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Comment by freitzkriesler2 | Hacker News Reader

The people who are having children are those that happen to be the biggest polluters: Africa, India, and China(birth rates are collapsing here but not fast enough).

The greenest people are north Americans (excluding Mexico) and Europe. They just so happen to not have any kids.

The solution is to put the economic burden of pollution onto those that cause it the most and right now the biggest burdens are on western states who do the most already to greenify their economies.

And don't post the innane," they're poor and need to burn coal to get ahead!". India is the worst offender with dumping plastic in the ocean. China is even worse with industrial pollutants destroying what good land they had.

The 3rd world needs to be brought to heel if climate change is to be stopped.

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The marginal impact of any child you have is much larger than the marginal impact of any child had by someone of the wrong geography/skin color to you.

This is just reskinned eco-racialist rhetoric. We do not need to reduce our population to 1 billion by bringing billions of people in poorer countries ‘to heel’ via forced sterilization or killlings.

This is so comically wrong and flies in the face of the amount of trash and dirty pollution these countries spew.

Until people like accept that reality either by visiting those countries to see how bad it really is, nothing will ever change.

i have visited those countries and also have a basic understanding of economics. my child (and likely yours) will almost certainly take flights, which already blows the marginal Chinese child out of the water - before we get into supply chains and anything like that

China currently has a consumer heavy middle class population that is greater in number than the entire population of the USofA.

Your "basic understanding" is certainly that.

FWiW tv and education are great at reducing population growth, Hans Rosling presentations of the past decades show the high correlation between these, women's rights, and reducing population growth.

Mitigating the effects of AGW is multi pronged, population will peak and fall, and then stabilise, this is already projected. Reducing insulating gas emmissions comes with changes in behaviour; alternate energy, reduced consumption, etc.

Doomsayers don't have to go full genocidal in their thoughts, you may consider winding back on that kind of simplistic thinking.

i at least know what the word "marginal" means, which your comment makes clear you do not. reducing population to 1 billion in foreseeable future can only be achieved through genocidal means, it is an absurdist suggestion.

have a good one

I have several decades in exploration geophysics, in my actual experience "forseeable future" has a long timescale, something your comment makes clear you do not think in.

"Reducing population" is phrased as an active control of population numbers. Populations fluctuate by other means than just genocidal ones, and I made no mention of one billion as a taget.

Do better.

then stop flying? being unwilling to reduce your consumption isn’t a badge of honor in this discussion.

there are real problems, you identify yourself as a greater contributor than the average global person, then you imply that others in this discussion feel superior to people in “those countries”

maybe stop blowing the consumption of “the marginal Chinese child out of the water”?

think globally, act locally

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