zlacker

Encourage other people (especially if you're in a developing country) not to have too many children. The absolutely unsustainable population levels worldwide are behind the climate and pollution crises. We are an incredibly destructive species to the planet. All countries, developing and developed are part of the problem.

Not only that the overcrowding and fighting over limited resources causes psychosocial stress, which might explain the mental illness epidemic nowadays?

>>127361+(OP)
> Tell other people (especially if you're in a developing country) not to have too many children

That’s my bullshit detector. All of the friends heavily engaged in global fight, to the point of leading a 500-people EU startup on ecology… have finally changed their minds and have children.

My bullshit detector is, so is ecology more important for you than immigration? Because for me, if you use immigration in parallel to ecology, then you’re just nullifying the results, while asking me to take less space, which is just the usual leftist ideology.

Turns out, after interviewing dozens, that none of the ecologists, really care about ecology. None of them are sincere. None of them are honest when presented figures. None of them are upfront about their desires and projects.

It’s just that they want less of people like me. Has always been.

None of the scientific evidence I have studied has withheld the “what if we didn’t do it the leftist way” test.

>>eastbo+e1
The instinct to procreate is obviously very powerful? Also increasing use of birth control in developing countries can improve the situation?

>>127361+(OP)
Medical condition gave me a built-in vasectomy, and my wife and I tried IVF (getting the sperm out without a vas deferens wasn't a fun surgery, FWIW) but it wasn't successful.

You're welcome.

>>bdcrav+O5
Yes, for me it's because of childrens' rights, I don't want my kids to potentially go through what I went through, including the soul crushing compulsory education system.

I feel that natural learning is so much superior, if you can encourage and cultivate it. Coercion destroys the fun in learning and it teaches us how to procrastinate very well indeed. Treat people like slaves, and what do you expect? You get poor productivity as a result, too.

Overall I think the treatment of children and young people in society is terrible and unjustified. It is inhumane.

I think they are being (sort of) micromanaged and exhibit the same behaviors as adults do when micromanaged, this is especially applicable for older teens.

>>127361+o1
This won't work. You have no instrument on actually limiting child birth and no one ever will have it. While some nations might listen to that advice, others simply won't. Then what?

>>127361+(OP)
A story in two charts:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita

>>cynica+Al
We already have a method for reducing birth rates that has worked 100% of the time - end extreme poverty, send girls to school and provide basic healthcare.

https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate

>>jdietr+Gu
This method somewhat works. But the person above really thinks asking people politely would achieve anything.

>>127361+(OP)
There are 100 things I could put on a list of potential causes for the mental illness epidemic. “Overcrowding and fighting over limited resources” would not be on that list.

>>jdietr+7u
I genuinely do not see the point you’re trying to make. Is it that pollution == lower birth rate? I’d imagine there are many factors besides pollution that may influence why certain regions have more birth rates than others.

>>plutoh+OO
The places with high birth rates are economically undeveloped, so the people there consume very few resources, produce very little pollution and have negligible impact on the environment. One person in the US produces the same amount of CO2 as 150 people in DR Congo. That disparity is broadly similar for metrics like land use, water use, soil depletion, waste production etc.

The number of people being born in very poor countries is essentially irrelevant compared to the consumption choices of people in rich countries. Based on current trends, the global population is expected to peak at around 10 billion, but the planet is comfortably capable of sustaining billions more if we can find a middle ground in resource use between the dire poverty of DR Congo and the wanton profligacy of the US. Talking about birth rates in relation to climate change is at best a misguided distraction and at worst wilful misdirection.

>>jdietr+pZ
The US currently has what was once the Earth's entire population. Much of the population can be explained by a steady flow of relatively poor immigrants.

The people in the high population growth rate regions aren't going to stay there, and their emissions will look similar to the nations they move to.

>>jdietr+pZ
Or we could target the whole world population living in wanton profligacy. The goal here is something like maximising median living standards.

Ideally we'd all be living even more decadently than the best US lifestyle. If that means nobody feels like having kids - great.

>>roenxi+Ha1
You’ve missed the point of the video if you think the goal is maximising mean living standards.

>>jdietr+pZ
We don't expect or desire (or IMHO even consider it acceptable) for these places to stay poor - the less developed countries on average have had steady improvements, a major reduction in poverty and the associated increase in consumption. The growth in emissions of China are not caused by some population growth but by the increase in prosperity of Chinese people, and we'd also expect places like DR Congo to steadily grow their consumption-per-capita.

>>127361+G6
This sounds to me like you're extrapolating your own experience and generalizing it to the whole population, when in truth you are likely to be an outlier: most kids do fine in school (and always have), and most home schooled people find it harder to contribute meaningfully to society (due to less exposure to socialization opportunities and poorer education).

>>kettle+nx1
Yes, and my kids are likely to be like me, outliers, that will end up suffering the same way.

And I heard the reason why teens act out so much can be due to the incredibly stifling environment they are in for their age. I think the rise of over-controlling helicopter parenting is making that even worse?

Throughout history the treatment of children in society has been absolutely appalling. And even in today's times emotional abuse of children is very common. During the COVID lockdown nearly half of children were victims of it.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/not-surprising-see-sad-...

>>127361+(OP)
Birth rates decline pretty proportionally to economic development, arriving at well below replacement levels in highly developed countries. In light of this, it seems misguided to expend energy personally convincing people to have less children, when we could just focus on bringing more people up to the western standard of living that, apparently, organically makes having many kids mostly unappealing.

Less charitably, this is the kind of advice that mostly seems like an excuse to preach at people.

>>mycolo+OT1
> Less charitably, this is the kind of advice that mostly seems like an excuse to preach at people.

No, I just picked it as a random example of something that you can do to reduce population growth. Widespread access to birth control in developing countries would be a better solution. Supposedly educating girls in developing countries also helps reduce population growth as well. And there are probably countless other things you can do.

They also have traditions in many developing countries to have very large families.