, you don't want kids? You'd make a great dad."
I've been asked this several times by close friends since my early 20s. My response has always been about what I feel is the irresponsibility of bringing a child I will desperately love into a world that I've seen crumbling around me since my teens.
People called me stupid for believing in things like the oncoming ecological and societal collapses, despite me trying to show them what I'd seen and read.
Somehow, "I told you so," doesn't, in any way, make me feel better about the situation.
If you still think you'd make a great dad, there's lots of kids that already need one.
When I (hopefully) get my life together enough for myself, this is what I would look into.
My mom is desperate for grandchildren and she is so upset that our branch of the family will end with me. I'm not ever having a child or adopting. Shit is way too fucked for that and is only getting worse. I'm 26, and I fully expect to see society as we know it collapse within my lifetime. My hope is that humanity falling due to its own hubris will allow the planet to finally heal.
The planet will be fine. WE are fucked, the planet doesn't give a shit about us.
Most of the apocalyptic things people imagine are not supported by science at this point, and those that are possible can still be averted. But I also think that our children will find a way to adapt despite our problems. Will it be easy? No, but life is not easy even without the climate going haywire, and we find a way to live anyway. Our descendants will do the same.
Congratulations. You just described the bystander effect. I'm excited to stand with the crowd waiting for someone else to do something as we all die.
This is completely unrelated to anything I said. I have personally dedicated my life to working to solve this and other environmental issues so calling me a bystander is hilariously wrong. In fact, doomerism is a big reason many people don’t act which is what I’m arguing against. Feeling some optimism the future will help you take real action in your community instead of doom-scrolling. And as I said there is no scientific basis to believe that climate change will kill all of us.
Life finds a way is one of the top ten anti climate change propaganda myths. Life doesn't always find a way. Sometimes life gets blasted in the face and goes through a mass extinction event. Saying you think our kids will find a way to adapt is taking the passive bystander approach.
No it isn’t. That’s a nonsensical statement that is at odds with both human nature and climate science. People need to believe that there is hope or they will not act.
So far, there are always survivors of the mass extinctions. No indication that this one will be different.
I'm sure that'll be very comforting for the 99% of humans that die in that case.
You know how we adapt? By changing now.
For sure dude. I don’t know why you think I’m saying otherwise.
Because saying things like, "I trust our kids" is part of how climate denialism was sold to Boomers and Gen X. We tried the low pressure approach. It's time to panic people.
But this is not and has never been part of climate denialism messaging. In fact, the type of false statements you have been making (e.g. 99% of people dying—there is absolutely no scientific basis for this idea) are increasingly amplified by denialists to convince everyone that it’s too late to do anything.
Research on this topic supports that a hopeful outlook not only does not reduce climate action, it helps to encourage it by reducing a sense that actions won’t have any real effect: https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.14020
So the science supports neither the idea that our children are doomed nor that holding a realistic but hopeful view of the future will prevent people from acting. In fact it is the exact thing people need to empower them to act.
There's been a documented decline of about 70% in animal populations, the amount of weather and climate related destruction has demonstrably increased, there's traces of plastic and forever chemicals almost literally all over, Australia was on fire for half a year, wildfires are increasing in frequency in the western US, hurricanes are coming with increasing frequency and intensity from the gulf up the Atlantic.
There's also the fires that tore across Greece, the tornadoes forming in states in the US that have seemingly never had them before, the massive loss of ice from Arctic and Antarctic areas of the world.
This is just a small smattering of the things I remember from recently.
I'm not saying that next year everything is going to immediately collapse. But I can see the stability of the ecosphere dissolving in front of me and there are quite a few nations that seem like they are leaning towards collapse if history is any judge of things.
And yet people continue to live their lives and create joy and meaning despite these problems. You underestimate the resilience of humanity.
Most governments and economic systems are harmful and have created these problems in the first place, so their collapse could be an important part of solving these problems and creating something new and better.
So who cares about them?
I do. Which is why I want to give them a chance to chart their own path instead of fatalistically deciding that the world is too terrible for them.