Wanna do something for the environment? Don't have kids. One kid absolutely dwarfs all things suggested so far, combined. By far.
Also, compare the birth rate per woman in the US (1.73) to somewhere like Niger (7). Getting Western populations to decline faster will not have any meaningful effect on total human population.
Either way, only what developed countries (and China, India, Brazil, maybe Nigeria and Indonesia) do today matters in the fight against climate change. There's no one else to point fingers at, unless you're looking for an excuse to do nothing.
As a percentage of total population, the number of people who emigrate from a poor country like Niger to a developed country is quite small. And they'd likely be poor there too, and consume fewer resources on average.
I think "doing nothing" is what people who advocate reduction of consumption and having fewer kids are doing. Those plans won't be implemented and they won't work. What I'm advocating is technological development to solve the problems related to global warming.
You may think so but that's not the case. I don't know of too many vegan-organic-bike-riding-hippy types who think we shouldn't invest in grid-scale storage, renewable power, carbon capture, or more efficient heating & cooling, manufacturing, or transportation systems. Arguably the only tech many of them oppose is nuclear power.
(Voluntary) reduction of consumption has the side-effect that the electorate becomes more agreeable to measures such as carbon taxes. An SUV and burger-loving electorate will never vote for them, because they would make SUVs and burgers more expensive. Without carbon taxes, there's no market mechanism to control emissions. And there's less funding for technological development or subsidies to green tech.
It’s silly to attribute it all Americans.
I keep being told that America doing anything to reduce emissions is pointless "because China builds a new coal plant ever hour" or something factoid like that. But China does a substantial portion of the world's manufacturing. So if you're giving America's emissions a pass, you should give China a pass as well, right?
Doing online advertising produces much less CO2 than say running a steel mill.
Why kid ourselves? 8+ billion humans are going to consume, and keep consuming, endlessly. The ONLY actual solution that involves humans is expansion. We either expand to another planet / galaxy, or we ride this one out to its (and our) death.
That's why we should prioritize science more as a collective. We need more Elon Musks with giant aspirations to really move the needle.
Does the earth differentiate between malaria and kelp forests? No. Humans differentiate between them, actively trying to eliminate one and wringing our hands and trying to prevent the destruction of the other.
To call it “a problem” is to implicitly assert dominion over the land, sky and sea while pretending that you are not.
And no, human beings do not naturally "consume and consume endlessly". In fact, the vast majority of those 8 billion people (say, 7.9 billion of them, or maybe 7.5 billion if you want) are consuming a fraction of the total resources. The vast majority of climate change is due to the richest ~10-20% in the richest countries on Earth. One way or another, this state of affairs will end in the next 50 years at most. Hopefully it will end in a more egalitarian society that respects the environment.
The completely illogical application of the slippery slow fallacy*
The actual logical next step would be to address the large corporations that are polluting.
Does nature and beauty matter if there are no sentient beings to observe it?
When many (most?) people talk about mitigating or reversing climate change, their main goal is the benefit to humanity. Sure, there is some level of empathy and caring for the species going extinct every year, but even part of that is only as far as how a healthy, diverse biosphere better supports human life.