My own Thoughts on Climate Parenthood - Part 2

"Is it ethical to have kids in 2020?" I'm hopefully done with stats, and just ready to talk thoughts. Mind you, who ever knows what I'm going to write in these things.

I'm not sure how tongue and cheek people are, but one common response to the dilemma is to brush off the environmental impact that children represent. These responses mostly miss the mark. They underestimate the magnitude change that an extra human eating food and consuming things represents compares to taking the bus. This compounds further if you think of the possible grandkids that might be created at the same time.

Another common refrain that I've seen from more conservative sources is the idea that humanity always needs more people to solve its problems, not less. I've never been able to challenge this with the obvious reductio ad absurdum, but the more attainable argument usually focuses on Elon Musk. It is our duty, clearly, to reproduce, lest we allow Elovum and Spermusk never to meet. Beyond the blank slate illusion that this should apply equally to all reproductive aged people, even in Canada, say, I think there's a stark overestimation of Elon's ability to help the climate. People love to compare their heroes to a world in which no one filled their shoes. The truth is, if Tesla didn't exist, another company would likely be trying to do the same thing, and we can't actually say for sure they wouldn't be more successful. The specifics of Elon's venutres and how they interrelate wouldn't be there without him, but from an environmental perspective all we need are big EV and solar panel companies. The effect on morale might be a different matter I suppose.

What this boils down to is a conviction that any child born in Canada is extremely likely to have an upward influence on global carbon emissions. And, all else being equal, I think having an upward influence on global carbon emissions is immoral. Case closed, right?

Well, obviously all is NOT equal in this case. Nor, indeed, in almost any case when we're weighing actions with environmental impacts. It's an open question how positively people's lives are actually impacted by children, but it seems pretty clear to me that some people are rather taken by their children and almost fancy them. It also seems clear that you can make an educated guess as to how much you'll enjoy children at the appropriate age. It may be true that child-bearing is an order of magnitude worse for climate change than driving a pickup, but IF you're likely to benefit from it an order of magnitude more as well, the calculus becomes less obvious. And less obvious is usually all people need to stop trying the calculation and go with their gut.

Of course, the environmental impacts of extra children scales, not quite linearly, but close to linearly. If you thought the math was close the first time, you had better believe that a second child will bring just as much happiness into the world as the first. Personally, I doubt most people could justify more than two. I really want to get into the equations I would use to make that estimation, but I'm not entirely clueless to length.

In any case, this thing is kind of running away from me again (it's my blog, I can do what I want!), so there's going to be a part 3. Hopefully there I can finish with some thoughts on the future, for what it's worth.