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Comment by village-idiot | Hacker News Reader

Literally why I don’t have kids. I could afford them (with some sacrifices to my quality of life, of course), but I can’t stomach the ethical consequences of bringing a kid into what I think is a dying world.

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I’ve often thought that this is like someone living at the fall of the Roman Empire deciding not to have kids because the world was falling apart.

It wasn’t pleasant by any means for a lot of people and the population in Rome declined drastically, but if everyone decided to pack it in when the world felt like it was falling apart, Europe would never have become what it is (which I like to think would be a great loss).

There’s a big gap between “the empire I’ve known forever is going away” and “this world might not be habitable in a century”. You’re being incredibly disingenuous to draw a comparison between the two.

I don’t think there was as much of a difference to the person living in Rome at that time, what with disease and starvation and lack of geographic mobility and hostile invaders.

And I might be wrong, but the worst predictions I’ve seen seem to be things that would lower the population of the world by billions, but wouldn’t make it utterly uninhabitable for those who remain (other than something like all out nuclear war).

I don’t think the comparison is disingenuous at all.

I think that if sea level rises and forests turn to deserts and oceans acidify and the population of the world declines by 90%, we’ll hope that the people who are left still try to thrive. And hopefully do better the next time around.

This type of fear-mongering hyperbole does true harm in the fight to combat climate change. The world will not become uninhabitable. It will change in dramatic, unexpected ways, but it's not like it will become radioactive rubble. Feeding FUD about it just enables the deniers.

Are you sure from the viewpoint of a prosperous citizen of the empire that there was actually a big gap between these two comparisons? My readings have always suggested the two viewpoints would be thought synonymous.

One could absolutely make the argument that an American today could identify heavily with a late Roman Empire citizen.

the big gap you claimed was between “the empire I’ve known forever is going away” and “this world might not be habitable in a century”. My statement was meant to indicate that I am not sure that a citizen of Rome would have the same understanding of those two concepts that an American today might have, although there might be other correspondences between the two, the understanding of a world outside their empire being meaningful enough that its destruction would be significantly worse than the destruction of Rome.

The same concerns could motivate the opposite view. Doesn't ethical responsibility compel those with the most educational resources to raise as many creative and productive members of society as they can?

Fears of Malthusian overpopulation were quelled by a series of agricultural revolutions. Fears of peak oil turned out to be based on outmoded projections and technologies. Fears of worsening global war and nuclear apocalypse did not take into account massive increases in prosperity and political changes.

In every case human ingenuity has surmounted existential threats. The world is not going to die, it is going through change within the bounds of many climate shifts that came before (albeit more rapidly). We need more minds working on problems, not less.

Every generation has predicted it will be the last. They’ve all been wrong, so far. One will be right.

What terrifies me is that for the first time in human history, inaction will kill us all. Previous credible apocalyptic scenarios either were local (e.g. deforesting Easter island killed the islanders, but not anyone else), or required active action by people to bring about Armageddon. Now continuing the current course unchanged will absolutely bring an end to most civilizations by the century end, and end humanity completely by 2300 or so. This is new, and something we are really not prepared to deal with.

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