I personally cringe when I hear a friend js having a kid. All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it. Hell id definitely have been better off being born 20 years earlier, but these new kids are REALLY screwed unless they have super rich parents.
“Nothing new under the sun” I suppose!
Climate change is the only true existential reason to feel that way.
Everything else is just over focusing on a short term dip. On average things are getting better over the long term. The British Empire collapsed, and so will the American one, and the world will keep on turning and progressing.
Hell kids born these days may have legitimate cures for most forms of cancer by the time they’re old. We won’t.
I’d argue that technology also, because it is consolidating wealth and power in the hands of fewer and fewer. This creates a positive feedback loop to further entrench their power. They have widened the divide and pulled up the ladder.
is there anything substantial being done about climate change right now though?
Yes.
exemplify?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1jOqyjcO4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUA1kFSJnYQ
I was going to say more, but basically, watch those videos (or read their references).
Good news sells bad, solar energy is being deployed really quickly and accelerating exponentially, solar has a higher return on investment than gas, coal or oil (about 8x as much in developed markets, according to the IEA), nowadays, green energy is the better one for the economy, and the billionaires just want money, so if it is the green energy that has higher returns, they will invest in that.
Green energy has had 2x as much investment as fossil fuels, and about 80% of that investment is private.
In september 2024 the UK shut down its last coal powerplant.
And I forgot the most important! There have been days where energy has a NEGATIVE COST in some places in the world because of renewables, doesn’t that sound like a financial incentive to use renewables?
you could go on for days, there is a lot being done, we just don’t know about most of it.
Oh, only climate change. Well that’s alright then. /s
Climate change is going to influence everything in our society for the worse: politics, economics, living standards, everything, including the amount of resources available to use for research.
and the world will keep on turning and progressing.
The world will keep on turning, but there is absolutely no factual basis for claiming it will keep on progressing. If anything that is one thing we can learn from history.
Climate change is going to influence everything in our society for the worse: politics, economics, living standards, everything, including the amount of resources available to use for research.
Cite the numbers that make you pessimistic.
If you don’t have numbers, then keep your crystal astrology bad vibes to yourself until you have something to back them.
I’m fucking sick of leftists acting like being moody and pessimistic is a valid political stan stance that does anything.
What kind of numbers are you going after?
I mean, probably you want numbers to prove that climate change is changing politics and economics, etc. for the worse, or maybe just numbers for proving that climate change is real.
But both of these seem like such trivial information that I’m probably just guessing wrong. But because of that, I’d be curious to know: what kind of numbers did you mean?
I can probably help digging up some for you, but not if you just meant “prove that climate change exists”. But, numbers proving that economy will suffer from climate change should be easy to find. (And I think you could just search for them yourself…)
The goal posts are just going to be moved if you produce anything with numbers on it.
Windows 11 laptops requires a webcam. The internet now wants selfies to prove that you are a certain age.
The kids now will grow up thinking that this is normal. That is what I am worried about.
That and the impending societal collapse from Climate Change lol
Can I get a source?
VERY specific people would have been better off born 20 years ago.
The vast majority of people would be better off today.
You can imagine in another 20 years that would be different, but almost everyone is better off today than they were 20 years ago, and they will be even better 20 years from now than today.
Specific groups may have a harder time in one time period or another, but society at large is getting better at the world scale over the long term. Hope still exists.
Maybe when it comes to social issues but when I read OP’s post I think of climate change and how it seems to be worsening at an increasing pace.
That and personal privacy and freedom from despotic and fascist government
I’m in my mid thirties and I’ve had a tough time the last few summers. I’m too hot to eat, causing nausea and reducing the amount of water I can drink without vomiting. I’m sure it puts a strain on my vital organs. I wonder how much it’s taking off of my life expectancy already and how much worse it will get over the next decades.
I don’t even live in a (historically) warm place.
I agree with almost all of this, but I think factoring in the imminent catastrophes we know are coming (and actively doing nothing about) will make a sizeable balance of this ‘better off vast majority’ of today.
The heaps of plastic tell a different story and define ‘getting better’ in a daunting light for those just now being born
Climate change related disasters will only get worse over the long term, though.
My children are still very young, but oh are they happy!
They are enjoying their life and no future suffering will ever take that away from them.
I wouldn’t want to deny those awesome humans their right to play as merrily as they do. To create, to enjoy life. They exist right now as well, in 2025 and 2026.
The end of life is always painful. Life is still worth it.
It’s a very personal decision and I’m glad about every human that’s not born on this crowded planet. But collectively not having children feels pretty bleak to me. Are we as a species already giving up, rolling on our backs and wait to go extinct? Come on! There is so much beauty and so much to do in this world.
My children are having a great time, they bring joy, purpose and chaos to my life. I love having them around, even though their future scares me. That has always been part of becoming a parent.
I feel like some doomer lemmings need to go outside a little more, instead of telling themselves and their screens how awful everything is. Life was brutal a century ago.
I think the next generation is going to start feeling it hard. Current generation will slip by but barely. I’m not pressuring my kids to have their own. Just do you fam.
Absolutely I do. And I don’t understand what makes a person think that bringing a new life into this disaster is a good idea.
Well, hopefully you at least feel thankful that so many of your ancestors brought children into a world much more filled with pain and suffering and death than today.
I’m not, lmao. My life sucks. Wtf is with all the breeders here trying to justify their contributions to climate change!? There is immensely more pain and suffering in our immediate future than there was at any point in human history. We are literally looking at the end of humanity here.
Breeders, oy… So wtf you still doing here if so miserable and zero hope?
I’m here because I’m trying to figure out what’s going on in your head. You’re trying to justify having children when we’re barrelling towards the most dire point of humanity’s history, one that will potentially cause the extinction of our species, while the powers that be are putting their foot on the gas. What the fuck is wrong with you?
Yeah, I’m going to call you a breeder because it appears that your not practicing responsible parenthood, you’re just breeding like an animal.
…unless you were trying to indirectly tell me to kill myself. If so then grow a pair and say it to my face. I’m still here because I know I’ll hurt the people around me if I end my life. That’s it. That’s the only reason why I still live. I’m a trans gal in Texas. I don’t have much to look forward to.
Do the rest of the world a favor and get yourself neutered, breeder.
I’m not trying, nor will I ever try, to justify a goddamned thing to a hateful fuck like you, just pointing out you’re a logically inconsistent hypocrite.
I feel like most people today have kids just because they feel that’s what they should be doing or because they just want a kid. I feel having kids is almost, incredibly selfish? If that makes sense.
What an odd take. Reproducing is arguably the #1 motivation, and purpose, of all life on this planet. Biologically anyway. You’re taking issue with a fundamental trait of life that’s baked into our DNA.
May as well deem people selfish for wanting food and shelter too.
Yeah, I don’t get how people can think like this but not want nukes to take out everything. Like you’re living this shit, too, if you are willing to keep living this shit, why do you assume it’s a bad thing for anyone to bring someone else into it? Anti-natalism is pro-extinction from my pov.
Not that I have an issue with people taking themselves out of the gene pool or anything, I just find the position wildly inconsistent with anyone who wants to continue living themselves.
And to be clear, I mean specifically the “if you choose to have a kid, you are bad” position, I can understand “having kids is not for me, I don’t want to do parenting”.
Hey there, I’ll try to clear things up a bit. At this point in time, here’s a list of things going on in the world:
1.) Collapse of world democracies- the US is fascist now with several countries on their way. It’s a reasonable assumption that a child born today will experience less freedom than you ever have.
2.) Collapse of the environment. - The planet is becoming uninhabitable. 60% of insect species are gone. Temperatures are rising. There’s more than a few inferences that can be made from this…
3.) Collapse of the middle class - it kinda ties into #1, and a lot of people have seen this coming for a while too. We’re being split into an ownership class and a working class. If that divide continues growing (like graphs would indicate) we’re heading towards a neo-feudalist state. That’s not a pleasant experience for anyone other than those at the top. I’m not at the top, you probably aren’t either.
4.) Idiocracy Effect - the beginning part of idiocracy, where it’s explained that dumb people are popping out 10 kids while intelligent people are spending years planning their first. If you are one of the smart people, you’d be forcing a new version of yourself to live in a world with exponentially more dumb people than the world you live in today. If you’re one of the dumb people, well….
The last one doesn’t get a #, but I also have questions surrounding consent for existence. I won’t get into that because I don’t have a fully formulated opinion on that specific area yet. I’m still working it out for myself.
I think we are in for a very hard 30-50 years politically and economically speaking.
Current young people are already poorer than their parents, and that’s not getting solved. Next generation will be poorer and we will have to factor in a lot of tensions and unsolved problems that I think will derive in violence, a lot of violence. And very heavy societal collapses.
Maybe I’m dramatic, but the other day I thought that’s not unlikely that a “western” country will experience a famine in the next 50 years. Many don’t produce enough food for themselves by far, the moment they don’t have the money or the possibility to buy it from other countries… Starvation it is. And with a growing population getting near the 10 billion humans, a few years of globally bad crops could devastate humankind.
So, yep, I think kids today are in for really hard times.
Maybe not societal collapses but costly upheavals certainly.
Yup, the fossil fuel foundation that enabled us to reach 10 billion is going away. Sunshine and puppies won’t sustain 10 billion eaters.
The carrying capacity of a renewable energy system is not the same as a system that uses massive amounts of surplus energy coming from the ground.
It’s lower. Far far lower. And getting there will be ugly, and your time frame is correct IMO.
Renewable energy production is increasing exponentially.
Electrical, yes. Oil is a feedstock for pretty much anything you can see in your house.
Please fertilize modern agri-business with electricity.
I’ll wait.
In the meantime, try the trick of flying across the Atlantic in 6 hours with batteries.
No doubt we’ll have electricity for as long as we can, but… the underlying civilization that uses it will not look a thing like what we have now.
Do you not already see housing supply issues, inflation, war everywhere?
War everywhere? See WW1 and WW2. Although there is certainly a risk with a large war across Europe it isn’t guaranteed and generally seems like most don’t really want one.
Very much so. I honestly think it’s at least a little cruel and selfish to have a child in a dying world.
That said, I remain supportive of the parents in my life and I try to keep that feeling to myself–unless the parent brings it up (my cousin has two very young children whom he adores, but he also worries for their futures due to climate change and political instability, and he’ll talk pretty openly with me about it).
Climate change is the number one thing. The past had fascism, tools, slavery - but it didn’t have an Extinction level event looming just cresting over the horizon. I’m not having any kids until there is actual meaningful progress towards fixing that… So it looks like I’m not having kids.
Not to mention that one of the easiest ways to combat climate change is to simply not bring more humans into the world.
Of course it did.
If not for the courage and conviction of Vasily Arkhipov, civilization, and potentially humanity, may have ended in 1964. People had kids for 30 years under the very real threat of nuclear extermination. In the end it turned out pretty well.
People had kids during the black plague.
While a climate crisis is more than just a threat, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We have ideas, and models, and educated guesses… But not knowledge.
I wouldn’t tell anyone to have kids if they don’t want to. But no one should plan their life around sparing a hypothetical person from the hypothetical struggles of a slow moving crisis we don’t fully understand.
How about sparing them from a life of working constantly to have job insecurity, no social safety net, and a bullet for a retirement plan? Birth is cruelty.
I think you may just need to talk to somebody this comment is out of my depth.
We’re all talking now. I don’t find that perspective to be one that equates uniquely to a depressed person. That perspective is relatively prevalent within this thread, but also somewhat prevalent within social circles that I find myself in.
“my life is so miserable that I would rather see the continuation of the species voluntarily end that risk someone else suffers like me” is depression. Maybe it’s not suicidal depression, but it probably requires intervention.
Maybe it’s just immature edgelord BS, but if not that’s a serious problem.
I really think you’re missing the target entirely.
There’s not a biological imperative for humans to reproduce. It’s pretty egotistical to assume that your species “deserves” to exist. Can you tell me what about our species is so special?
Calling something “a problem,” and failing to articulate on what specifically makes it a problem is MAGA level thinking.
Politics, economics and war are all hard to predict for long term, but just on the count of climate change kids born today are screwed.
I mean, I made a conscious decision not to have children, so…
If you were born 20 years earlier you’d get to destroy the planet and die before there was any consequences?
The kids will be fine, they are smarter and more capable than those that came before them, every time. The real problem is people living so long they aren’t making room for the young people. Think turnover at a restaurant, and all the diners finished eating and paid but won’t leave.
No. I think that things have pretty steadily gotten better over time, and that a great deal of people being upset about now for any given now comes from a tendency to focus on negatives. Could be social media or news media tending to bring negatives to the surface because it drives engagement, political activists aiming to drive or leverage upset, or so forth.
I choose not to. I can choose to be hopeful for the future without being unrealistic. I can see intrinsic value in human life and the human experience even knowing that every single one of us will die at some point, some peacefully, some during suffering. The moment of death doesn’t have to define one’s life. Even a baby who lives for six hours has spent infinitely more time living than dying. Would you be so nihilistic as to erase that life, just because it was short?
Your philosophy is valid; it’s not necessarily correct.
Starting from the assumption that it is denies you the opportunity to see things from a different perspective.All the time. I fake being happy for them and on the inside think What the fuck is wrong with you?
Im glad im not the only one.
Has nothing to do with lemmy or reddit either. I’ve always felt that way even when. I was a kid I couldn’t imagine why people want them. Must be something in the genes because im pretty sure my parents shouldn’t have had kids either lol!
