Posted on 08/26/2016 9:20:13 AM PDT by Kaslin
The problem with environmentalists isn't merely that they have destructive ideas about the economy, but that so many of them embrace repulsive ideas about human beings.
Take a recent NPR piece that asks, "Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?" If you want to learn about how environmentalism has already affected people in society, read about the couple pondering "the ethics of procreation" and its impact on the climate before starting a family, or the group of women in a prosperous New Hampshire town swapping stories about how the "the climate crisis is a reproductive crisis."
There are, no doubt, many good reasons a person might have for not wanting children. But it's certainly tragic that some gullible Americans who have the means and emotional bandwidth -- and perhaps a genuine desire -- to be parents avoid having kids because of a quasi-religious belief in apocalyptic climate change and overpopulation.
Then again, maybe this is just Darwinism working its magic.
In the article, NPR introduces us to a philosopher, Travis Rieder, who couches these discredited ideas in a purportedly moral context. Bringing down global fertility rates, he explains, "could be the thing that saves us."
Save us from what, you ask? The planet, he tells a group to students at James Madison University, will soon be "largely uninhabitable for humans," and it's "gonna be post-apocalyptic movie time." According to NPR, these intellectual nuggets of wisdom left students speechless.
Oh, no! Did someone forget to tell millennials that the megatons of greenhouse gases that cellphone charging emits into the atmosphere is going to create a dystopia? That's an unforgivable oversight by our culture and public schools -- which almost never broach the topic of climate change.
What can we do? Well, Rieder says, "Here's a provocative thought: Maybe we should protect our kids by not having them."
The idea that we should have fewer children to save the planet hasn't been provocative in about 50 years. It would take these students five minutes of Googling to understand that doomsayers have been ignoring human nature and ingenuity since the 18th century, at least.
They might read about Paul Ehrlich and our "science czar" John Holdren, who co-authored a 1977 book suggesting mass sterilizations and forced abortions to save the world. (We're decades past the expiration date.); or about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who not long said that she always assumed Roe v. Wade was "about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of." Did she mean poor people? Did she mean people who recklessly use air conditioners? It's still a mystery.
Overpopulation is regularly cited by journalists -- who quite often live in the densest, yet somehow also the wealthiest, places on Earth -- as one of the world's pressing problems, thrown in with war and famine and so on.
But it's got a bit of a new twist these days. As Rieder tells it, Americans and other rich nations are responsible for more carbon emissions per capita than anyone. And since the world's poorest nations are most likely to suffer "severe climate impacts," it all "seems unfair."
However, we have fewer hungry people than ever in the world; fewer people die in conflicts over resources; and deaths due to extreme weather have been dramatically declining for a century. Over the past 40 years, our water and air is cleaner, despite population growth.
Everything is headed in the wrong direction for environmental scaremongers. If we're already experiencing the negative force of climate change -- which I'm told we are every time we have ugly weather somewhere in the country -- shouldn't things be getting worse? Well, the real trouble is always right over the horizon.
Take India. Not only does it have to deal with Americans despoiling the Earth but its population has exploded from 450 million in 1960 to 1.25 billion today. Yet, by every tangible measurement of human progress, the Indian people live better now than they did before the colonialists started using refrigerators. And it's not just India.
Even the United Nations estimates that the world population of 9 billion expected by 2050 could be supported with the technology we already possess. What Malthusians never take into consideration are the efficiencies and technology we don't have yet, which continually amaze us and undermine their dark vision of humankind's future.
The real problem we face is sustaining population. The replacement fertility rate is 2.1, and in certain places where they fail to meet this threshold -- parts of Europe and Japan, for example -- they've suffered economic and cultural stagnation. Here in the United States we have, for a variety of reasons, long struggled with this problem, as the Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Last has argued. The success of developing nations also portends a similar slow-down.
Here's a provocative thought: Maybe it's the best time in history to have children.
Do child bearing couples even listen to these environmental hysterics? My guess is the woman may fall for it, for a while, until she realizes that if affordable, her husband probably does want children. He may start looking elsewhere to make that happen.
That’s a nice family photo. I wish that could have been my life.
What an excellent photo choice! He is hilarious.
Is that the guy from the Chrysler Pacifica commercials?
The first commercial in the series his voice and comments were over the top feminine, homosexual. It was in your face blatant.
Have you seen the Chrysler Pacifica commercial?
That was the first time I had noticed him, and it was very grating/offensive to me.
Here’s a link to it. I’ll have to admit though, it sounds nothing like the version I heard on my television.
His voice is not over exaggerated to the feminine.
If you listen to some of the things he says though, it’s just strange. Talking about another guy, “I’ll bet he’s good in bed...”
Those words have never rolled off my lips in relation to a guy.
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/A6KM/2017-chrysler-pacifica-neighborhood-watch-featuring-jim-gaffigan
No, I’ve only seen a few episodes of his comedy show in which he plays basically the guy he says he is in his personal life, a Catholic dad with a lot of little kids. I also saw a harmless comedy routine on Craig Ferguson about how much he loves to eat. Thanks for the heads up if he is off-color in other venues.
Gaffigan is cool I think. I believe he’s a pro-life, Catholic guy. Has clean humor, relatively. the feminine voice is not him being HIM, but for when he’s imitating women.
I’m father to six kids. I’ve done my share! LOL
I DID MY PART! 5.
I’ll have to admit, the commercial sounds a lot less offensive on my computer than it did on my television. On the television it sounded as if he was talking very “gay”, forced. His (commercial character) wife appeared in the commercial, and my instant thought was “dyke”. She just looked hard, and they way he was acting played into that.
I’d heard it five to ten times on the tube, and always felt the same way.
Then I listened to it on my computer, and there was a noticed difference. It even seemed his was eyeing some women.
Very strange how there could be such a big difference just one medium to another.
I may have been off base.
Thanks for the reply.
Okay, thanks for the insight. I appreciate it.
You may want to read my last post above, just a post or two up.
I explain my evolving thoughts on it.
OK, I watched it. Sounded like the voice thing is to mock yuppies and metrosexuals who buy cool new cars. And the reference to another guy being good in bed was because the “other guy” has five kids. So does Gaffigan, therefore he is implying sarcastically that he must be really good in bed to the only other person in earshot, his wife, who responds with a put-down as you see in the video. It’s more of his “martyred by fatherhood” comedy schtick. To me, it’s mildly funny and edgy with today’s young people’s sense of humor.
Okay. Thanks for your thoughts on it. I appreciate it.
It’s a shame the thread is getting off-track with discussing Gaffigan, which was not my intent.
Hey, people, the topic here is whether birth control and having fewer or no children is a beneficial act for the planet (even if it means the death of Western Civ). Basically, it’s Environmentalists vs. God’s Will.
BUT
The biggest thing they overlook is that unless EVERYBODY in the world cuts back on population growth.... An individual country doing so will only be freeing up land and resources for someone else’s progeny that currently live elsewhere BUT that WILL eventually move to where there is plentiful room and resources.
I feel bad for people that fall for the lies of feminism and global warming/climate change or whatever they’re calling it this month. They are really missing out on the joys of having children. I can’t imagine growing old and then realizing, Oh my God, I missed out on all of that because of a bunch of lies.
And I personally have no intention of using toilets that dont flush properly, shower heads that just drip, reusable grocery backs packed with deadly bacteria, and digging through my own garbage to sort it, so that some 3rd world parasites spawn will still have space and resources when they illegally invade my country sometime in the future.
I have no idea. I live in TN and we don’t get any Chrysler Pacifica commercials here. Besides I don’t watch commercials.
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