Kids consume more energy pound for pound than adults with regards to food. There’s also all the associated products that go along with raising children, many of which aren’t handed down, etc.
Kids do have a lot fewer pounds though. Also humans live around seventy to eighty years. So stopping procreation right now would bring us to carbon neutrality in about that time. That means that in about twenty years stopping procreation would have reduced carbon emissions by about thirty percent or so. That's a lot, but far from what's needed to prevent catastrophic warming.
The only reason I care about the Earth at all is that our future generations will need to live here. If we all stop having kids and humanity goes extinct, I don't care if Earth's atmosphere gets hotter than Venus's after that.
no, but I did notice the uptick of "Japan must open itself to immigration or it will not survive" kind of articles from the very same outlets who chastise us for the carbon sin and promote having fewer or no children as one of the ways to atone for it. same in NA and Europe
>United Nations projections indicate that over the next 50 years, the populations of virtually all countries of Europe as well as Japan will face population decline and population ageing. The new challenges of declining and ageing populations will require comprehensive reassessments of many established policies and programmes, including those relating to international migration.
>Focusing on these two striking and critical population trends, the report considers replacement migration for eight low-fertility countries (France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, United Kingdom and United States) and two regions (Europe and the European Union). Replacement migration refers to the international migration that a country would need to offset population decline and population ageing resulting from low fertility and mortality rates.
>How is the presence of these kinds of articles any kind of argument or input into thinking about the matter?
well, I don't know about you, but I find it peculiar that the Venn diagram of 'entities who say that we need to have fewer children to reduce our carbon footprint' and 'entities who say we need unlimited mass migration to prevent our economy from collapsing due to our low birth rates' is just one circle
Right, populate trends have effects. That should go without saying.. but that’s not at all related to a country “not surviving”.
There are many times in life where change is needed even though that change creates trade offs and new problems to solve.
So really in the context of this thread the question should be, “which problem is easier to solve or less dire: climate change or gradual population stagnation?”
I can’t say I have the answer, but a stable society without requiring population growth does not seem off the table to me.
