NPR: ‘We should protect our kids from global warming — by not having kids!’

‘U.S. environmentalists are taking a page from China’s mandatory one-child policy even as China abandons the policy. If these wacky climate activists believed their own literature they would realize that ‘global warming’ may lead to less kids! (See: Climate Change Kills the Mood: Economists Warn of Less Sex on a Warmer Planet) The warmists have now graduated from regulating our light bulbs, coal plants and SUVs to regulating our family size. Let’s keep ‘global warming’ out of the bedroom! Let’s give families the freedom to choose how many kids they want!’

NPR article: ‘The climate crisis is a reproductive crisis’ – Solution? ‘A carbon tax — on kids’ – Philosopher claims ‘Climate Change” is “affecting the morality of procreation.’

‘Scientists warn that a catastrophic tipping point is possible in the next few decades’ (Climate Depot note: Really? Earth ‘Serially Doomed’: UN Issues New 15 Year Climate Tipping Point – But UN Issued Tipping Points in 1982 & Another 10-Year Tipping Point in 1989!)

“Philosopher Travis Rieder asks how old they will be in 2036, and, if they are thinking of having kids, how old their kids will be. “Dangerous climate change is going to be happening by then,” he says. “Very, very soon.”

“Here’s a provocative thought: Maybe we should protect our kids by not having them,” Rieder says.

“I’m not ready to have children because I don’t know what the climate’s gonna be like in 50 years’

Bringing down global fertility by just half a child per woman “could be the thing that saves us,” he says.

Rieder proposes that richer nations do away with tax breaks for having children and actually penalize new parents. He says the penalty should be progressive, based on income, and could increase with each additional child. Think of it like a carbon tax, on kids.

Sierra Club: ‘Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license’

Full article: http://www.npr.org/2016/08/18/479349760/should-we-be-having-kids-in-the-age-of-climate-change

Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change- - NPR.clipular

August 18, 201611:09 AM ET

Heard on All Things Considered

By  – Jennifer Ludden is a correspondent on NPR’s National Desk

Full NPR program:

Standing before several dozen students in a college classroom, Travis Rieder (a philosopher with the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University) tries to convince them not to have children. Or at least not too many.

He’s at James Madison University in southwest Virginia to talk about a “small-family ethic” — to question the assumptions of a society that sees having children as good, throws parties for expecting parents, and in which parents then pressure their kids to “give them grandchildren.”

Why question such assumptions? The prospect of climate catastrophe.

For years, people have lamented how bad things might get “for our grandchildren,” but Rieder tells the students that future isn’t so far off anymore.

He asks how old they will be in 2036, and, if they are thinking of having kids, how old their kids will be.

“Dangerous climate change is going to be happening by then,” he says. “Very, very soon.”

Big Data Predicts Centuries Of Harm If Climate Warming Goes Unchecked

Rieder wears a tweedy jacket and tennis shoes, and he limps because of a motorcycle accident. He’s a philosopher with the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and his arguments against having children are moral.

Americans and other rich nations produce the most carbon emissions per capita, he says. Yet people in the world’s poorest nations are most likely to suffer severe climate impacts, “and that seems unfair,” he says.

There’s also a moral duty to future generations that will live amid the climate devastation being created now.

“Here’s a provocative thought: Maybe we should protect our kids by not having them,” Rieder says.

His arguments sound pretty persuasive in the classroom. At home, it was a different matter.

Toward a Small Family Ethic: How Overpopulation and Climate Change Are Affecting the Morality of ProcreationToward a Small Family Ethic - How Overpopulation and - Travis N. Rieder - Springer.clipular

When she imagines raising a child, Ferorelli says she can’t help but envision the nightmare scenarios that have dogged her since she first heard the term “global warming” in elementary school. “Knowing that I gave that future to somebody is something that just doesn’t sit very well,” she says.

Full NPR article here: http://www.npr.org/2016/08/18/479349760/should-we-be-having-kids-in-the-age-of-climate-change

Daily Caller: Sierra Club: ‘Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license’ – By Andrew Follett – Daily Caller – Energy and Environmental Reporter – There are entire environmental groups dedicated to the view that humans should stop having kids due to global warming and environmental issues. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, for example, claims that “voluntary human extinction is the humanitarian alternative to human disasters” and believes that humanity should commit species suicide rather than continue damaging the environment…Mainstream green groups, such as The Sierra Club, also hold a more limited version of the view that the freedom to have kids should be restricted to save the planet. “Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license … All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing” David Brower, the first executive director of The Sierra Club, stated in an interview.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who advised both Pope Francis and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, claims that the maximum number of people Earth can support is a mere 1 billion people. As of 2016, there are more than 7.3 billion humans on Earth, making the question of which 6.3 billion people are supposed to die a fairly important one.

Dire predictions of greens have consistently failed to materialize as the number of people living in poverty has significantly declined and the amount of food per person has steadily increased, despite population growth. The quality of life of the average person has also immeasurably improved.

Climate-change activists call for tax policies to discourage childbirth

NPR Lectures About Selfish Moms Having Kids in ‘Age of Climate Change’

Skeptics Mock: ‘Having less babies might cool the world. There are no kids in Antarctica, and there’s no warming there either. How many non-babies does it take to stop a flood in Bangladesh? Perhaps the IPCC has an App for that.’

Related Links: 

Warmist Mike Hulme: Since 1979, China’s ‘one-child’ policy’ has ‘avoided’ 300 million births — Reducing ‘about 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 from being emitted annually to global atmosphere’ – Warmist David Appell mocks Overpopulation/climate fears: ‘On the other hand, maybe one of those 300 Million people would have invented a technique for massive noncarbon energy production’

5 replies
  1. bruce lulla
    bruce lulla says:

    Overpopulation is no myth.

    There were roughly 100 million human being in the year 1AD.
    Then it took another 500 years to produce and additional 100 million. Now the world produces 100 million humans every single year.

    By 1800, the global population reached 1 billion. Now the world produces 1 billion every 10 years.

    The global population has tripled in 60 years. Another tripling will have us running over the surface of the earth in a rat-like infestation.

    Covering ones eyes, ears, intellect and rationality is not a virtue.

    Just because neo-liberal NPR is perhaps for a healthy and sane global population does not make it automatically incorrect.

    Reply
    • Dr. Rich Swier
      Dr. Rich Swier says:

      Bruce,

      Thanks for reading and commenting.

      Some thoughts. Mankind can grow exponentially. Why? Because mankind has developed technologies in the fields of agriculture, science and medicine to allow for this growth. Mankind may one day travel to other planets and begin colonies there.

      To deny a man and woman their fundamental right to choose to have a child is the ultimate form of tyranny. Who decides who can and cannot have a child? You? Elected officials? Dictators? Doctors? Layers? The courts?

      What this NPR commentator is suggesting is population control once called Eugenics. The creation of a master race. The world has seen this before.

      Who will be denied the basic human right to bear children? The infirm? Political opponents? Everyone in the name of a cause such as environmentalism?

      This is a slippery slope indeed.

      Reply
      • bruce lulla
        bruce lulla says:

        Hi Rich

        Are traffic lights tyranny which remove the fundamental right for the human being to decide when to stop and go, or are they necessary responsible tools for society’s and the human being’s own good, so there are no accidents and traffic flows smoothly with no problems?

        Is it responsible to breed when one cannot afford it financially and so depends upon the state? Is it responsible to breed when one is an alcoholic or addicted to some other substances? Can such people properly raise their children so they don’t become burdens to the rest of society? Is it responsible to breed when one hasn’t reached a level of maturity to deal with raising a child?

        You are suggesting there should be no laws whatsoever because they are tyrannical in nature and deny basic freedoms.
        The entire Creation has its own immutable laws which cannot be transcended or this whole thing wouldn’t exist. Nature has its laws in order to keep balance and if one species overpopulates, then it will lead to an imbalance which is automatically and naturally handled. The human species is of course integrated into such laws of nature. We are not above creational laws and to suggest so is megalomanical and equating the human being to the Creation itself or a god-like status.

        The human being is endowed with the ability to choose ( a free will as it is called), and from any choice, comes an effect or a result. From such effects, we learn and we learn responsibility from our mistakes, hopefully or we can repeat them until we get it right.

        I don’t think the NPR article was suggesting eugenics/master-race breeding by any stretch of the imagination. Nor do I think such an article can possibly master the entire issue. Nothing worthwhile is done in a day but we must start somewhere.

        Reply
        • Dr. Rich Swier
          Dr. Rich Swier says:

          Bruce,

          Thanks for reading and commenting on Marc’s column.

          Traffic lights have nothing to do with choosing to have a child. It is a false narrative. Society does put restrictions on certain human behaviors that are dangerous.

          Having a child is not dangerous, rather it is glorious.

          It is how all species continue, it is natural, and natures law as you point out. Population is and always has been controlled naturally. We are born, grow up, mature and die. That is the natural cycle.

          So it is with the climate. Here are three absolutes about the climate:

          1. The climate changes.
          2. These changes are natural cycles.
          3. There is nothing mankind can do to control these natural cycles.

          There is no connection between human procreation and climate change, which is the point of this column.

          Reply

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