Nothing else even comes close. It’s a simple fact. It’s easy to do. But nobody wants to do that.
It’s far less painful to pretend that we can keep the Titanic from sinking by making sure we sip our boat drinks from metal straws.
The point of the post is that we’re trying to consume our way out of a consumption problem, but predictably, a group of technology people want desperately to believe that if we just make the stuff we’re consuming better — with technology! — we’re helping.
To this end, it’s worth pointing out that the only item on that list that relates to family size is midway down, where it talks about family planning for the third world...something other people can do, so that you don’t have to change your life.
If we let the "ban cars" and the "ban children" folk fight it out then that frees up time for the "pragmatically improve things along many different dimensions, many of which would be beneficial even if we totally ignored climate change" folk to get on with things.
It’s far easier to mock the people who tell you the truth than it is to make substantial changes.
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment...
But people don't want to listen to the harsh truths. They would rather consume their way out of the problem with electric cars, education for third world countries, reforestation, solar power and other false hopes.
Whereas making a car or a plane trip or a burger or a child x% more expensive will move us in the right direction and even that will be resisted to a crazy degree.
They've probably done more to combat global warming than most "ban cars/meat/flying" fanatics.
What the heck are you talking about? Every industrialized nation now has negative population growth if you ignore immigration. People are having fewer children, and frequently, none.
If you elect to have one fewer child, you can drive a car everywhere and fly first class for vacation and eat a big steak every week of your life, and you’ll still be greener than your neighbor with the solar panels and the Tesla. Doesn’t matter what birth rates are in the industrialized world.
"Educating Girls" and "Family Planning" are ranked 6th and 7th on the list (out of 80). So I don't know why you are saying that its midway down the list?
According to this logic the real number one thing you could do is to kill yourself, but it fails for exactly the same reason.
You're just measuring the impact and not the cost. Doing one thing with a large impact and an even larger cost is worse than doing three things whose total impact is more and total cost is less than that of the one thing. Especially since in this context they stack -- if you buy an electric car and switch to electric heat and install solar panels on your roof, but so too do your spouse and three kids, that's going to have more impact than having two kids while you're all driving ICE cars and getting heat from fuel oil and electricity from coal, since the impact of each measure is multiplied by each of the five people in your family.
On top of that, you're not considering the economic and political implications. If there are fewer children then there will be fewer working people per retiree. That means a resource crunch, which is exactly the sort of thing that will prevent people from being able to afford sustainable alternatives that may cost a little bit more, and then you've doomed us all.
However, the responses to this simple fact continue to be enlightening: people would rather commit all sorts of tortured fallacies of reasoning than change their lifestyles in any meaningful way.
It's the same result. You're just choosing it for yourself instead of your parents having chosen for you, which only seems fair -- I know I'd rather be the one to choose for myself. But the point is that the choice, in either case, is not worth the cost when there are better alternatives.
If we were at the point that population reduction was the only possible solution then we would be soliciting volunteers, but it's not.
> However, the responses to this simple fact continue to be enlightening: people would rather commit all sorts of tortured fallacies of reasoning than change their lifestyles in any meaningful way.
Why would anybody want to do that when it isn't necessary? You can't just buy an electric car and call it done, but it's one among a collection of things you can do that sum together to an actual solution that doesn't require people to abandon their standard of living.
I mean, a small-but-growing number of young adults are already doing exactly that.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/some-millennials-climat...
https://qz.com/1590642/these-millennials-are-going-on-birth-...
https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-americans-worry-...
> The point of the post is that we’re trying to consume our way out of a consumption problem,
I don't think that's true. People are trying to find better ways to solve the minimum amount of consumption they need to continue to exist. That's not the same thing as what you've described, that's not "consuming our way out".
People aren't buying EVs because they want to vacation all the time and/or take fun extra road trips 24/7. It's mainly about "I have to be able to get to Work/School/Home in a quick and safe manner, because capitalism demands it for my survival. How can I emit as little CO2 into the air as possible, while still meeting the requirements a capitalist nation demands of me. Which of these solutions can I afford?"
> it talks about family planning for the third world...something other people can do, so that you don’t have to change your life.
Because many "first world" nation birthrates are already abstaining pretty significantly. In the US specifically, birthrates have fallen to all-time record lows - https://money.cnn.com/2013/09/06/news/economy/birth-rate-low...
The primary cause of population growth now isn't the birth rate, but rather life expectancy. People are living 20+ years longer than before.
If you take your argument to its logical conclusion, the #1 most significant thing you can do to reduce climate change is suicide. And the most significant thing a nation can do is genocide.
