Sea level is likely to be several feet higher by the end of this century, when today’s children are grandparents.
Unfortunate that the author of the article normalises the creation of children like this. It will take a special kind of ignoramus or optimist to keep popping out kids in this day and age.
I get your point but the driving imperative for all life as we know it, reproduction, is normal and has been for the entire known history of the Earth.
Something can be normal in the sense of what typically happens without being reinforced as a cultural norm. As an unrelated example, homosexuality has existed for an extremely long time, so it was “normal” in the sense that it was something common, but it was not culturally accepted as normal in the Western world until much more recently. By reinforcing the cultural norm of making babies, the author lends social acceptance to bringing someone into the world without their consent while simultaneously contributing to all of the environmental problems of human overpopulation.
Of course I’m not trying to argue that reproduction doesn’t happen; I was making the point that it doesn’t need to be considered the default. For many people before the age of puberty, the idea is rather unappealing, and they lose that aversion partly due to social factors.
Thing is, by then everything will be even worse, climate, economy.
But, kids keep being made. Life is going to try to keep going, regardless if it makes sense to continue propagating or not. Life just says “go”, there aren’t any designs within DNA saying “woah pump the breaks, we have just the right amount of us.” It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a species killed itself off by being too successful.
Exactly. Nature is great at producing highly intricate and adaptive self-propagating systems, but it has no regard whatsoever for the well-being or consent of those who have to live in it. If a species overpopulates and destroys its own habitat, many (or potentially all) organisms of that species will die off in order to restore balance to the ecosystem. Nature carries on. For those that nature kills off, that’s not much consolation.
The sad thing is we’re taking a LOT of species down with us. Species that are needed for the recovery of the environment. Eventually another animal will fill the niche but that just makes recovery take that much longer.
In the abstract, I don’t find it sad when species go extinct. That’s how nature works. The species that can’t adapt quickly enough die out and make way for those that can. What I find abhorrent is that all of the current environmental disasters (as well as some “natural causes”) are killing off individual beings who never instigated violence against anyone, and who cannot (and presumably would not) consent to being hunted and killed, having their habitats destroyed, being eaten from the inside out by parasites, experiencing organ failure due to microplastic exposure, and so on. Recovery of the environment matters only to the beings who depend upon it. The environmental and climate disaster in the abstract is just the transition to a new state (George Carlin’s “the Earth plus plastic”), and it’s only when one considers the effect on non-consenting sentient beings that it becomes a tragedy on an almost incomprehensible scale.
The crime is not destruction of the environment; it’s the violence against those living in the environment who do not consent to the destruction.
Unfortunate that the author of the article normalises the creation of children like this. It will take a special kind of ignoramus or optimist to keep popping out kids in this day and age.
I get your point but the driving imperative for all life as we know it, reproduction, is normal and has been for the entire known history of the Earth.
is != ought
Sure, but you accused the author of normalizing a normal thing. You can argue that it shouldn’t be, but it very much is.
Something can be normal in the sense of what typically happens without being reinforced as a cultural norm. As an unrelated example, homosexuality has existed for an extremely long time, so it was “normal” in the sense that it was something common, but it was not culturally accepted as normal in the Western world until much more recently. By reinforcing the cultural norm of making babies, the author lends social acceptance to bringing someone into the world without their consent while simultaneously contributing to all of the environmental problems of human overpopulation.
Of course I’m not trying to argue that reproduction doesn’t happen; I was making the point that it doesn’t need to be considered the default. For many people before the age of puberty, the idea is rather unappealing, and they lose that aversion partly due to social factors.
Thing is, by then everything will be even worse, climate, economy.
But, kids keep being made. Life is going to try to keep going, regardless if it makes sense to continue propagating or not. Life just says “go”, there aren’t any designs within DNA saying “woah pump the breaks, we have just the right amount of us.” It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a species killed itself off by being too successful.
Exactly. Nature is great at producing highly intricate and adaptive self-propagating systems, but it has no regard whatsoever for the well-being or consent of those who have to live in it. If a species overpopulates and destroys its own habitat, many (or potentially all) organisms of that species will die off in order to restore balance to the ecosystem. Nature carries on. For those that nature kills off, that’s not much consolation.
The sad thing is we’re taking a LOT of species down with us. Species that are needed for the recovery of the environment. Eventually another animal will fill the niche but that just makes recovery take that much longer.
In the abstract, I don’t find it sad when species go extinct. That’s how nature works. The species that can’t adapt quickly enough die out and make way for those that can. What I find abhorrent is that all of the current environmental disasters (as well as some “natural causes”) are killing off individual beings who never instigated violence against anyone, and who cannot (and presumably would not) consent to being hunted and killed, having their habitats destroyed, being eaten from the inside out by parasites, experiencing organ failure due to microplastic exposure, and so on. Recovery of the environment matters only to the beings who depend upon it. The environmental and climate disaster in the abstract is just the transition to a new state (George Carlin’s “the Earth plus plastic”), and it’s only when one considers the effect on non-consenting sentient beings that it becomes a tragedy on an almost incomprehensible scale.
The crime is not destruction of the environment; it’s the violence against those living in the environment who do not consent to the destruction.