"Having more people isn't green." - Bill Maher

[Ayytaly]

For a guy that fancies himself a "progressive, independent free-thinker", Maher's views on human population are dangerously closer to Ted Turner's.

[New haven america]

I didn't know Bill used Reddit.


No actually, the human carrying capacity is 9 billion.

The main issue is poor and wasteful/unsustainable resource management. Earth is overpopulated, but simply having a bunch of people around isn't the main negative at the moment.

Theoretical carrying capacity doesn't mean much if so many people are dying from humanity's poor resource management.

I agree it isn't the main negative, but we should really be doing all we can. Humanity can focus on more things at a time...theoretically.

Honestly though, I've seen a lot of opinions in my country along the line of "why should we have to make an effort if X doesn't?" in response to being more green, which is truly disheartening.

Oh, don't get me wrong, people having more kids while also inching closer and closer to complete climate catastrophe is the exact opposite of helpful.

However, the thing is that it's not the general population's fault, it's the fault of the ~1000 richest individuals in the world. Fortune 500 CEO's and executives in The Americas, Europe, Asia, etc... produce as much carbon and methane as 50% of humanity does. This isn't an issue the general population can just fix by having less kids or taking the bus, we need to deal with those 1000 megapolluters who are fine with killing the Earth and leaving everyone else in squalor as long as they can make a quick buck.

And yeah, lotta people are shortsighted or selfish, it's how we got in this mess to begin with. (Geologists and Meteorologists have been saying pollution would cause something like Global Warming since the 1920's)

[Resilient Acceleration]

However, the thing is that it's not the general population's fault, it's the fault of the ~1000 richest individuals in the world. Fortune 500 CEO's and executives in The Americas, Europe, Asia, etc... produce as much carbon and methane as 50% of humanity does.

...Uh, completely false, where did this number come from exactly? As far as I know, the actual figure is 10% of the global population commits 50% of emission. Which, although still a minority, that's still like 800 million people responsible for 50% of global emissions - and note that the population of EU + US = 700 million. Besides, another thing that most concerns us right now is that this number is increasing as people all across the world gets richer. Now I'm all for the reduction of life quality of literally everyone in the West and developed parts of China if it meant that more people in my country would be allowed to prosper, but I don't think such policy would be popular.

[Dakini]

Technically, the first/second/third world terminology is super outdated and stopped being relevant after the Cold War ended (first world nations were NATO-aligned, second world nations were Warsaw pack-aligned and third world nations were unaligned). Although these terms are often used as a shorthand for levels of economic development, these terms had nothing at all to do with levels of development and everything to do with which alliance you were in during the Cold War (so for example, Ireland, Sweden and Finland were third world nations, but Mozambique was a first world nation).

The modern terminology (and by "modern" here I again mean "what has been used for the last 30 years so there's no excuse for anyone to be using anything else) used for economic development levels are developed, developing and least developed.

So no. The USA is not technically a first world nation as that term has been deprecated since 1991. It was a first world nation during the Cold War and it is currently considered a developed country.

You're right, I forgot about that aspect of the terminology. It's just that I'm so used to hearing "first world" used as a shorthand for "developed."

However, the post to which I was replying made the exact same mistake, yet I don't see you calling its author out on that. Could it be out of bias against my perspective, perhaps?

Nope, it was entirely because you were attempting to correct someone while being wrong yourself.

Your source on the 1% vs 50% statistic doesn't specify how much of that pollution is stuff like "private jets" (eg. not a business expense, just a personal luxury) and how much of it is stuff like farming for meat because a lot of customers still eat meat. (Eg. The customers are at fault, for if one businessperson didn't cater to consumer demand, another would.) The developed world has a disproportionate share of the blame for greenhouse gases, yes, but the USA; the country to which Bill Maher was referring; is part of the developed world, so my point still applies. Fewer Americans born would've meant fewer of them growing up to eat way too much beef, and in turn, lower concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. (Among other reduced environmental harms.)

And why, if this perspective is supposedly so rational, is it competing with "hurr hurr KYS antinatalists" in popularity among pronatalists? Surely they'd feel no need to invoke the "KYS antinatalists" platitude if they had something better to invoke.

It's more the private jets, frequent air travel etc than anything else. The fact that the USA eats a disproportionately large amount of meat is also probably not helping its carbon footprint, but many of the people who are in the USA aren't living the sorts of extravagant lifestyles that are contributing the most to climate change.

If Bill Maher is going to go after anyone for having lots of kids, he should go after the rich people who are having tons of them. He should especially go after the ultra-rich who are having piles of kids. Where is his criticism of Elon Musk for having seven children? Did he go after Donald Trump for his brood in particular? Or is he just going after working and lower middle class people for having children?

[Immortan Khan]

Probably shouldn't try to shame anyone simply for the number of children they have. If they can have 2,4,8,16 etc and support them well then w/e.

[New haven america]

However, the thing is that it's not the general population's fault, it's the fault of the ~1000 richest individuals in the world. Fortune 500 CEO's and executives in The Americas, Europe, Asia, etc... produce as much carbon and methane as 50% of humanity does.

...Uh, completely false, where did this number come from exactly? As far as I know, the actual figure is 10% of the global population commits 50% of emission. Which, although still a minority, that's still like 800 million people responsible for 50% of global emissions - and note that the population of EU + US = 700 million. Besides, another thing that most concerns us right now is that this number is increasing as people all across the world gets richer. Now I'm all for the reduction of life quality of literally everyone in the West and developed parts of China if it meant that more people in my country would be allowed to prosper, but I don't think such policy would be popular.

Who's running the factories manufacturing the cars? Who's running the ranches growing the livestock responsible for the methane production? Who's lobbying congress people to not get rid of fossil fuel? Who's responsible for making places like the US reliant on cars due to urban planning and development? Who's currently wasting cities worth of power mining crypto?

[Salus Maior]

Well, Bill Maher is a stuckup bastard as per usual.

[Resilient Acceleration]

...Uh, completely false, where did this number come from exactly? As far as I know, the actual figure is 10% of the global population commits 50% of emission. Which, although still a minority, that's still like 800 million people responsible for 50% of global emissions - and note that the population of EU + US = 700 million. Besides, another thing that most concerns us right now is that this number is increasing as people all across the world gets richer. Now I'm all for the reduction of life quality of literally everyone in the West and developed parts of China if it meant that more people in my country would be allowed to prosper, but I don't think such policy would be popular.

Who's running the factories manufacturing the cars? Who's running the ranches growing the livestock responsible for the methane production? Who's lobbying congress people to not get rid of fossil fuel? Who's responsible for making places like the US reliant on cars due to urban planning and development? Who's currently wasting cities worth of power mining crypto?

It seems like your obsessive preoccupation of hating the rich results in a strange way of perceiving reality, one that is damaging.

Why do they manufacture the cars in the first place? Why do they grow livestock responsible for the methane production? While crypto waste is fair point, the fact remains that these people do the aforementioned activity because there is public demand for it. People (you might be shocked!) actually buy the cars and the beef, they buy gas and use electricity. This is similar to the misguided claim that "100 companies produces 70% of global emission". Uh, if you look at the actual papers, you immediately see why: literally all of these are the companies that sells fossil fuel. So, duh. And they sell fossil fuel because, surprise, society "buy" them and then "consume" them, either directly or indirectly. This if because as of today, societies still needs fossil fuel to operate. An immediate removal of fossil fuel before the availability of the alternative will result in those societies stop operating.

I guess in this aspect, emission is comparable to drugs. Sure, people can blame the cartels for responsibility with the drug epidemic. But combating the drug problem through a "War on Drugs" to militarily eliminate the cartels has been a catastrophic total failure, as it doesn't address the real cause in any way: the fact that people actually wants, buy, and consume drugs, and these things can only be "cured" through public healthcare and social welfare efforts. Similarly, if we hire assassins to murder these 1000 people you obsessively hate, or if we use orbital weapons to kinetically bombard the assets and offices of the 100 fossil fuel companies, first (obviously) there will be chaos that catastrophically screws the lowest income the most, sure. But then, if society's lifestyle and demand doesn't change, and/or if no one build the necessary green infrastructures or develop the technologies, 1000 new people and 100 new fossil fuel companies will simply appear and we simply return to the previous status quo. While I do agree that lobbyists and propagandists do hamper our climate efforts, killing them off with a gun won't matter if the public (especially the 800 million top polluters) doesn't actually change their consumption behavior of if the alternatives don't appear, which is our actual end goal. Thus, this approach of "blame the rich and nobody else" won't just be totally naïve, it'll be totally useless in the long term.

(Of course, there is another alternative path: keep our society's living standards, but alleviate the impacts on the environment through technological and infrastructure solutions. Which is what we're already doing, although I'm not currently sure if it'll be enough).

[Cisairse]

Friendly reminder that neomalthusianism and its siblings is an ideology of the petit-bourgeoisie

“We have to convince mothers to bear children so that they can be maimed in educational establishments, so that lots can be drawn for them, so that they can be driven to suicide!”

If the report is true that this exclamation of Mr. Astrakhan’s was greeted with thunderous applause, it is a fact that does not surprise me. The audience was made up of bourgeois, middle and petty bourgeois, who have the psychology of the philistine. What can you expect from them but the most banal liberalism?

From the point of view of the working class, however, it would hardly be possible to find a more apposite expression of the completely reactionary nature and the ugliness of “social neomalthusianism” than Mr. Astrakhan’s phrase cited above.

... “Bear children so that they can be maimed” ... For that alone? Why not that they should fight better, more unitedly, consciously and resolutely than we are fighting against the present-day conditions of life that are maiming and ruining our generation?

This is the radical difference that distinguishes the psychology of the peasant, handicraftsman, intellectual, the petty bourgeois in general, from that of the proletarian. The petty bourgeois sees and feels that he is heading for ruin, that life is becoming more difficult, that the struggle for existence is ever more ruthless, and that his position and that of his family are becoming more and more hopeless. It is an indisputable fact, and the petty bourgeois protests against it.

But how does he protest?

He protests as the representative of a class that is hopelessly perishing, that despairs of its future, that is depressed and cowardly. There is nothing to be done ... if only there were fewer children to suffer our torments and hard toil, our poverty and our humiliation—such is the cry of the petty bourgeois.

The class-conscious worker is far from holding this point of view. He will not allow his consciousness to be dulled by such cries no matter how sincere and heartfelt they may be. Yes, we workers and the mass of small proprietors lead a life that is filled with unbearable oppression and suffering. Things are harder for our generation than they were for our fathers. But in one respect we are luckier than our fathers. We have begun to learn and are rapidly learning to fight—and to fight not as individuals, as the best of our fathers fought, not for the slogans of bourgeois speechifiers that are alien to us in spirit, but for our slogans, the slogans of our class. We are fighting better than our fathers did. Our children will fight better than we do, and they will be victorious.

The working class is not perishing, it is growing, becoming stronger, gaining courage, consolidating itself, educating itself and becoming steeled in battle. We are pessimists as far as serfdom, capitalism and petty, production are concerned, but we are ardent optimists in what concerns the working-class movement and its aims. We are already laying the foundation of a new edifice and our children will complete its construction.

—Lenin, 1913.

It's silly that this is even still a point of discussion over a hundred years later, and that anyone takes these ideas which are weapons of class war to be worth discussing, especially when they come from folks like Bill Maher...

[Ayytaly]

...Uh, completely false, where did this number come from exactly? As far as I know, the actual figure is 10% of the global population commits 50% of emission. Which, although still a minority, that's still like 800 million people responsible for 50% of global emissions - and note that the population of EU + US = 700 million. Besides, another thing that most concerns us right now is that this number is increasing as people all across the world gets richer. Now I'm all for the reduction of life quality of literally everyone in the West and developed parts of China if it meant that more people in my country would be allowed to prosper, but I don't think such policy would be popular.

Who's running the factories manufacturing the cars? Who's running the ranches growing the livestock responsible for the methane production? Who's lobbying congress people to not get rid of fossil fuel? Who's responsible for making places like the US reliant on cars due to urban planning and development? Who's currently wasting cities worth of power mining crypto?

Europeans

[Ifreann]

...Uh, completely false, where did this number come from exactly? As far as I know, the actual figure is 10% of the global population commits 50% of emission. Which, although still a minority, that's still like 800 million people responsible for 50% of global emissions - and note that the population of EU + US = 700 million. Besides, another thing that most concerns us right now is that this number is increasing as people all across the world gets richer. Now I'm all for the reduction of life quality of literally everyone in the West and developed parts of China if it meant that more people in my country would be allowed to prosper, but I don't think such policy would be popular.

Who's running the factories manufacturing the cars? Who's running the ranches growing the livestock responsible for the methane production? Who's lobbying congress people to not get rid of fossil fuel? Who's responsible for making places like the US reliant on cars due to urban planning and development? Who's currently wasting cities worth of power mining crypto?

Who holds back the electric car? Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?

[Kubra]

I don't quite understand why so many laws passed by the US congress include such generous income qualifiers in bills/programs. Someone making $400,000 a year in most places is solidly rich, they shouldn't need any government subsidy or help compared to the more typical situation of someone who makes say- $40,000 a year or less. How many people do people know who really make six figures regularly who's not considered beyond the middle class in lifestyle?

If someone lived off of only a fraction of a lucrative $400,000 job or total household income for just 10 years or less in purposely living below their means, they really could retire early indefinitely if $3.6 million isn't spent too fast. It could fund a $50,000 a year lifestyle for 60+ years which is perfectly stable/good in most locales.

$400000 wouldn't get you that far in Toronto. I don't know how many American cities are comparably expensive to Toronto, but I'd rather err on the side of a law that makes a Winnipegger rich than one that leaves a Torontonian poor.

Bill Maher is an idiot. One second he's for M4A and the next he's saying it's the roadway to communism. Keeping people from having children isn't going to make a huge dent in climate change. It's another way of trying to blame individuals for climate change rather than corporations and 1st world nations who are mostly responsible for this

The USA is a first world nation. Well, at least technically, anyway.

And corporations are only catering to consumer demand amongst the public so that argument is meaningless.

you're not serious, are you? That's well in excess of the median income, man.

[Cannot think of a name]

Who's running the factories manufacturing the cars? Who's running the ranches growing the livestock responsible for the methane production? Who's lobbying congress people to not get rid of fossil fuel? Who's responsible for making places like the US reliant on cars due to urban planning and development? Who's currently wasting cities worth of power mining crypto?

Who holds back the electric car? Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?

We do! Weeee do!

[New haven america]

Who's running the factories manufacturing the cars? Who's running the ranches growing the livestock responsible for the methane production? Who's lobbying congress people to not get rid of fossil fuel? Who's responsible for making places like the US reliant on cars due to urban planning and development? Who's currently wasting cities worth of power mining crypto?

Who holds back the electric car? Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?

His manager, they let him star in Sharknado.

[GuessTheAltAccount]

You're right, I forgot about that aspect of the terminology. It's just that I'm so used to hearing "first world" used as a shorthand for "developed."

However, the post to which I was replying made the exact same mistake, yet I don't see you calling its author out on that. Could it be out of bias against my perspective, perhaps?

Nope, it was entirely because you were attempting to correct someone while being wrong yourself.

Your source on the 1% vs 50% statistic doesn't specify how much of that pollution is stuff like "private jets" (eg. not a business expense, just a personal luxury) and how much of it is stuff like farming for meat because a lot of customers still eat meat. (Eg. The customers are at fault, for if one businessperson didn't cater to consumer demand, another would.) The developed world has a disproportionate share of the blame for greenhouse gases, yes, but the USA; the country to which Bill Maher was referring; is part of the developed world, so my point still applies. Fewer Americans born would've meant fewer of them growing up to eat way too much beef, and in turn, lower concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. (Among other reduced environmental harms.)

And why, if this perspective is supposedly so rational, is it competing with "hurr hurr KYS antinatalists" in popularity among pronatalists? Surely they'd feel no need to invoke the "KYS antinatalists" platitude if they had something better to invoke.

It's more the private jets, frequent air travel etc than anything else. The fact that the USA eats a disproportionately large amount of meat is also probably not helping its carbon footprint, but many of the people who are in the USA aren't living the sorts of extravagant lifestyles that are contributing the most to climate change.

If Bill Maher is going to go after anyone for having lots of kids, he should go after the rich people who are having tons of them. He should especially go after the ultra-rich who are having piles of kids. Where is his criticism of Elon Musk for having seven children? Did he go after Donald Trump for his brood in particular? Or is he just going after working and lower middle class people for having children?

I notice you conveniently ignored the last paragraph of the post you were quoting.

In any case, if oil barons get blamed instead of their customers for catering to consumer demand for oil, why don't the likes of Elon Musk get the credit instead of their customers for catering to consumer demand for electric cars? If it's because they're subsidized, what does that make oil and gas subsidies?

People on the whole are bad for the environment, but not all equally so. It's entirely possible for a few individuals to be a net positive for the environment by offsetting their own carbon footprint through their downward effects on the carbon footprints of everybody else. The next few years will tell the tale of whether or not Elon Musk is one of them. I can't blame Bill for reserving judgment regarding someone whose electric cars might prevent as much pollution as Elon personally causes. Likewise, if someone is a net positive for the environment, it's entirely possible to raise kids who are as well, if not through genetics, then through upbringing.

But of course, you can't subsidize environmentalist breeding more heavily than non-environmentalist breeding, because then people would fly off the handle at "eugenics" being wielded against law-abiding citizens. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Bill Maher has criticized his own guests on the show for breeding beyond the replacement rate (can't find the exact excerpts, I'm afraid) but I think that's only when they actively mention how many kids they have. I doubt a low-income mother struggling because she can't afford her kids is going to get booked on Maher's show in the first place, so odds are he actually DOES say that sort of thing to the rich. I think it's kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't at this point; if you consider it worse for a rich person to have kids, people say "if I pay for my own damn kids, it's none of your business if I'm having too many!" If you consider it worse for child-rearing to be subsidized by the state, people say you're being unfair to the poor. It's like the carbon tax issue; if you make it a carbon tax, we could theoretically be neutral on your excuse for polluting as long as you compensate everyone else for the consequences of your pollution, but you're met with inevitable cries of "but what about poor rural people who can't afford to move to the big cities"? Then tell them they will regulate the meat industry and people say "now wait a minute, who are you to decide whether driving is a more valid reason to pollute than eating meat"?

Of course, it's not clear whether making child-rearing unaffordable will deter breeding either, for the reasons noted in the OP. Even an "if she claimed she wouldn't keep the baby" exception wouldn't necessarily preclude some rich guys from willingly giving up a slice of their income in exchange for sex. (It'd sure explain why they're not content with the first million dollars.)

But the damned if you do, damned if you don't situations involved in all of this are another part of why I feel compelled to doubt them. Perhaps critics of antinatalism aren't so much contradicting themselves as contradicting each other; certainly this thread is full of people coming at it from a left-of-centre perspective as opposed to the right-wing one you hear from climate change denialists; but that leaves the question of why they always seem to have more of a qualm with antinatalists than with each other.

[Dakini]

Nope, it was entirely because you were attempting to correct someone while being wrong yourself.


It's more the private jets, frequent air travel etc than anything else. The fact that the USA eats a disproportionately large amount of meat is also probably not helping its carbon footprint, but many of the people who are in the USA aren't living the sorts of extravagant lifestyles that are contributing the most to climate change.

If Bill Maher is going to go after anyone for having lots of kids, he should go after the rich people who are having tons of them. He should especially go after the ultra-rich who are having piles of kids. Where is his criticism of Elon Musk for having seven children? Did he go after Donald Trump for his brood in particular? Or is he just going after working and lower middle class people for having children?

I notice you conveniently ignored the last paragraph of the post you were quoting.

Because I have no clue wtf you were on about with that last paragraph.

In any case, if oil barons get blamed instead of their customers for catering to consumer demand for oil, why don't the likes of Elon Musk get the credit instead of their customers for catering to consumer demand for electric cars? If it's because they're subsidized, what does that make oil and gas subsidies?

Elon Musk created electric cars for rich people and rides around in a private jet. There are plenty of electric cars that are actually affordable. At any rate, he was just an example. There are a lot of super rich who have piles of children (e.g. Roman Abramovich also has seven children, Boris Johnson has six that he acknowledges).

People on the whole are bad for the environment, but not all equally so. It's entirely possible for a few individuals to be a net positive for the environment by offsetting their own carbon footprint through their downward effects on the carbon footprints of everybody else. The next few years will tell the tale of whether or not Elon Musk is one of them. I can't blame Bill for reserving judgment regarding someone whose electric cars might prevent as much pollution as Elon personally causes. Likewise, if someone is a net positive for the environment, it's entirely possible to raise kids who are as well, if not through genetics, then through upbringing.

Even if Elon Musk had a better carbon footprint than most billionaires, billionaires still tend to have carbon footprints that are thousands of times (or even more) larger than the average person. Going after people having children without targeting those who are doing the most environmental damage while popping out shit tons of children (see the article I posted earlier about how people earning over $400k are outpacing the rest of the USA in terms of number of children), then you're really just going after the poor for having children, even though their children aren't as much of an environmental burden.

But of course, you can't subsidize environmentalist breeding more heavily than non-environmentalist breeding, because then people would fly off the handle at "eugenics" being wielded against law-abiding citizens. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I mean, you can always introduce carbon taxes, subsidize products that are more environmentally-friendly, get rid of oil and gas subsidies etc.

Bill Maher has criticized his own guests on the show for breeding beyond the replacement rate (can't find the exact excerpts, I'm afraid) but I think that's only when they actively mention how many kids they have. I doubt a low-income mother struggling because she can't afford her kids is going to get booked on Maher's show in the first place, so odds are he actually DOES say that sort of thing to the rich. I think it's kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't at this point; if you consider it worse for a rich person to have kids, people say "if I pay for my own damn kids, it's none of your business if I'm having too many!" If you consider it worse for child-rearing to be subsidized by the state, people say you're being unfair to the poor. It's like the carbon tax issue; if you make it a carbon tax, we could theoretically be neutral on your excuse for polluting as long as you compensate everyone else for the consequences of your pollution, but you're met with inevitable cries of "but what about poor rural people who can't afford to move to the big cities"? Then tell them they will regulate the meat industry and people say "now wait a minute, who are you to decide whether driving is a more valid reason to pollute than eating meat"?

Of course, it's not clear whether making child-rearing unaffordable will deter breeding either, for the reasons noted in the OP. Even an "if she claimed she wouldn't keep the baby" exception wouldn't necessarily preclude some rich guys from willingly giving up a slice of their income in exchange for sex. (It'd sure explain why they're not content with the first million dollars.)

But the damned if you do, damned if you don't situations involved in all of this are another part of why I feel compelled to doubt them. Perhaps critics of antinatalism aren't so much contradicting themselves as contradicting each other; certainly this thread is full of people coming at it from a left-of-centre perspective as opposed to the right-wing one you hear from climate change denialists; but that leaves the question of why they always seem to have more of a qualm with antinatalists than with each other.

jfc, this is all tl;dr.

I don't care about this whatever anti-natalist stick you have up your ass and although you claim that Maher goes after his guests for having shit tons of children, you can't provide examples and I honestly find this hard to believe. I really don't care about your little rant.

And for reference, I'm not a "pronatlalist" or whatever. I'm in favour of people being free to choose basically. If rich people weren't so fucking wasteful, I wouldn't mind if they had 24 kids each, but they are wasteful, excess greenhouse gas emitting assholes so their children are likely going to also be responsible for an excess of greenhouse gas emissions.

[GuessTheAltAccount]

I notice you conveniently ignored the last paragraph of the post you were quoting.

Because I have no clue wtf you were on about with that last paragraph.

In any case, if oil barons get blamed instead of their customers for catering to consumer demand for oil, why don't the likes of Elon Musk get the credit instead of their customers for catering to consumer demand for electric cars? If it's because they're subsidized, what does that make oil and gas subsidies?

Elon Musk created electric cars for rich people and rides around in a private jet. There are plenty of electric cars that are actually affordable. At any rate, he was just an example. There are a lot of super rich who have piles of children (e.g. Roman Abramovich also has seven children, Boris Johnson has six that he acknowledges).

People on the whole are bad for the environment, but not all equally so. It's entirely possible for a few individuals to be a net positive for the environment by offsetting their own carbon footprint through their downward effects on the carbon footprints of everybody else. The next few years will tell the tale of whether or not Elon Musk is one of them. I can't blame Bill for reserving judgment regarding someone whose electric cars might prevent as much pollution as Elon personally causes. Likewise, if someone is a net positive for the environment, it's entirely possible to raise kids who are as well, if not through genetics, then through upbringing.

Even if Elon Musk had a better carbon footprint than most billionaires, billionaires still tend to have carbon footprints that are thousands of times (or even more) larger than the average person. Going after people having children without targeting those who are doing the most environmental damage while popping out shit tons of children (see the article I posted earlier about how people earning over $400k are outpacing the rest of the USA in terms of number of children), then you're really just going after the poor for having children, even though their children aren't as much of an environmental burden.

But of course, you can't subsidize environmentalist breeding more heavily than non-environmentalist breeding, because then people would fly off the handle at "eugenics" being wielded against law-abiding citizens. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I mean, you can always introduce carbon taxes, subsidize products that are more environmentally-friendly, get rid of oil and gas subsidies etc.

Bill Maher has criticized his own guests on the show for breeding beyond the replacement rate (can't find the exact excerpts, I'm afraid) but I think that's only when they actively mention how many kids they have. I doubt a low-income mother struggling because she can't afford her kids is going to get booked on Maher's show in the first place, so odds are he actually DOES say that sort of thing to the rich. I think it's kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't at this point; if you consider it worse for a rich person to have kids, people say "if I pay for my own damn kids, it's none of your business if I'm having too many!" If you consider it worse for child-rearing to be subsidized by the state, people say you're being unfair to the poor. It's like the carbon tax issue; if you make it a carbon tax, we could theoretically be neutral on your excuse for polluting as long as you compensate everyone else for the consequences of your pollution, but you're met with inevitable cries of "but what about poor rural people who can't afford to move to the big cities"? Then tell them they will regulate the meat industry and people say "now wait a minute, who are you to decide whether driving is a more valid reason to pollute than eating meat"?

Of course, it's not clear whether making child-rearing unaffordable will deter breeding either, for the reasons noted in the OP. Even an "if she claimed she wouldn't keep the baby" exception wouldn't necessarily preclude some rich guys from willingly giving up a slice of their income in exchange for sex. (It'd sure explain why they're not content with the first million dollars.)

But the damned if you do, damned if you don't situations involved in all of this are another part of why I feel compelled to doubt them. Perhaps critics of antinatalism aren't so much contradicting themselves as contradicting each other; certainly this thread is full of people coming at it from a left-of-centre perspective as opposed to the right-wing one you hear from climate change denialists; but that leaves the question of why they always seem to have more of a qualm with antinatalists than with each other.

jfc, this is all tl;dr.

I don't care about this whatever anti-natalist stick you have up your ass and although you claim that Maher goes after his guests for having shit tons of children, you can't provide examples and I honestly find this hard to believe. I really don't care about your little rant.

And for reference, I'm not a "pronatlalist" or whatever. I'm in favour of people being free to choose basically. If rich people weren't so fucking wasteful, I wouldn't mind if they had 24 kids each, but they are wasteful, excess greenhouse gas emitting assholes so their children are likely going to also be responsible for an excess of greenhouse gas emissions.

Difference is, people disagree on what "free to choose" entails. "Free to choose" could, to a libertarian, mean "free to choose to have kids, but the taxpayer isn't obligated to subsidize them in doing so." Others would say that baby bonuses free those who want kids from the chokehold of corporate America, at the slight expense of others' freedom to spend a slightly higher fraction of their income however they choose. The term "freedom" is a lot more subjective than most people admit. And the appeal to "freedom" very strongly resembles that invoked by carbon tax opponents claiming the "freedom" to emit as much greenhouse gas as one chooses to; it's all a difference of degree.

It is that same voting public; including the poor and middle class; who vote for policies that enable the wealthy to continue polluting. Just as recently as 2016, a disproportionate slice of votes for an outright climate change denialist came from the working poor.

And again, regarding Elon Musk, you're missing the point. He might very well be preventing more polluting than he directly personally causes, if not by selling people electric cars, then at the very least by getting more people talking about these sorts of issues and what to do about them.

Also, when you're not sure what I'm saying, that's the time to ask follow up questions, rather than just picking and choosing which parts to address and which to ignore. Where did I lose you?

As well, I've since managed to find the example I was referring to. (The woman in question has worked for the Bush administration, so I don't think she's dirt poor either.) Reflects rather poorly on your judgment that you mistook me for a liar, does it not? What else could you be wrong about?

[Dumb Ideologies]

Everything else being equal, more people will mean using more resources. However, it is also a truism that if we are to have an economy then we need working age people to work in it. In the developed world at least, we are also struggling to wean ourselves off the notion that permanent economic growth is desirable or sustainable and that it should be delivered by the global competition of private enterprise rather than more protectionist and localist planned economics. In the present paradigm, if there is not enough cheap labour about then private enterprises will simply demand that it is imported so that they can compete with foreign rivals. It's very established in centre-right populism to rouse the rabble against the alleged deficiencies of morality and work ethic in the undeserving poor, carefully brushing under the carpet that the very people being roused against "welfare queens" etc are usually only a couple of missed paycheques away from finding themselves in a very similar economic pickle. Or to support capitalism whilst loudly bemoaning migration and promising that it will go down, surely, just after the next election. As a line of thought it is very electorally successful, but in terms of resolving the challenges that the community faces it is a complete dead end of vacuous rhetoric. Let's not greenwash it and wheel it out again.

[Dakini]

Because I have no clue wtf you were on about with that last paragraph.


Elon Musk created electric cars for rich people and rides around in a private jet. There are plenty of electric cars that are actually affordable. At any rate, he was just an example. There are a lot of super rich who have piles of children (e.g. Roman Abramovich also has seven children, Boris Johnson has six that he acknowledges).


Even if Elon Musk had a better carbon footprint than most billionaires, billionaires still tend to have carbon footprints that are thousands of times (or even more) larger than the average person. Going after people having children without targeting those who are doing the most environmental damage while popping out shit tons of children (see the article I posted earlier about how people earning over $400k are outpacing the rest of the USA in terms of number of children), then you're really just going after the poor for having children, even though their children aren't as much of an environmental burden.


I mean, you can always introduce carbon taxes, subsidize products that are more environmentally-friendly, get rid of oil and gas subsidies etc.


jfc, this is all tl;dr.

I don't care about this whatever anti-natalist stick you have up your ass and although you claim that Maher goes after his guests for having shit tons of children, you can't provide examples and I honestly find this hard to believe. I really don't care about your little rant.

And for reference, I'm not a "pronatlalist" or whatever. I'm in favour of people being free to choose basically. If rich people weren't so fucking wasteful, I wouldn't mind if they had 24 kids each, but they are wasteful, excess greenhouse gas emitting assholes so their children are likely going to also be responsible for an excess of greenhouse gas emissions.

Difference is, people disagree on what "free to choose" entails. "Free to choose" could, to a libertarian, mean "free to choose to have kids, but the taxpayer isn't obligated to subsidize them in doing so." Others would say that baby bonuses free those who want kids from the chokehold of corporate America, at the slight expense of others' freedom to spend a slightly higher fraction of their income however they choose. The term "freedom" is a lot more subjective than most people admit. And the appeal to "freedom" very strongly resembles that invoked by carbon tax opponents claiming the "freedom" to emit as much greenhouse gas as one chooses to; it's all a difference of degree.

It is that same voting public; including the poor and middle class; who vote for policies that enable the wealthy to continue polluting. Just as recently as 2016, a disproportionate slice of votes for an outright climate change denialist came from the working poor.

And again, regarding Elon Musk, you're missing the point. He might very well be preventing more polluting than he directly personally causes, if not by selling people electric cars, then at the very least by getting more people talking about these sorts of issues and what to do about them.

Also, when you're not sure what I'm saying, that's the time to ask follow up questions, rather than just picking and choosing which parts to address and which to ignore. Where did I lose you?

As well, I've since managed to find the example I was referring to. (The woman in question has worked for the Bush administration, so I don't think she's dirt poor either.) Reflects rather poorly on your judgment that you mistook me for a liar, does it not? What else could you be wrong about?

I literally said that you're going off on a rant that bores the shit out of me and you expect me to watch a fucking video now?

I get that you're salty that I corrected you about the use of "first world countries", but seriously, get over it.

Also, FYI: nobody owes you a response to every part of your post.