Science proves kids are bad for Earth. Morality suggests we stop having them.

a reply to: TheLotLizard

What about kids in small villages in the middle of nowhere? Villages that grow their own crops and don't use fossil fuels. Are those kids bad for Earth? Of course not.

It's the lifestyle the parents choose to give their children that makes them a burden on the planet. These lifestyles are supported and endorsed by pop culture.

If all kids lived in those small villages that grew their own crops and left no carbon footprint, they would cease to be a burden on the planet. That is proof that they are NOT the issue.

I doubt the left wants to initiate policies like China that restrict the number of children a family can have. If they did, I would not support it. I think there are other ways to go about the issue, like public service messages and the like.

At any rate, I think that people have fewer and fewer children as society progresses. In the past, people had more babies because they could put them to work, and some of them died. These days, it looks like teen births are declining, and there are more older mothers.

The total number of babies born in the U.S. last year was 3,941,109. That’s 37,388 fewer babies than were born in the U.S. in 2015, which represents a 1% decline.

In order for a generation to exactly replace itself, the total fertility rate needs to be 2,100 births per 1,000 women. The U.S. has been missing that mark since 1971 (though the country’s population has grown due to immigration).

Americans keep having fewer babies as U.S. birth rates hit some record lows

originally posted by: FamCore
a reply to: ElectricUniverse

How many of the people who would advocate for this have children of their own?

Controversial topic, no doubt about it.

In the future I believe we will see laws like those in China on a grander scale.

If you value your social safety net, you want people to have at least 2 kids per family. You need the future taxpayers to pay for what you expect the government to cough up to take care of you.

And if you implement this policy globally, you won't be able to advocate for open borders to replace the bottom part of the tax pyramid with cheap brown labor from countries that are excessively fertile like they are attempting to now.

Now, excuse my un-PCness, but that's the dirty truth. The countries in the EU stopped trying to hide it.

Growth is the problem. I do think we should put a limit on having excessive kids though, like that woman who had 8 babies. That's just stupid and if anything happens to her then we all have to pay for them.

Of course ending immigration is the easiest fix for the US.

I think eventually we'll be "fixed" like pets are. They'll discover it's better for our health and produces better behavior. It lowers costs and makes it easier for our society to function. I don't think this will happen on a widespread scale until they can manufacture sperm and egg and reliably grow babies in artificial wombs. However, before we reach that point, other measures will take place, reducing the place sexuality has in our society. The genders will muddy so much it'd be like trying to pick out the race in someone who's mixed. When a man can have a baby as easily as a woman, without the need for the other, the genders as they're now cease to be meaningful.

Everything will be engineered or managed--think Forestry Management. If you look into history what you see is these things build up over time, very broadly over many dozens of centuries. What's occurring is civilization is reorganizing itself as it acquires new information and capability. This process is increasing in its pace. Just as humanity rules most of the Earth and yet their numbers are so small compared to total lifeforms, the human species is just a small slice of the whole history of the planet. Evidence suggests we discovered fire making a million years ago. So the Earth needed ~4.499 billion years to produce fire makers. In less than one million years, this same intelligence landed on the moon. If we could step into the world in the not so distant future, assuming people(?) are still here, we'd find a severely controlled world, if we were able to make sense of anything. I don't think anything could fully prepare us for that daunting task. Some of us would gladly come back to the present, even after being informed of the great leaps in knowledge and lifespan.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

People could consume less instead..

originally posted by: purplemer
a reply to: ElectricUniverse

People could consume less instead..

I'm starting to think computers are being used to do just that. How so? Via people moving their animal motivations to virtual frontiers. The internet is not only long in becoming a meeting place, it's also fast becoming a virtual environment where people live alternate lives. Increasing numbers of young people create homes and even businesses in virtual worlds. No need for spending millions of dollars on real world luxury. You can get the same bang for almost nothing in a fantasy world, if you only have hte imagination and the right attitude. Combined with augmented reality, I think people in the future will derive much of their enjoyment from virtual estate made to appear real. In turn, real world environmental costs will plummet for the average person. They will no longer demand a large house or multiple cars or frequent flights or other. They will instead spend more of their money on their virtual possessions. You might reject this as fanciful, or science fiction, but it's happening right now in plain sight.

a reply to: norhoc

Policies like the one China implemented not only try to forcefully stop women from having female children... They also set out to murder any second child that was born. You should read some of the stories of women who saw how government officials would drown, beat to death, etc, children that the state deemed were "a treat to the nation"...

Implementing a measure like that of China would not only include to force women to not have children, but those who have them, in secret, would be murdered. After all, human lives are nothing when the extremist left invokes the claim that it will be done "to save mother Earth".

originally posted by: scojak
a reply to: TheLotLizard

What about kids in small villages in the middle of nowhere? Villages that grow their own crops and don't use fossil fuels. Are those kids bad for Earth? Of course not.

It's the lifestyle the parents choose to give their children that makes them a burden on the planet. These lifestyles are supported and endorsed by pop culture.

If all kids lived in those small villages that grew their own crops and left no carbon footprint, they would cease to be a burden on the planet. That is proof that they are NOT the issue.

More people are bad for the earth in any way shape or form. So yes they are just as bad.

There is NO WAY a human being can live without making a carbon footprint sorry.

originally posted by: purplemer
a reply to: ElectricUniverse

People could consume less instead..

Of course this is the logical solution, but people are greedy and one solution for greedy people to keep their pie and eat it too, is to limit breeding by others.

a reply to: TheLotLizard

More people are bad for the earth in any way shape or form. So yes they are just as bad. There is NO WAY a human being can live without making a carbon footprint sorry.

Yes there is. Positive ecological regeneration and a negative carbon foot print. Produce instead of consume.
Permaculture means permanent culture its the way forward.

Science's track record for the well-being of earth and its creatures isn't so great either. Just sayin'...

human lives are nothing when the extremist left invokes the claim that it will be done "to save mother Earth"

We're not the ones destroying human lives every day through war, pollution, police violence, denying medical care, etc.

originally posted by: scojak
a reply to: ElectricUniverse

"Science proves kids are bad for Earth"

LOL. No it doesn't

What science proves (if you can call it proof) is that the average human life in today's society has an overall adverse affect on the planet. Kids are not the problem, the parents and popular culture are.

You're dead on. Reproduction isn't the problem- it's our worship of consumption. We need to combine the sustainable lifestyles of a third world village with the access to food and health care and infrastructure we enjoy in the first world.

This overpopulation lie is just lazy thinking. Instead of reforming the system, it just eliminates the "problem," which it assumes is people, not greed and corporate plutocracy. Priorities are totally deranged.

I'd like to point out how elitist this type of thinking is: Who has the least access to birth control? Who depends most on their children for support in their old age? Are countries and states where abortion is illegal richer or poorer on average? This Trevor reporter is all smug about his single daughter, and flips the finger at the world's non European poor.

a reply to: Look2theSacredHeart

We need to combine the sustainable lifestyles of a third world village with the access to food and health care and infrastructure we enjoy in the first world.

You do understand these things are at odds. Rights?

Third world lifestyles are "sustainable" precisely because they don't have those first world amenities.

originally posted by: starwarsisreal
a reply to: FamCore

I'm pretty sure it is a necessity in some Third World Nations though since a lot of them suffered from overpopulation.

The suffering is from famine, war, and drought. If governments did their jobs instead of pandering to corporate interests, there are plenty of solutions that don't require limiting people's freedom to have kids.

originally posted by: TobyFlenderson
a reply to: ElectricUniverse

I'm concerned when anyone with a materialist viewpoint speaks of ethics. I'm particularly concerned when they are a scientist.

that's only because science doesn't support your ideas that spirits and gods are controlling the planet.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

I think it's pretty clear to most that kids are not the problem, industrial pollution is what is hurting our environment. Acceptable Standard practices for dealing with toxic waste are set by bureaucrats. Perhaps we should start there before we start blaming kids.

there are plenty of solutions that don't require limiting people's freedom to have kids

When that freedom is putting the entire planet and all life on it at risk than yes, we need to limit that freedom. Just like we limit peoples' freedom to drive beyond a certain speed, people should not be allowed to have 10 or 20 kids.