He argued that if he "gave up my 15 mpg pickup truck — basically the mascot for climate inaction — and rode my bicycle everywhere, I'd save the planet 2.4 tons of carbon emissions a year."58 tons of carbon emissions annually, per kidIs this a world we want to bring kids into? Is this a world it's responsible to bring kids into?
It looks like the pace of climate change is speeding ahead of science's ability to understand or forecast it. Thinking about hypothetical Wes Jr.'s life as far into the future as I've already lived — 38 years — it's tempting to try to forecast stuff like so many feet of sea-level rise or the extinction of some keystone species. But that may not be possible. The future might be worse than any of us currently fear.
Then Virginia and I started talking about something we could do — for ourselves and to make a meaningful impact on the bigger problem. We could just forego the whole kid thing altogether.
Comment: Climate change is real, but it is not due to man made carbon emissions.
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- The fallacy of "Climate Change"
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- Weather is not climate! - except when it's hot, say global warming ideologues
However, by not having a child, Siler said he'd save the world from 58 tons of carbon emissions annually: "Any other action we could take, even all the actions we could ever possibly add up together, pale in comparison."More from Siler's column:
He concluded things with the following message: "It might not be enough to save the polar bear, and it might not prevent the next Camp Fire, but this is the absolute biggest difference we can make. We need fewer humans, and getting there voluntarily will be an awful lot less painful than doing it with war, famine, and natural disaster."That's because there are simply too many humans on this planet. We've all been told that driving an electric car or putting solar panels on our roofs will help, but that involves buying more stuff, which has a terrible impact on the environment, no matter how green the image. Two people deciding to make fewer humans eliminates the entire cycle of consumption that would fuel that kid's life.
All those people ultimately represent the greatest climate change-related threat. Burning forests and flooded beach houses are sad and all, but it's the human conflict created by dwindling resources needed to sustain the population that stands to really change life on this planet. We're already fighting wars for oil. Many think wars for water will be next, and those are going to hit closer to home.
Comment: Not every body is convinced of the having fewer children as a solution to climate change.