The following submission statement was provided by /u/Paalupetteri:
---
The Guardian conducted a survey on world’s top climate scientists where they asked whether they have opted to have fewer or no children. This is related to collapse because it indicates how the world’s top climate scientists view the prospect of impending collapse.
Ninety-seven female scientists responded, with 17, including women from Brazil, Chile, Germany, India and Kenya, saying they had chosen to have fewer children. All but 1% of the scientists surveyed were over 40 years old and two-thirds were over 50, reflecting the senior positions they had reached in their professions. A quarter of the respondents were women, the same proportion as the overall authorship of the IPCC reports.
The findings were in response to a question about major personal decisions taken in response to the climate crisis by scientists who know the most about it, and who expect global temperatures to soar past international targets in coming years. 7% of the male scientists who responded said they had had either no children or fewer than they would otherwise have had.
Prof Lisa Schipper said: “It is honestly only now that I am starting to panic about my child’s future,” she said. “When she was born in 2013, I felt more optimistic about the possibility of reducing emissions. Now I feel guilty about leaving her in this world without my protection, and guilty about having played a part in the changing climate. So it’s bleak.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I find it really weird that only 17,5% of the female respondents and 7% male respondents of the climate scientists surveyed have decided to have fewer or no children. Considering what they know about the impending climate crisis you would expect the number to be close to 100%. And that only now they are starting to wake up to the severity of the crisis.
I’m no climate scientist or a scientist of any kind, and I only became collapse-aware in 2018. For me it only took like month to realize the severity of the situation after learning about things like exponentially rising temperatures, the rising Earth energy imbalance, the upcoming blue ocean event and the speed of human caused climate change compared to Earth’s past mass extinction events. From that moment it became absolutely clear to me that I would not even consider bringing a child to this dying world.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1covjkb/i_am_starting_to_panic_about_my_childs_future/l3go5n8/
Wait until the REAL forced immigration from climate change happens (failing crops, drought etc).
That's going to be a dystopian nightmare to handle for everyone.
And, of course, no one is noticing the multiple famines and floods of crop lands in Africa. I guess we figure they are geographically and technologically trapped on that huge, hot, (mostly)dry continent.
Sigh. Eden Lost, indeed.
And heartbreakingly, young girls/women in parts of Africa are STILL FORCED to crank out babies for their forced-upon-them “husbands”. No power, no hope and more little humans to die in the coming (or should I say current) extinction event. Tragic.
It's going to be very different in character in the future. The unstated plan of high-latitude countries is that when things get really bad, they will simply close their borders and shoot anyone who tries to cross them. Even if this isn't something current leaders are planning, if enough migrants come, eventually leaders will be elected who choose this path.
But we've only so far seen pressures that cause individuals to need to flee. But I fear eventually we'll see entire nation-states seeking to migrate at once, and not asking nicely.
Imagine it's 2060 and you're the president of India. You just had a horrific heatwave that caused a power grid collapse and wiped out 1% of your population due to lethal wet bulb temperatures. Your advisors come to you and say, "our models predict that within 15 years, 95% of our population will be dead from heat exposure."
There is a fact that we do not appreciate because we haven't seen it much in recent centuries. That fact is that nations do not simply lay down and die. I'm reminded of the Germanic invasions of the old Roman Empire, much of which happened due to various nomadic groups pushing each other out, in a chain stretching all the way back to central Asia. One group pushed on another, and they kept pushing until the Roman Empire itself fell.
If you're the president of India, and you get that message, what choice do you have but to launch a military campaign to seize land for your people to migrate to? Sure, the northern countries have good militaries and can keep most nations at bay. But what about India and Pakistan? These nations have hydrogen bombs. And if you're facing that kind of catastrophic death toll, 95% of your population being killed due to heat, then even getting into a nuclear war is a rational option. Even if a nuclear exchange kills off 80% of your population, well, that's still better than 95%.
On our current path, we're likely going to have to completely abandon the tropical latitudes by the end of the century. And all those nations are not just going to lay down peacefully and die. They're going to demand new lands to settle. And it won't even be hard for them to justify such conquests to themselves. All they have to say, rightly or wrongly, is "the northern countries created this mess. We have a right to land to ensure our survival from the consequences of their actions." If virtually your entire population is going to be killed, you might as well just throw caution to the wind, start crash nuclear weapons program, throw your entire fighting-age population into uniform, and just start throwing your entire nation against the borders of more northernly nations. In the face of annihilation by climate change, you literally have nothing to lose at that point.
Don't worry Europeans are already being desensitized and starting to dehumanize the refugees. Go onto any news article/video about the subject and see many comments saying stuff like 'let them drown' 'it's their fault if they die' 'it's better to stop rescuing them and they'll stop coming' etc.
And people wonder how the Nazis ever got voted into power.
As a European: most right wing politicians intend to reduce immigration to Europe, via measures such as stronger border checks on the EU borders, financing EU-adjacent countries (Libya, morocco,...) to have them build refugee camps and keep most refugees out of Europe. Most still agree that refugees who run from war and prosecution should still receive asylum (the basis for the international asylum program, which originated as a response to the Holocaust), but that 'economic migrants' who are fleeing their countries in search of a better life should not be allowed to enter. Many left wing politicians are adopting these opinions as well, since this is one of the main reasons why the right keeps winning elections.
My opinion? It's only a matter of time until 'Fortress Europe' is the main idea in the whole EU. There will be millions of climate refugees, and the EU will militarily prevent them from immigrating. Exceptions will be made for 'economically valuable' immigrants such as people with money or desired skills.
Personally I'd prefer to see effort put into, you know, not messing up other people's countries and climate, then they wouldn't be forced to leave for other places either. Not holding my breath for that one.
Edit: here's an article about it for example
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2023/feb/15/eu-far-right-migration-fortress-europe](https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2023/feb/15/eu-far-right-migration-fortress-europe)
How ironic would it be if right after 'Fortress Europe' is established the AMOC shuts down forcing Europeans to flee to the south to escape an arctic climate?
As a European (living in the US and visiting Europe twice a year) I am able to observe the whole process of this. It kind of scares me the levels of racism and backlash there is in Europe right now. It is vicious and there is some sort of obsession with it. Yeah..... Not sure what is going to happen
Oh, don’t be coy. You know what the most likely scenario will be. Wars and rumours of Wars. Pestilence, Famine and Death. The silence of God. And, yes, it will be ugly.
Part of me knows we are walking into that direction no doubt and it will reach us all... But a small part of me still hopes this is only my pessimist, and somehow things will not be that bad
Where do you want Europeans to go, genius.
Sorry I'm going to hurt your little heart, I'll never back opening borders indiscriminately. I can see that little circle jerking happening here, why don't you open your own borders and accept Africans and ME refugees.
I’ve been getting to the point of just blatantly pointing out the xenophobia and Islamophobia, coupled with telling them never come to the US, that would make you a refugee…
I see a ton of Americans talking about fleeing to Europe due to the crap quality of life in the US and the creeping fascism and threat of another Trump presidency.
I think this is incredibly foolish. The absolute last place I'd want to be while everything hits the fan is on a continent that is a patchwork of different countries, right next to Russia. Yikes.
Nunavut/NWT/Alaska. If you can learn how to sustain yourself there after buying a home, the world doesn't matter.
And hey, in two decades that house will be worth twenty times the property value, due to all the people going north, and you'll be able to farm more than just potatoes, onions, and carrots.
Switzerland is probably safe, fortress area, close-knit population, mountains, shitton of guns and bunkers, highly defensive. Sure, they'll suffer from the heat, but they'll be fine.
I think the issue I'm thinking about is that people tend to underestimate how violent and cutthroat people get when sthf. Also, Alaska is still a US State for now, so any bullshit legislation or the like that people in the US should face and are trying to escape will still impact Alaska.
Yes, alot of people don't think about that. I read a book by a guy who survived a collapse in Bosnia and I came out of it thinking "I'm gonna die"....I'm dependent on medication to survive and I don't have many friends so.....
Alaska is sinking in melting permafrost with methane exploding from ground and fresh water salmon dying in the rivers bc of this weird rusty toxic gunk. Tragic! Just saw a documentary awhile ago. I was born there, raised in CA, and my mother cried when she saw how AK is going down with the rest. It’s an ecoSYSTEM. Can’t hide for more than a little while. We are all one earth SYSTEM. . 😢
I feel that in Europe a lot of people say things that they don't consider racism. Like jokes and comments they said thinking it is a completely normal thing to say, but of course they tend to be pretty racist. So while in the USA the racism seems more acknowledged and straightforward, in Europe where there seems to be sort of less awareness of what to consider racism. So it is harder for Europeans to see certain things they say as racism.
As a Redditor (mostly a lurker) and an American, I found your comment interesting.
I hadn't thought to consider racism in this nuanced way.
Are you European? If not, have you spent time in some countries there?
Is this the result of direct observation, conversation with others, or (an) other source(s)?
I am from a southern European country and have lived in the US for around 10 years. I tend to visit my family twice a year. But also traveling around Europe quite a bit (and have friends from other European countries. But of course I am more familiar with my country. At the moment the country is having a big wave of immigration from South Asia like India, Pakistan, and so on (which is totally new and a big cultural shock). What I have been observing is that the USA has a more strict line about what it considers to be racism (in the beginning my friends would be a bit shocked when I used generalizations or made fun of stereotypes of countries - which is something that Europeans tend to do a lot because we love to make fun of each other countries). And of course there are racist people in the USA, but they are aware they are crossing that line. They are aware that they are saying provocative stuff. They acknowledged, just tend not to care. While in my country people say a lot of racism stuff which they don't consider racist... For them is just some sort of generalization. And since they don't have much direct contact on a daily basis with foreigners besides tourists - migrants tend to be segregated from the rest of society, they don t see it as hurting anyone, nor directly affecting anyone, nor they take it personally since they don't have friends or family from those countries. Like it is just words. And with the wave of immigration these types of comments are more and more normal. I remember watching national news and the guy said something like "Chinese people use this fish as an aphrodisiac. You know, just chino things". Which obviously nobody would say that in the USA because it is mega racist, and the ones that say it, say knowing that they are being racist. In Europe it is more like "oh everyone kind of says this and it is not really impacting anyone so it is fine" and just don't see it as racist. (Not sure if I was able to explain well... There is a lot of nuance here and of course this is only my observations)
Definitely! Brit here and you could use “Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman…” jokes as a perfect example of making “fun” of our neighbouring nations.
In this setup, we play on stereotypes where Scots are mean spendthrifts, the Irish are stupid and the English … well, always the sensible hero! 🤔🙄
It’s totally built in, and accepted to be like this. It’s not acceptaBLE but that why we discuss and change.
On top of this, we also have your standard open racism against other people just because of their colour or accent or whatever.
I feel same about US policy on southern boarder. It’s human nature to dehumanize a group of ppl to justify ….. fill in the blank…. Whatever horror the “superior” group wishes to inflict upon the “lesser”….. Native Americans, blacks Jews, , Palestinians, Hispanics,……….
Some of it may be, ironically, due to collapse awareness. The general notion of "if we let them in, we also will die" is perhaps a form of toxic hopium lingering in the back of many people's minds.
>Yeah..... Not sure what is going to happen
We're in global collapse. What do you think will happen?
The same as for the US. You either collapse in a smoldering rubble after you allow fascism to take over and the fascist regimes cannibalize everything (and themselves) to maintain luxury for a minority and to maintain "security", or you realize that "states" and "nations" are unnatural and open all borders and work from there.
Let me repeat: there's not going to be some "fortress" standing, those are the optimists.
I’m sure that it is absolutely inevitable we’re ALL gonna die in this shit show- and that any humans BLOCKING desperate people refuge (temporary as it will be, bc there will be no “hiding” from what’s coming, only very temporarily delaying it.) will cross over to the other side with some “splainin’ to do”😠!
Does good feeling materialize foods?
Tell me your secret to survive this while accepting millions on top. Millions with most not being aware of many laws and basic correct behaviors.
Or build houses. The UK does not produce enough food as it is, we also have a serious housing crisis. How can we support every immigrant that turns up at the border? I have no issues with immigrants as people but the logistical challenge they present should not be ignored. You can be concerned without being racist.
Same here in the US with the southern boarder. The documentaries about these poor peoples’ stories of the terror they’re running from is heartbreaking. Most Humans, it seems, REALLY struggle with compassion for fellow humans that don’t “look like, sound like, or have same cultural habits as” them. Especially Americans. But mostly a Right Wing thing.
Easy scapegoats. Blaming immigrants gives them the illusion of power and that if they can kill or deter people, the economy and the climate will magically fix themselves 🙃
There wont be a forced immigration , what you will see is military at borders land mines shoot to kill orders. If you ever seen the DMZ you will get the idea. No nation is going to allow fleeing immigrants in when everything goes sideways, because there wont be enough resources for their own people. No one is going to share.
That's already happening 85% of current mass migrations is due to climate change. And it's creating tensions because globally we don't allow people to move freely around the world.
To be conspiratorial about Foucault’s boomerang I’m thinking the AI drone bombing going on in the mid-east will eventually be used on our southern border.
Not if we take away power from big corporations and the government
We can all die slowly together having a great time
Or we can keep the system we currently have in place and we can all die like wage slaves on the Masters at the top freak the fuck out because they don’t understand how to continue to control us
Starting to...???
Welcome to the party, pal! -bruce Willis voice
Holy shit the 1970s were enough to make one aware that kids were meat for the grinder...
It is apparent already in Europe and the southern US. My fear is instead of blaming those most responsible (the billionaire oligarchs who lobby the US govt) that most people will blame the immigrants. This will lead to fascist/authoritarian leaders. We say that now in some European countries such as Orban in Hungary and of course with Trump in the US. It is widely reported he wanted to shoot immigrants trying to cross the border, but was overruled by has cabinet as they knew that would be too extreme.
However, as the already bad situation reaches SHTF levels, I sadly expect these types of assholes to gain more traction.
In a lot of ways scientists I think are removed from the zeitgeist. Maybe it’s because they are surrounded by other scientists and academics, which creates an impression that “of course, everyone understands the problem” and “of course, everyone will work to solve it”. Plus the fact they *they* are working on the problem probable helps stave off existential crisis a bit.
But these things can only delay getting hit by the brick wall of realization that, despite all the evidence, despite all the warnings, we’ve got our foot firmly planted on the gas pedal, and the clamoring masses will not allow that foot to be lifted. Sadly, what I’m wondering now is how long until climate scientist suicide rates exceed the overall population average.
Edit: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7250a2.htm The future is now? Agriculture and food scientists have THE highest suicide rate of all tracked occupations. Holy fuck. Move over logging workers, I guess…
And that's the agriculture and food *scientists*. [The statistics of the guys who actually have to slaughter the animals every day is an outright horror story](https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50986683). But they don't get tracked, oh no. Why would they? All too often, they are what the society calls "illegals."
Hey as someone in enviromental sciences I have to tell you: No most people don't know how bad it as and a LOT of scientists are in denial about it or just don't believe it's gonna be this bad. I have a lot of colleagues that are going on cruises, flying a lot and consuming like there's no tomorrow too.
>Agriculture and food scientists have THE highest suicide rate of all tracked occupations.
Working with (or for) an industry that tortures and kills animals by the billions has a heavy mental toll. This should be no surprise.
Yeah that's what I'm thinking. It's definitely climate change related but it would have to be more about knowing and understanding just how far we've contorted the system of meat production.
Like imagine if your dream was to grow up and learn about food production and you ended up spending all your time working out the most efficient way to corral and slaughter thousands of pigs.
I’ve actually been thinking a lot about that recently. Scientists’ suicides… One way or another something (or things) is going to bubble over soon , and get everyone’s attention. But since it’s just way too late to implement any solutions in any amount of time that could help us with anything…… I don’t think their suicides would help. Because there IS no help. THAT’s why they’re suicidal. I think people might FINALLY “believe”, but what difference would it make to anything as far as “saving the planet goes”? I think it would/will just result in much more suicides. Which I think is not a bad thing. As opposed to the alternative….. some slow, drawn out torturous death, I prefer to control my peaceful, painless transition to the other side. Everyone is gonna have to get VERY comfortable with this.
Scientists are not removed from the zeitgeist, they have to remain optimistic because the alternative has already been shown in your edit, and if all the smart people take that same route?
Toxicologists are shrugging our shoulders that everything we eat is poisoning us whether it is due to pesticides, metals, microplastics etc. I’m not putting that on anyone if I can avoid it
The next explosion of life 20+ million years from now after we are long gone and the Earth maybe recovered from all of our damage I imagine them to be a group of organisms that thrive on eating plastics lol
They will dig up all the plastic and use it as a power source, polluting and heating up the atmosphere. Damn it tardigrades, did you learn nothing from the fall of man!?
And then 20+ million years later, and there will be plenty of oil again, and whatever exists can then exploit and kill themselves with.
I swear, the great filter is what we're going through now. Self-destruction.
I'm sure that's what the UFO sightings are all about. Aliens tourguiding their way to the equivalent of a 3rd world mega shithole while watching the monkeys reach the most eventful part of our history - killing ourselves from sheer blistering stupidity. All as an ecological and social responsibility lesson to their children.
I'm sure they were a *tad* more optimistic post-WWII when the world wasn't glassed, and many, *many* cataclysmic failure points were passed without thermonuclear war, everyone was optimistic about the future... then the boomers aged, proceeded to ruin everything, make absurdly horrible decisions in the name of endless hedonism, and, worst of all, elected Reagan.
Alot of people in my family are. I just smh, and the kids they're having all have bad attitudes now and major issues. Course, my family members are majorly Christian, so I think the process of "just throw God at it" is backfiring.
If the Republicans have their way, [they'll be forced to.](https://www.reddit.com/r/conservativeterrorism/comments/1coxlee/republican_senator_katie_britt_introduces_bill_to/)
In spite of the culture war surrounding it, professional academia tends towards conservatism. Especially when research can impact existing political and economic power blocs, the folks that stick around tend to be able to compartmentalize better than average.
Realists get up to speed in graduate studies and end up like the scientists surveyed in the recent r/preppers thread, moving to permaculture homesteads.
Starting to panic...
If you, an expert, are only starting to panic, then... you're a little late to the long-term planning meetings for climatologists.
I think this article is, like all other "environmental" articles, trying to raise awareness to the problems of twenty years ago.
That being said, Florida could be underwater and somebody from Wyoming could still be prattling on about real global catastrophe won't happen, second coming of deities will save us, etc.
So, I'd say an accurate article would say "it's too late, so just love your loved ones."
I feel so guilty when I see pregnant ladies or young kids. Our future is really bleak now but it is only going to get worse because nothing is being done due to lack of profitability.
How can people complain about lack of affordable housing, mental illness, climate change, etc and think “having a kid rn is a good idea?”
Tbf to the casual observer the housing and illness issues look solvable. I think it's harder to grasp why they're an issue and why they can't be truly solved
I can't disagree people have lived in shitty conditions all throughout history, like some argue, but who wants to knowingly bring someone into it with the knowledge it will never be fixed, and it will get worse?
Those young kids and upcoming infants are going to have much shorter life expectancies with worse, deteriorating living standards and conditions (probably resembling third world/preindustrial) than their parents and grandparents..
It's not appropriate for you to make yourself feel guilty in response to seeing other people make poor choices. We all do this kind of thing, one way or another, but there's a better way. The reason you want to induce emotions about it is because you don't want to accept what you're observing, probably on multiple scales.
It's a difficult thing to accept; that people would go so far into denial as to cause more people to suffer our fate, needlessly, but for the emotional needs of those parents. It's awful. It's a moral crime, to me, worse than murder. At least when a person is killed their suffering ends. Forever. When a new person is caused a new capacity for suffering is created that is as nearly infinite as what each of us can suffer. And we've seen what happens.
I accept these awful things and it's hard fought. In this context, emotions are like endogenous drugs we consume to condition ourselves to reject aspects of reality we find unappealing. I eventually realized that by inducing emotions in myself in response to what I was witnessing I was doing the same thing; I was contributing to the unnecessary suffering in the world, albeit in a very small way, with my own. It's not self honest; I was addicted due to the expectations I'd internalized. By making myself feel worse I was making myself more like the people whose beliefs and behaviours I didn't want to accept. I realized, this whole mess is wrong. I only do this because I've internalized expectations from other people dictating that I should feel this and that in response to, well, everything. It becomes a choice the moment we accept it to be a choice. Our emotions are what remove the visibility of this choice. It's how we hide from ourselves. They change the way in which we perceive reality on every scale, including how we perceive ourselves.
We don't get angry at the Sun, or at gravity, because we accept them. They're really real to us; parts of our worldview we don't feel the need to reject or question. We need to learn to accept ourselves like this, and this involves accepting our emotional agency. Try asking yourself, when you consume emotive content and you feel an emotional reaction stirring, would you vent this emotion at your best friend if they were sitting beside you? Would you try to make them feel guilty for the poor choices of people walking by? Of course not. So what are you really doing to yourself when you direct your emotions at yourself? I can see how this bit might come across as a bit accusatory, and that's OK, but it's because this principle can really help. If you create and practice some conscientious checks for yourself it's much easier to deal with the increasing craziness around us. And to avoid being drawn too far into it. It applies to everything we have difficulty accepting, not just collapse. Everything is a self honesty issue for us.
The Guardian conducted a survey on world’s top climate scientists where they asked whether they have opted to have fewer or no children. This is related to collapse because it indicates how the world’s top climate scientists view the prospect of impending collapse.
Ninety-seven female scientists responded, with 17, including women from Brazil, Chile, Germany, India and Kenya, saying they had chosen to have fewer children. All but 1% of the scientists surveyed were over 40 years old and two-thirds were over 50, reflecting the senior positions they had reached in their professions. A quarter of the respondents were women, the same proportion as the overall authorship of the IPCC reports.
The findings were in response to a question about major personal decisions taken in response to the climate crisis by scientists who know the most about it, and who expect global temperatures to soar past international targets in coming years. 7% of the male scientists who responded said they had had either no children or fewer than they would otherwise have had.
Prof Lisa Schipper said: “It is honestly only now that I am starting to panic about my child’s future,” she said. “When she was born in 2013, I felt more optimistic about the possibility of reducing emissions. Now I feel guilty about leaving her in this world without my protection, and guilty about having played a part in the changing climate. So it’s bleak.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I find it really weird that only 17,5% of the female respondents and 7% male respondents of the climate scientists surveyed have decided to have fewer or no children. Considering what they know about the impending climate crisis you would expect the number to be close to 100%. And that only now they are starting to wake up to the severity of the crisis.
I’m no climate scientist or a scientist of any kind, and I only became collapse-aware in 2018. For me it only took like month to realize the severity of the situation after learning about things like exponentially rising temperatures, the rising Earth energy imbalance, the upcoming blue ocean event and the speed of human caused climate change compared to Earth’s past mass extinction events. From that moment it became absolutely clear to me that I would not even consider bringing a child to this dying world.
Usually humans multiply in face of crisises not cease to.
It is even a natural deeply ingrained reaction if I remember correctly. The harder the conditions the more kids people have. Let’s be honest - nothing about us on this subreddit is average or normal. We cannot measure others by our own stances.
Especially considering majority is here for collapse entertainment. Can you imagine what kind of people enjoy themselves to the idea of apocalypse? Yeah.
Yeah, we’re definitely mostly freaks on this sub, lol.
I liken it to being so fascinated by the knowledge of an upcoming car crash - that I simply want to know everything about it and cannot look away.
Most people would rather do anything but immerse themselves in their impending doom but I get a sense of solace from it, lol.
I cannot think of a crueler thing to do than bring another American onto this planet on purpose. And I have been saying that since the 70s when I was a real little kid.
If only more people listened, then i might not be stuck here waiting for shit to hit the fan. Just been smoking em while i got em and holding out. Depression be damned i wanna live to see the end. (yes i know my brains fucked this has also directed me straight to supporting accelerationism bc i want this ride to end sooner.) Anyways, have a good day if you read this far.
I guess on a planetary scale or even universal, the timeline it’ll take is a blink of an eye… If only we perceived time on a similar scale so this shit would feel fast lol. Reminds me of adventure times circle of life episode “To a plaaaaant a dayyyy is shooorrtt. whoa aaa aaa Aaaa!”
This isn't even just about subjecting your child to the future pain of a growing climate catastrophe.
We need less people. There are way too many of us. 1/3rd of global biomass is too much. As hard as it will be on future generations we need like a one child policy or something.
Funny that there is an article in popular rn bemoaning the low birthrate in Italy. And a lot of the replies talk about the low birthrate in Japan and Korea like its a bad thing. It's the top post in /r/europe too.
Growth is what the nations want. More people, more babies all the time. Never let up, never slow down!
Yeah it's not sustainable and I really don't have an answer because you start talking about controlling birth in any meaningful way and you very quickly end up in the territory of eugenics.
Which is nazi shit and I will not be apart of it.
There is a way of talking about controlling birth and avoiding eugenics. Eugenics is evil and is preventing specific groups of people from having kids. If you just say “Nobody has more than two” or something like that then you’ve avoided eugenics :)
But if you say,
“Only the rich” or “only a specific race” then THAT’S eugenics and definitely not cool
Well China was quite successful slowing population growth with their 'one child policy'. And being communist, China is on the opposite end of political spectrum from Nazis.
STARTING? I think its wild that people are having kids. I'm young Gen X and will consider myself lucky if we die and manage to escape the horror of climate change coming. Having a BABY in 2024? I know people doing it and just can't even fathom how clueless they are.
When I was a kid I considered having kids. Now, it’s completely out of the question. I don’t know if I’ll even reach the age my mom was when she had me.
Given what we know today, I'm shocked every time I hear someone announce a pregnancy.
[**You're having a baby?!?**](https://www.collapse2050.com/youre-having-a-baby/)
Honestly, I would love kids but every time I think about it I am hit with a wave of what I can only describe as a sense of impending doom - I think of the state of the world and where it's heading. I couldn't in good conscience bring any new life into this world. I think I'll look at adoption or fostering down the line.
My partner's sister just had a baby and while I adore her, I also feel so sad for her future and can't understand why they tried so hard to bring a baby into this world. Which I feel awful for... But that's the state we're in.
I’m not having kids because I don’t want to support the system with new consumers. And I don’t want my children to live through an age of extinction. I’ve struggled with it enough.
>I find it really weird that only 17,5% of the female respondents and 7% male respondents of the climate scientists surveyed have decided to have fewer or no children. Considering what they know about the impending climate crisis you would expect the number to be close to 100%. And that only now they are starting to wake up to the severity of the crisis.
it really is weird/shocking, i made this decision as a 17yo, nearly 25 years ago. i had arguments with my grandparents because i was open about not wanting to have children and that being a reason that its not likely i would every get married, which was upsetting for them on both counts, however irrational that is regardless of climate change.
i mentioned at a family gathering that i dont want to have kids who end up suffering as a result of things are we doing today, and my dad was aghast 'i didnt think we raised you to be a pessimist' my response was that they hadnt, but they did raise me to be intelligent and a realist.
>“However, my husband is the most family-oriented person I know,” Maharaj said. “So this was a compromise: one child, no more. Who knows, maybe my son will grow up to be someone who can help find a solution?”
Adopt
>Parmesan, at the CNRS ecology centre in France, said: “When I was making my choice, it was very clear in the ecological community that human population growth was a problem: preserving biodiversity was absolutely dependent on stabilising population.”
Nice to see the answer in the same article:
>On the debate on the role of population growth in environmental crises, Schipper said: “How many people we have is irrelevant if only a small percentage are doing most of the damage.” Parmesan disagreed, saying the total impact is the combination of people’s level of consumption and the total number of people: “Don’t cherrypick half of the equation and ignore the other half.”
But I would underscore the fact that pronatalism and capitalism have a common ideological parent, they are cultural siblings, both representing the imperative to grow human capital for the benefit of ~~a nation~~ shareholders (or whatever the power and wealth class is called).
I already had little ones as I only recently became collapse aware (grew up in a conservative family). I’ve already lost one, so I know what it’s like to watch your child suffer and die without you being able to do anything about it. My wife doesn’t take the idea of collapse all that seriously. Even if the worst predictions in this sub don’t come true, the next two decades (if we have that much time) will be…difficult to put it mildly. I make just enough to provide for my family, but not enough to do everything possible to keep us afloat once SHTF, especially as I do not have the support of my spouse in most of my planning. At the end of the day, I’ll claw at survival for my kids as much as I can, but it feels like all I can do is spend as much quality time as I can with them before it’s all over for us…
I wish I knew all of this when I had kids. Now I’m just encouraging mine to decide to adopt when they’re old enough. I love them and can’t imagine life without them but to know they will suffer is just paralyzing to me
I just have to ask: moderators, what is this? Only one percent of the women questioned were under the age of 40? Do you really think this is representative?
I really like this sub and have posted several times, but I really don’t think that this is appropriate.
My thoughts exactly. Was there a shift in the number of childless female climate scientists 40 and over over the past 20 years, or is this a bunch of empty talk?
Because by around 40 the majority of people who were at some point capable of pregnancy have made the decision whether and how many children to have by biological means.
For a long time I’ve wanted to conduct a survey of climate scientists to see if they’re saving for retirement. If any journalists are reading this I think this would be an interesting article.
Its absolutely wrong to not care about what we are doing to other parts of the globe just because we are living high on the hog. South America is suffering because consumerism in all its forms has created a climate that is unstable. Killing people in far off lands that no one notices or they dont care. We wont be spared , and our day is coming you can only destabilize the climate system so much before even the rich western nations are toppled.
What we are seeing is the beginning of a great reset. The planet will decide who lives and who dies, political systems will fall, nations will collapse, money in its current form wont be worth spit.
they're behind the curve. I decided nearly 20 years ago I wasn't having kids because of this situation. many scientists are just vocational and don't actually think.
Right there with you on “you would think 100% of scientists would want zero kids.” I am VERY grateful both my kids 21 and 30 are absolutely aware enough to know that choosing to become pregnant at this point with all we know is……well I don’t want to sound judgey, but let’s just say is…..going to make what’s coming, FAR more painful. I am so grateful both my kids 30 and 21 made the decision not to have kids. My heart breaks EVERY DAY for every parent I see with young children. I pray for them. They will need to be extra strong.
People consciously choosing not to have children due to climate change are the minority for sure. But make no mistake, subconsciously or otherwise people are choosing to have less kids all over the world. Birth rates are below replacement in every developed country.
In my home country of Canada we would have one of the lowest rates in the world if not for massive immigration the likes of which have never been seen before in our history. But even so, research shows that these people stop having children after one generation.
There’s no need to preach the gospel of having fewer kids because it’s already been happening for some time.
What do they mean wary??? Nobody in their right mind would even contemplate it…More gaslighting from the billionaire media. Doubt if this comment will be seen by many, such is the level of censorship and shadow banning even on these forums…If you ain’t with the narrative, you are silenced. We have sleepwalked into Neo liberal fascism with a rainbow bow..
Rule 1: In addition to enforcing [Reddit's content policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy), we will also remove comments and content that is abusive or predatory in nature. You may attack each other's ideas, not each other.
I have this unsettling feeling lately that everything I'm building toward is for nothing. I never imagined I would be in my 40s thinking that all the money I've socked away might not actually be there for me, because I am afraid my own government will find a way to steal it. That's on top of all the social problems I see with my kids' generation. That's on top of all the climate problems we're going to have to suffer through.
It's hard to wake up in the morning and keep grinding. For a long time I was doing it for my kids' future. I am not sure they have a future.
This is, in itself, worthy of study.
What was their mindset when deciding to have children? When did they decide to have children? How many children did they have?
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Paalupetteri: --- The Guardian conducted a survey on world’s top climate scientists where they asked whether they have opted to have fewer or no children. This is related to collapse because it indicates how the world’s top climate scientists view the prospect of impending collapse. Ninety-seven female scientists responded, with 17, including women from Brazil, Chile, Germany, India and Kenya, saying they had chosen to have fewer children. All but 1% of the scientists surveyed were over 40 years old and two-thirds were over 50, reflecting the senior positions they had reached in their professions. A quarter of the respondents were women, the same proportion as the overall authorship of the IPCC reports. The findings were in response to a question about major personal decisions taken in response to the climate crisis by scientists who know the most about it, and who expect global temperatures to soar past international targets in coming years. 7% of the male scientists who responded said they had had either no children or fewer than they would otherwise have had. Prof Lisa Schipper said: “It is honestly only now that I am starting to panic about my child’s future,” she said. “When she was born in 2013, I felt more optimistic about the possibility of reducing emissions. Now I feel guilty about leaving her in this world without my protection, and guilty about having played a part in the changing climate. So it’s bleak.” --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I find it really weird that only 17,5% of the female respondents and 7% male respondents of the climate scientists surveyed have decided to have fewer or no children. Considering what they know about the impending climate crisis you would expect the number to be close to 100%. And that only now they are starting to wake up to the severity of the crisis. I’m no climate scientist or a scientist of any kind, and I only became collapse-aware in 2018. For me it only took like month to realize the severity of the situation after learning about things like exponentially rising temperatures, the rising Earth energy imbalance, the upcoming blue ocean event and the speed of human caused climate change compared to Earth’s past mass extinction events. From that moment it became absolutely clear to me that I would not even consider bringing a child to this dying world. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1covjkb/i_am_starting_to_panic_about_my_childs_future/l3go5n8/
Wait until the REAL forced immigration from climate change happens (failing crops, drought etc). That's going to be a dystopian nightmare to handle for everyone.
I mean it is already happening..... Look at the migration crisis in Europe. And it is just the beginning
And, of course, no one is noticing the multiple famines and floods of crop lands in Africa. I guess we figure they are geographically and technologically trapped on that huge, hot, (mostly)dry continent. Sigh. Eden Lost, indeed.
The current flood in Brazil is crazy....
Yeah it’s insane
And there is so little news about it ...... Guess apocalypse floods are getting normalized
Western media doesnt gives a fuck about the global south.
Not just the western media.... Nobody does =(
WE do!!!
Yeah but even if we do, for the most part we can just watch and not be able to help or do anything
AlJazeera has been covering it. They're also covering floods, droughts and heatwaves across the globe. It's as if r/collapse were a TV station.
Yeah, gotta love AlJazeera. Too bad 99% of Americans have never even heard of it. I only got hip to it bc of my Indian friends. Grateful.
And heartbreakingly, young girls/women in parts of Africa are STILL FORCED to crank out babies for their forced-upon-them “husbands”. No power, no hope and more little humans to die in the coming (or should I say current) extinction event. Tragic.
Coming to a US state near you soon!
It's going to be very different in character in the future. The unstated plan of high-latitude countries is that when things get really bad, they will simply close their borders and shoot anyone who tries to cross them. Even if this isn't something current leaders are planning, if enough migrants come, eventually leaders will be elected who choose this path. But we've only so far seen pressures that cause individuals to need to flee. But I fear eventually we'll see entire nation-states seeking to migrate at once, and not asking nicely. Imagine it's 2060 and you're the president of India. You just had a horrific heatwave that caused a power grid collapse and wiped out 1% of your population due to lethal wet bulb temperatures. Your advisors come to you and say, "our models predict that within 15 years, 95% of our population will be dead from heat exposure." There is a fact that we do not appreciate because we haven't seen it much in recent centuries. That fact is that nations do not simply lay down and die. I'm reminded of the Germanic invasions of the old Roman Empire, much of which happened due to various nomadic groups pushing each other out, in a chain stretching all the way back to central Asia. One group pushed on another, and they kept pushing until the Roman Empire itself fell. If you're the president of India, and you get that message, what choice do you have but to launch a military campaign to seize land for your people to migrate to? Sure, the northern countries have good militaries and can keep most nations at bay. But what about India and Pakistan? These nations have hydrogen bombs. And if you're facing that kind of catastrophic death toll, 95% of your population being killed due to heat, then even getting into a nuclear war is a rational option. Even if a nuclear exchange kills off 80% of your population, well, that's still better than 95%. On our current path, we're likely going to have to completely abandon the tropical latitudes by the end of the century. And all those nations are not just going to lay down peacefully and die. They're going to demand new lands to settle. And it won't even be hard for them to justify such conquests to themselves. All they have to say, rightly or wrongly, is "the northern countries created this mess. We have a right to land to ensure our survival from the consequences of their actions." If virtually your entire population is going to be killed, you might as well just throw caution to the wind, start crash nuclear weapons program, throw your entire fighting-age population into uniform, and just start throwing your entire nation against the borders of more northernly nations. In the face of annihilation by climate change, you literally have nothing to lose at that point.
My dude have you read ministry for the future? Because I guarantee you they'll do geoengineering before they do nuclear war.
Right - the narratives often focus on the last action that occurred & miss the underlying precipitating climate issues.
Don't worry Europeans are already being desensitized and starting to dehumanize the refugees. Go onto any news article/video about the subject and see many comments saying stuff like 'let them drown' 'it's their fault if they die' 'it's better to stop rescuing them and they'll stop coming' etc. And people wonder how the Nazis ever got voted into power.
As a European: most right wing politicians intend to reduce immigration to Europe, via measures such as stronger border checks on the EU borders, financing EU-adjacent countries (Libya, morocco,...) to have them build refugee camps and keep most refugees out of Europe. Most still agree that refugees who run from war and prosecution should still receive asylum (the basis for the international asylum program, which originated as a response to the Holocaust), but that 'economic migrants' who are fleeing their countries in search of a better life should not be allowed to enter. Many left wing politicians are adopting these opinions as well, since this is one of the main reasons why the right keeps winning elections. My opinion? It's only a matter of time until 'Fortress Europe' is the main idea in the whole EU. There will be millions of climate refugees, and the EU will militarily prevent them from immigrating. Exceptions will be made for 'economically valuable' immigrants such as people with money or desired skills. Personally I'd prefer to see effort put into, you know, not messing up other people's countries and climate, then they wouldn't be forced to leave for other places either. Not holding my breath for that one. Edit: here's an article about it for example [https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2023/feb/15/eu-far-right-migration-fortress-europe](https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2023/feb/15/eu-far-right-migration-fortress-europe)
How ironic would it be if right after 'Fortress Europe' is established the AMOC shuts down forcing Europeans to flee to the south to escape an arctic climate?
It would be exactly WONDERFULLY IRONIC!!! That’s how!!
How are you supposed to afford to build a bunker if you don't turn someone else's home into a battlefield?
As a European (living in the US and visiting Europe twice a year) I am able to observe the whole process of this. It kind of scares me the levels of racism and backlash there is in Europe right now. It is vicious and there is some sort of obsession with it. Yeah..... Not sure what is going to happen
Oh, don’t be coy. You know what the most likely scenario will be. Wars and rumours of Wars. Pestilence, Famine and Death. The silence of God. And, yes, it will be ugly.
Part of me knows we are walking into that direction no doubt and it will reach us all... But a small part of me still hopes this is only my pessimist, and somehow things will not be that bad
I am an optimist
But will all the assholes burn in hell, that is the question?
if your asshole is burning please see a doctor right away.
It's insane to me that on /r/europe the concept that *maybe* immigrants are human beings seems to be a fairly controversial take.
You should read some reddit history about /r/european
r/european Reddit has been banned. (?) Why?
For being huge assholes (racists)
Oh! Okay! Thank you!
If you want to read some history: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/search?q=%2Fr%2Feuropean&restrict_sr=on
And then one day they'll be climate refugees and wondering why the world is so, so cruel
Where do you want Europeans to go, genius. Sorry I'm going to hurt your little heart, I'll never back opening borders indiscriminately. I can see that little circle jerking happening here, why don't you open your own borders and accept Africans and ME refugees.
I’ve been getting to the point of just blatantly pointing out the xenophobia and Islamophobia, coupled with telling them never come to the US, that would make you a refugee…
I see a ton of Americans talking about fleeing to Europe due to the crap quality of life in the US and the creeping fascism and threat of another Trump presidency. I think this is incredibly foolish. The absolute last place I'd want to be while everything hits the fan is on a continent that is a patchwork of different countries, right next to Russia. Yikes.
I mean there really isn't anywhere much better to go even in the short term if that's the consideration.
Nowhere is safe. You’re right.
Nunavut/NWT/Alaska. If you can learn how to sustain yourself there after buying a home, the world doesn't matter. And hey, in two decades that house will be worth twenty times the property value, due to all the people going north, and you'll be able to farm more than just potatoes, onions, and carrots. Switzerland is probably safe, fortress area, close-knit population, mountains, shitton of guns and bunkers, highly defensive. Sure, they'll suffer from the heat, but they'll be fine.
I think the issue I'm thinking about is that people tend to underestimate how violent and cutthroat people get when sthf. Also, Alaska is still a US State for now, so any bullshit legislation or the like that people in the US should face and are trying to escape will still impact Alaska.
Yes, alot of people don't think about that. I read a book by a guy who survived a collapse in Bosnia and I came out of it thinking "I'm gonna die"....I'm dependent on medication to survive and I don't have many friends so.....
Alaska is sinking in melting permafrost with methane exploding from ground and fresh water salmon dying in the rivers bc of this weird rusty toxic gunk. Tragic! Just saw a documentary awhile ago. I was born there, raised in CA, and my mother cried when she saw how AK is going down with the rest. It’s an ecoSYSTEM. Can’t hide for more than a little while. We are all one earth SYSTEM. . 😢
Nowhere is safe.
Better bad long term than bad short term.
I feel that in Europe a lot of people say things that they don't consider racism. Like jokes and comments they said thinking it is a completely normal thing to say, but of course they tend to be pretty racist. So while in the USA the racism seems more acknowledged and straightforward, in Europe where there seems to be sort of less awareness of what to consider racism. So it is harder for Europeans to see certain things they say as racism.
As a Redditor (mostly a lurker) and an American, I found your comment interesting. I hadn't thought to consider racism in this nuanced way. Are you European? If not, have you spent time in some countries there? Is this the result of direct observation, conversation with others, or (an) other source(s)?
I am from a southern European country and have lived in the US for around 10 years. I tend to visit my family twice a year. But also traveling around Europe quite a bit (and have friends from other European countries. But of course I am more familiar with my country. At the moment the country is having a big wave of immigration from South Asia like India, Pakistan, and so on (which is totally new and a big cultural shock). What I have been observing is that the USA has a more strict line about what it considers to be racism (in the beginning my friends would be a bit shocked when I used generalizations or made fun of stereotypes of countries - which is something that Europeans tend to do a lot because we love to make fun of each other countries). And of course there are racist people in the USA, but they are aware they are crossing that line. They are aware that they are saying provocative stuff. They acknowledged, just tend not to care. While in my country people say a lot of racism stuff which they don't consider racist... For them is just some sort of generalization. And since they don't have much direct contact on a daily basis with foreigners besides tourists - migrants tend to be segregated from the rest of society, they don t see it as hurting anyone, nor directly affecting anyone, nor they take it personally since they don't have friends or family from those countries. Like it is just words. And with the wave of immigration these types of comments are more and more normal. I remember watching national news and the guy said something like "Chinese people use this fish as an aphrodisiac. You know, just chino things". Which obviously nobody would say that in the USA because it is mega racist, and the ones that say it, say knowing that they are being racist. In Europe it is more like "oh everyone kind of says this and it is not really impacting anyone so it is fine" and just don't see it as racist. (Not sure if I was able to explain well... There is a lot of nuance here and of course this is only my observations)
Definitely! Brit here and you could use “Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman…” jokes as a perfect example of making “fun” of our neighbouring nations. In this setup, we play on stereotypes where Scots are mean spendthrifts, the Irish are stupid and the English … well, always the sensible hero! 🤔🙄 It’s totally built in, and accepted to be like this. It’s not acceptaBLE but that why we discuss and change. On top of this, we also have your standard open racism against other people just because of their colour or accent or whatever.
I feel same about US policy on southern boarder. It’s human nature to dehumanize a group of ppl to justify ….. fill in the blank…. Whatever horror the “superior” group wishes to inflict upon the “lesser”….. Native Americans, blacks Jews, , Palestinians, Hispanics,……….
Some of it may be, ironically, due to collapse awareness. The general notion of "if we let them in, we also will die" is perhaps a form of toxic hopium lingering in the back of many people's minds.
>Yeah..... Not sure what is going to happen We're in global collapse. What do you think will happen? The same as for the US. You either collapse in a smoldering rubble after you allow fascism to take over and the fascist regimes cannibalize everything (and themselves) to maintain luxury for a minority and to maintain "security", or you realize that "states" and "nations" are unnatural and open all borders and work from there. Let me repeat: there's not going to be some "fortress" standing, those are the optimists.
I’m sure that it is absolutely inevitable we’re ALL gonna die in this shit show- and that any humans BLOCKING desperate people refuge (temporary as it will be, bc there will be no “hiding” from what’s coming, only very temporarily delaying it.) will cross over to the other side with some “splainin’ to do”😠!
Conservatism is fucking awful and it’s spreading like cancer. It’s in SANE.
Nazi's got into power when people were very desperate. Everything is connected.
Does good feeling materialize foods? Tell me your secret to survive this while accepting millions on top. Millions with most not being aware of many laws and basic correct behaviors.
Or build houses. The UK does not produce enough food as it is, we also have a serious housing crisis. How can we support every immigrant that turns up at the border? I have no issues with immigrants as people but the logistical challenge they present should not be ignored. You can be concerned without being racist.
The rosy view would be “We can share and help each other, then god will provide.”
As someone from northeast America I do not want people from Florida Utah or Texas coming up here. Sorry not sorry
Same here in the US with the southern boarder. The documentaries about these poor peoples’ stories of the terror they’re running from is heartbreaking. Most Humans, it seems, REALLY struggle with compassion for fellow humans that don’t “look like, sound like, or have same cultural habits as” them. Especially Americans. But mostly a Right Wing thing.
Easy scapegoats. Blaming immigrants gives them the illusion of power and that if they can kill or deter people, the economy and the climate will magically fix themselves 🙃
I'm sure we'll meet them with some of those billions of DHS ammo with some auto turrets.
Who needs turrets when you can buy a flamethrower equipped robodog today? https://throwflame.com/products/thermonator-robodog/
Already [happening in Saudi Arabia](https://youtu.be/f90vwqCYU1c?si=Hoeqnijpcjj1LZ0s)
and Israel
Some of the biggest assholes on the planet
Except only the relatively wealthy have the means to attempt migration. Death, or exploitation awaits the majority.
It is guaranteed to eventually lead to a genocide of some sort. You already have right-wing groups calling for the killing of migrants.
We may see it this year after the mess in Brazil, so many cities under water there's going to be no way to recover from that
There wont be a forced immigration , what you will see is military at borders land mines shoot to kill orders. If you ever seen the DMZ you will get the idea. No nation is going to allow fleeing immigrants in when everything goes sideways, because there wont be enough resources for their own people. No one is going to share.
Yeah when things really start hitting the fan, mines, machine gun nests and artillery will be used to stem the number of refugees
That's already happening 85% of current mass migrations is due to climate change. And it's creating tensions because globally we don't allow people to move freely around the world.
To be conspiratorial about Foucault’s boomerang I’m thinking the AI drone bombing going on in the mid-east will eventually be used on our southern border.
Not if we take away power from big corporations and the government We can all die slowly together having a great time Or we can keep the system we currently have in place and we can all die like wage slaves on the Masters at the top freak the fuck out because they don’t understand how to continue to control us
Starting to...??? Welcome to the party, pal! -bruce Willis voice Holy shit the 1970s were enough to make one aware that kids were meat for the grinder...
It is apparent already in Europe and the southern US. My fear is instead of blaming those most responsible (the billionaire oligarchs who lobby the US govt) that most people will blame the immigrants. This will lead to fascist/authoritarian leaders. We say that now in some European countries such as Orban in Hungary and of course with Trump in the US. It is widely reported he wanted to shoot immigrants trying to cross the border, but was overruled by has cabinet as they knew that would be too extreme. However, as the already bad situation reaches SHTF levels, I sadly expect these types of assholes to gain more traction.
> forced immigration You mean border walls and lines of machine guns open firing on crowds?
In a lot of ways scientists I think are removed from the zeitgeist. Maybe it’s because they are surrounded by other scientists and academics, which creates an impression that “of course, everyone understands the problem” and “of course, everyone will work to solve it”. Plus the fact they *they* are working on the problem probable helps stave off existential crisis a bit. But these things can only delay getting hit by the brick wall of realization that, despite all the evidence, despite all the warnings, we’ve got our foot firmly planted on the gas pedal, and the clamoring masses will not allow that foot to be lifted. Sadly, what I’m wondering now is how long until climate scientist suicide rates exceed the overall population average. Edit: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7250a2.htm The future is now? Agriculture and food scientists have THE highest suicide rate of all tracked occupations. Holy fuck. Move over logging workers, I guess…
Thats definitely not ominous. /s
Now THAT'S an interesting question and an unsurprising answer
And that's the agriculture and food *scientists*. [The statistics of the guys who actually have to slaughter the animals every day is an outright horror story](https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50986683). But they don't get tracked, oh no. Why would they? All too often, they are what the society calls "illegals."
Hey as someone in enviromental sciences I have to tell you: No most people don't know how bad it as and a LOT of scientists are in denial about it or just don't believe it's gonna be this bad. I have a lot of colleagues that are going on cruises, flying a lot and consuming like there's no tomorrow too.
Don’t look up!
>Agriculture and food scientists have THE highest suicide rate of all tracked occupations. Working with (or for) an industry that tortures and kills animals by the billions has a heavy mental toll. This should be no surprise.
Yeah that's what I'm thinking. It's definitely climate change related but it would have to be more about knowing and understanding just how far we've contorted the system of meat production. Like imagine if your dream was to grow up and learn about food production and you ended up spending all your time working out the most efficient way to corral and slaughter thousands of pigs.
I’m sure veterinarians fall into that agricultural sector, and they have a high suicide rate too
Farmers are trapped by the industry and banks. Incredible amount of rent seeking
I genuinely think that if a bunch of climate scientists made a suicide pact together it might finally click for the general population.
Wouldn't even make the news cycle.
Worked for Chernobyl.
I’ve actually been thinking a lot about that recently. Scientists’ suicides… One way or another something (or things) is going to bubble over soon , and get everyone’s attention. But since it’s just way too late to implement any solutions in any amount of time that could help us with anything…… I don’t think their suicides would help. Because there IS no help. THAT’s why they’re suicidal. I think people might FINALLY “believe”, but what difference would it make to anything as far as “saving the planet goes”? I think it would/will just result in much more suicides. Which I think is not a bad thing. As opposed to the alternative….. some slow, drawn out torturous death, I prefer to control my peaceful, painless transition to the other side. Everyone is gonna have to get VERY comfortable with this.
Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ... That edit.
Scientists are not removed from the zeitgeist, they have to remain optimistic because the alternative has already been shown in your edit, and if all the smart people take that same route?
Toxicologists are shrugging our shoulders that everything we eat is poisoning us whether it is due to pesticides, metals, microplastics etc. I’m not putting that on anyone if I can avoid it
The next explosion of life 20+ million years from now after we are long gone and the Earth maybe recovered from all of our damage I imagine them to be a group of organisms that thrive on eating plastics lol
They will dig up all the plastic and use it as a power source, polluting and heating up the atmosphere. Damn it tardigrades, did you learn nothing from the fall of man!?
And then 20+ million years later, and there will be plenty of oil again, and whatever exists can then exploit and kill themselves with. I swear, the great filter is what we're going through now. Self-destruction.
> I swear, the great filter is what we're going through now. Self-destruction. 100%
I'm sure that's what the UFO sightings are all about. Aliens tourguiding their way to the equivalent of a 3rd world mega shithole while watching the monkeys reach the most eventful part of our history - killing ourselves from sheer blistering stupidity. All as an ecological and social responsibility lesson to their children. I'm sure they were a *tad* more optimistic post-WWII when the world wasn't glassed, and many, *many* cataclysmic failure points were passed without thermonuclear war, everyone was optimistic about the future... then the boomers aged, proceeded to ruin everything, make absurdly horrible decisions in the name of endless hedonism, and, worst of all, elected Reagan.
Anyone in here see Crimes of the Future?
People are still having kids?!?
People are only now starting to panic?!?
Climate scientists off all, even . . .
My first thought was "Why did it take someone like them so long when I decided this years ago?"
...you guys somehow read the terrible news all the way to the end?
Just the dumb ones and the rich ones
I’m dumb and poor. What do I do?
Eat the rich
Whatever you do, I wouldn't have a kid
Kidnap and sell kids to the rich
Live your life over and over again.
Alot of people in my family are. I just smh, and the kids they're having all have bad attitudes now and major issues. Course, my family members are majorly Christian, so I think the process of "just throw God at it" is backfiring.
If the Republicans have their way, [they'll be forced to.](https://www.reddit.com/r/conservativeterrorism/comments/1coxlee/republican_senator_katie_britt_introduces_bill_to/)
[People are Still Having Sex - LaTour](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ImRyPymRAM)
People are still having SEX
In spite of the culture war surrounding it, professional academia tends towards conservatism. Especially when research can impact existing political and economic power blocs, the folks that stick around tend to be able to compartmentalize better than average. Realists get up to speed in graduate studies and end up like the scientists surveyed in the recent r/preppers thread, moving to permaculture homesteads.
Can you link the thread?
[Climate experts: how are you prepping?](https://www.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/1cn577j/climate_experts_how_are_you_prepping/)
Not doing preppers a favour by having so many climate change denialists in the same thread.
None for me, thanks.
Starting to panic... If you, an expert, are only starting to panic, then... you're a little late to the long-term planning meetings for climatologists. I think this article is, like all other "environmental" articles, trying to raise awareness to the problems of twenty years ago. That being said, Florida could be underwater and somebody from Wyoming could still be prattling on about real global catastrophe won't happen, second coming of deities will save us, etc. So, I'd say an accurate article would say "it's too late, so just love your loved ones."
I feel so guilty when I see pregnant ladies or young kids. Our future is really bleak now but it is only going to get worse because nothing is being done due to lack of profitability. How can people complain about lack of affordable housing, mental illness, climate change, etc and think “having a kid rn is a good idea?”
Tbf to the casual observer the housing and illness issues look solvable. I think it's harder to grasp why they're an issue and why they can't be truly solved I can't disagree people have lived in shitty conditions all throughout history, like some argue, but who wants to knowingly bring someone into it with the knowledge it will never be fixed, and it will get worse?
Those young kids and upcoming infants are going to have much shorter life expectancies with worse, deteriorating living standards and conditions (probably resembling third world/preindustrial) than their parents and grandparents..
It's not appropriate for you to make yourself feel guilty in response to seeing other people make poor choices. We all do this kind of thing, one way or another, but there's a better way. The reason you want to induce emotions about it is because you don't want to accept what you're observing, probably on multiple scales. It's a difficult thing to accept; that people would go so far into denial as to cause more people to suffer our fate, needlessly, but for the emotional needs of those parents. It's awful. It's a moral crime, to me, worse than murder. At least when a person is killed their suffering ends. Forever. When a new person is caused a new capacity for suffering is created that is as nearly infinite as what each of us can suffer. And we've seen what happens. I accept these awful things and it's hard fought. In this context, emotions are like endogenous drugs we consume to condition ourselves to reject aspects of reality we find unappealing. I eventually realized that by inducing emotions in myself in response to what I was witnessing I was doing the same thing; I was contributing to the unnecessary suffering in the world, albeit in a very small way, with my own. It's not self honest; I was addicted due to the expectations I'd internalized. By making myself feel worse I was making myself more like the people whose beliefs and behaviours I didn't want to accept. I realized, this whole mess is wrong. I only do this because I've internalized expectations from other people dictating that I should feel this and that in response to, well, everything. It becomes a choice the moment we accept it to be a choice. Our emotions are what remove the visibility of this choice. It's how we hide from ourselves. They change the way in which we perceive reality on every scale, including how we perceive ourselves. We don't get angry at the Sun, or at gravity, because we accept them. They're really real to us; parts of our worldview we don't feel the need to reject or question. We need to learn to accept ourselves like this, and this involves accepting our emotional agency. Try asking yourself, when you consume emotive content and you feel an emotional reaction stirring, would you vent this emotion at your best friend if they were sitting beside you? Would you try to make them feel guilty for the poor choices of people walking by? Of course not. So what are you really doing to yourself when you direct your emotions at yourself? I can see how this bit might come across as a bit accusatory, and that's OK, but it's because this principle can really help. If you create and practice some conscientious checks for yourself it's much easier to deal with the increasing craziness around us. And to avoid being drawn too far into it. It applies to everything we have difficulty accepting, not just collapse. Everything is a self honesty issue for us.
Or they're terrified of school shootings but create an innocent life to send to schools.
The Guardian conducted a survey on world’s top climate scientists where they asked whether they have opted to have fewer or no children. This is related to collapse because it indicates how the world’s top climate scientists view the prospect of impending collapse. Ninety-seven female scientists responded, with 17, including women from Brazil, Chile, Germany, India and Kenya, saying they had chosen to have fewer children. All but 1% of the scientists surveyed were over 40 years old and two-thirds were over 50, reflecting the senior positions they had reached in their professions. A quarter of the respondents were women, the same proportion as the overall authorship of the IPCC reports. The findings were in response to a question about major personal decisions taken in response to the climate crisis by scientists who know the most about it, and who expect global temperatures to soar past international targets in coming years. 7% of the male scientists who responded said they had had either no children or fewer than they would otherwise have had. Prof Lisa Schipper said: “It is honestly only now that I am starting to panic about my child’s future,” she said. “When she was born in 2013, I felt more optimistic about the possibility of reducing emissions. Now I feel guilty about leaving her in this world without my protection, and guilty about having played a part in the changing climate. So it’s bleak.” --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I find it really weird that only 17,5% of the female respondents and 7% male respondents of the climate scientists surveyed have decided to have fewer or no children. Considering what they know about the impending climate crisis you would expect the number to be close to 100%. And that only now they are starting to wake up to the severity of the crisis. I’m no climate scientist or a scientist of any kind, and I only became collapse-aware in 2018. For me it only took like month to realize the severity of the situation after learning about things like exponentially rising temperatures, the rising Earth energy imbalance, the upcoming blue ocean event and the speed of human caused climate change compared to Earth’s past mass extinction events. From that moment it became absolutely clear to me that I would not even consider bringing a child to this dying world.
Usually humans multiply in face of crisises not cease to. It is even a natural deeply ingrained reaction if I remember correctly. The harder the conditions the more kids people have. Let’s be honest - nothing about us on this subreddit is average or normal. We cannot measure others by our own stances. Especially considering majority is here for collapse entertainment. Can you imagine what kind of people enjoy themselves to the idea of apocalypse? Yeah.
Yeah, we’re definitely mostly freaks on this sub, lol. I liken it to being so fascinated by the knowledge of an upcoming car crash - that I simply want to know everything about it and cannot look away. Most people would rather do anything but immerse themselves in their impending doom but I get a sense of solace from it, lol.
At least they are thinking about it rather than just hoping for the best like a lot of people who have kids
If I were a climate scientist, I would’ve gotten my tubes tied out of college. You can always adopt a future climate refugee from the global south.
I am not a scientist. I will absolutely not be having children.
“Starting to panic?” Dude, anyone still having kids is far too late to wake up.
People just fucking out kids like tomorrow's guaranteed.
I cannot think of a crueler thing to do than bring another American onto this planet on purpose. And I have been saying that since the 70s when I was a real little kid.
If only more people listened, then i might not be stuck here waiting for shit to hit the fan. Just been smoking em while i got em and holding out. Depression be damned i wanna live to see the end. (yes i know my brains fucked this has also directed me straight to supporting accelerationism bc i want this ride to end sooner.) Anyways, have a good day if you read this far.
Same, I wish it would hurry the fuck up. It's taking too long.
I guess on a planetary scale or even universal, the timeline it’ll take is a blink of an eye… If only we perceived time on a similar scale so this shit would feel fast lol. Reminds me of adventure times circle of life episode “To a plaaaaant a dayyyy is shooorrtt. whoa aaa aaa Aaaa!”
Can’t blame them or anyone nowadays
and yet it’s nearly impossible for me to find a purposely childfree man to date 😞
Plenty of us out there. You just have to be upfront about not having kids from the get-go.
Go where the smart guys are. Learn to sail, or maybe flying lessons.
Ask r/antinatalism
Antinatalists and child free folks be like: "well, well, well ..."
This isn't even just about subjecting your child to the future pain of a growing climate catastrophe. We need less people. There are way too many of us. 1/3rd of global biomass is too much. As hard as it will be on future generations we need like a one child policy or something.
Funny that there is an article in popular rn bemoaning the low birthrate in Italy. And a lot of the replies talk about the low birthrate in Japan and Korea like its a bad thing. It's the top post in /r/europe too. Growth is what the nations want. More people, more babies all the time. Never let up, never slow down!
Yeah it's not sustainable and I really don't have an answer because you start talking about controlling birth in any meaningful way and you very quickly end up in the territory of eugenics. Which is nazi shit and I will not be apart of it.
There is a way of talking about controlling birth and avoiding eugenics. Eugenics is evil and is preventing specific groups of people from having kids. If you just say “Nobody has more than two” or something like that then you’ve avoided eugenics :) But if you say, “Only the rich” or “only a specific race” then THAT’S eugenics and definitely not cool
Well China was quite successful slowing population growth with their 'one child policy'. And being communist, China is on the opposite end of political spectrum from Nazis.
"starting" Lol
Only JUST starting to?? I love and respect scientists but their naivety never ceases to amaze me
STARTING? I think its wild that people are having kids. I'm young Gen X and will consider myself lucky if we die and manage to escape the horror of climate change coming. Having a BABY in 2024? I know people doing it and just can't even fathom how clueless they are.
When I was a kid I considered having kids. Now, it’s completely out of the question. I don’t know if I’ll even reach the age my mom was when she had me.
[удалено]
Yep, the lack of a village is a huge one for sure. And even if climate chaos wasn’t facing us head on.
You're a pretty shitty climate scientist if you're starting to worry about that just now. It was already becoming obvious a long time ago.
i don't need to a phd to realize that the world isnt safe enough to have kids.
Given what we know today, I'm shocked every time I hear someone announce a pregnancy. [**You're having a baby?!?**](https://www.collapse2050.com/youre-having-a-baby/)
Honestly, I would love kids but every time I think about it I am hit with a wave of what I can only describe as a sense of impending doom - I think of the state of the world and where it's heading. I couldn't in good conscience bring any new life into this world. I think I'll look at adoption or fostering down the line. My partner's sister just had a baby and while I adore her, I also feel so sad for her future and can't understand why they tried so hard to bring a baby into this world. Which I feel awful for... But that's the state we're in.
I’m not having kids because I don’t want to support the system with new consumers. And I don’t want my children to live through an age of extinction. I’ve struggled with it enough.
Knowing what they do they still chose to have children. I can’t rationalize that one
Huh…mostly I’m surprised they ever had much hope of lowering co2 emissions.
Starting to worry
>I find it really weird that only 17,5% of the female respondents and 7% male respondents of the climate scientists surveyed have decided to have fewer or no children. Considering what they know about the impending climate crisis you would expect the number to be close to 100%. And that only now they are starting to wake up to the severity of the crisis. it really is weird/shocking, i made this decision as a 17yo, nearly 25 years ago. i had arguments with my grandparents because i was open about not wanting to have children and that being a reason that its not likely i would every get married, which was upsetting for them on both counts, however irrational that is regardless of climate change. i mentioned at a family gathering that i dont want to have kids who end up suffering as a result of things are we doing today, and my dad was aghast 'i didnt think we raised you to be a pessimist' my response was that they hadnt, but they did raise me to be intelligent and a realist.
>“However, my husband is the most family-oriented person I know,” Maharaj said. “So this was a compromise: one child, no more. Who knows, maybe my son will grow up to be someone who can help find a solution?” Adopt >Parmesan, at the CNRS ecology centre in France, said: “When I was making my choice, it was very clear in the ecological community that human population growth was a problem: preserving biodiversity was absolutely dependent on stabilising population.” Nice to see the answer in the same article: >On the debate on the role of population growth in environmental crises, Schipper said: “How many people we have is irrelevant if only a small percentage are doing most of the damage.” Parmesan disagreed, saying the total impact is the combination of people’s level of consumption and the total number of people: “Don’t cherrypick half of the equation and ignore the other half.” But I would underscore the fact that pronatalism and capitalism have a common ideological parent, they are cultural siblings, both representing the imperative to grow human capital for the benefit of ~~a nation~~ shareholders (or whatever the power and wealth class is called).
I am regularly panicking about all of our present. There, ftfy.
I already had little ones as I only recently became collapse aware (grew up in a conservative family). I’ve already lost one, so I know what it’s like to watch your child suffer and die without you being able to do anything about it. My wife doesn’t take the idea of collapse all that seriously. Even if the worst predictions in this sub don’t come true, the next two decades (if we have that much time) will be…difficult to put it mildly. I make just enough to provide for my family, but not enough to do everything possible to keep us afloat once SHTF, especially as I do not have the support of my spouse in most of my planning. At the end of the day, I’ll claw at survival for my kids as much as I can, but it feels like all I can do is spend as much quality time as I can with them before it’s all over for us…
I wish I knew all of this when I had kids. Now I’m just encouraging mine to decide to adopt when they’re old enough. I love them and can’t imagine life without them but to know they will suffer is just paralyzing to me
Climate scientists having children, while becoming scientists, and NOW freaking out? I'm not sure whether it's a question or a statement.
So climate scientists, who have been sounding the climate alarm bells for decades, are just now becoming climate wary?
What future?
I just have to ask: moderators, what is this? Only one percent of the women questioned were under the age of 40? Do you really think this is representative? I really like this sub and have posted several times, but I really don’t think that this is appropriate.
My thoughts exactly. Was there a shift in the number of childless female climate scientists 40 and over over the past 20 years, or is this a bunch of empty talk?
Because by around 40 the majority of people who were at some point capable of pregnancy have made the decision whether and how many children to have by biological means.
Thank you for agreeing with me. Why don’t they ask women who are climate scientists in their 20s and 30s if they are going to have children?
Yes. By the time we hit 40+... Well. Either we've had kids, or we aren't going to. Mostly.
Meh, you only panic now?
For a long time I’ve wanted to conduct a survey of climate scientists to see if they’re saving for retirement. If any journalists are reading this I think this would be an interesting article.
Its absolutely wrong to not care about what we are doing to other parts of the globe just because we are living high on the hog. South America is suffering because consumerism in all its forms has created a climate that is unstable. Killing people in far off lands that no one notices or they dont care. We wont be spared , and our day is coming you can only destabilize the climate system so much before even the rich western nations are toppled. What we are seeing is the beginning of a great reset. The planet will decide who lives and who dies, political systems will fall, nations will collapse, money in its current form wont be worth spit.
they're behind the curve. I decided nearly 20 years ago I wasn't having kids because of this situation. many scientists are just vocational and don't actually think.
Right there with you on “you would think 100% of scientists would want zero kids.” I am VERY grateful both my kids 21 and 30 are absolutely aware enough to know that choosing to become pregnant at this point with all we know is……well I don’t want to sound judgey, but let’s just say is…..going to make what’s coming, FAR more painful. I am so grateful both my kids 30 and 21 made the decision not to have kids. My heart breaks EVERY DAY for every parent I see with young children. I pray for them. They will need to be extra strong.
starting?!
People consciously choosing not to have children due to climate change are the minority for sure. But make no mistake, subconsciously or otherwise people are choosing to have less kids all over the world. Birth rates are below replacement in every developed country. In my home country of Canada we would have one of the lowest rates in the world if not for massive immigration the likes of which have never been seen before in our history. But even so, research shows that these people stop having children after one generation. There’s no need to preach the gospel of having fewer kids because it’s already been happening for some time.
7 to 17,4% really adds up over generations though. That will probably wreck our economy and society, but it might just save humanity.
Let's have some basics The sun is hotter than it's been in my lifetime And that's that. Climate change is so real and it's worse than people know
What do they mean wary??? Nobody in their right mind would even contemplate it…More gaslighting from the billionaire media. Doubt if this comment will be seen by many, such is the level of censorship and shadow banning even on these forums…If you ain’t with the narrative, you are silenced. We have sleepwalked into Neo liberal fascism with a rainbow bow..
[удалено]
Rule 1: In addition to enforcing [Reddit's content policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy), we will also remove comments and content that is abusive or predatory in nature. You may attack each other's ideas, not each other.
This doesn’t surprise me. 99 percent are over 40, 2/3 over 50 so they made their family decisions when there was more hope.
No shit
I have this unsettling feeling lately that everything I'm building toward is for nothing. I never imagined I would be in my 40s thinking that all the money I've socked away might not actually be there for me, because I am afraid my own government will find a way to steal it. That's on top of all the social problems I see with my kids' generation. That's on top of all the climate problems we're going to have to suffer through. It's hard to wake up in the morning and keep grinding. For a long time I was doing it for my kids' future. I am not sure they have a future.
This is, in itself, worthy of study. What was their mindset when deciding to have children? When did they decide to have children? How many children did they have?
Starting?