Because I won’t have a family (was once some one who hoped for that but … ultimately found it too difficult a path to pursue), so specifically because I won’t, then I feel somehow compelled to leave something of myself to the world to show people at least some of the love I might have had for my child some day… when I can.
Because of that… I can’t stand to think that we wouldn’t at least try to take care of each-other’s children when all of their survival depends on it.
Uhhh, what about all the other species we are driving to extinction?
Sorry, I don’t buy the self-righteousness of people who think their choice to not have children absolves them of any further responsibility toward the planet.
Anyway, the problem has less to do with population growth (which has been slowing steadily for generations) than it has to do with the per-capita carbon footprint of the people in rich countries (which has been growing steadily for generations).
Odd that the questions were focused on Governents rather than say Capitalism.
How far over 60%? Because that’s a discouragingly low number. If ~40% of people keep their heads buried in the sand, the future looks ever worse.
With that attitude nobody will be missing your selfish bullshit either. Win/win, eh?
American youth vote rates tend to be low for a variety of reasons, not all of them involving laziness or apathy. That it hasn’t gotten worse in the last three cycles is a surprise. In the U.S., for example, they’re stuck with the choice of a gerontocratic Third Way centre-right party that pushes out progressivism whenever it can or a gerontocratic death-cult fascist party that’s bent on making things worse. The latter has also invested a lot of resources in denying the vote to young people (ask college students how easy it is to vote in red states or districts) as well as generally demeaning liberal democracy and the effectiveness of good government. So it’s a bit more than just empty whingeing.
If he’s over age 40 that’s “have a gold star sticker” at best. The vast majority of child-free people over that age didn’t make the decision to reduce their carbon footprint by a large amount, even if that’s how it turns out when kids are figured in.
Didn’t the greeks publish one too?
Sometimes it is best to step back and think of the prophetic wisdom of National Lampoon. “Go placidly amid the noise and waste and remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof”
No, it’s adult children too (30). I worry about his mental health and the very lack of any hopeful news in our near future. From the outside I feel helpless to find some common ground with his life. It feels like my failure in the most horrible worst way.
Deciding to have a child in today’s world must be a very difficult decision for many people.
My daughter has just announced she’s pregnant with her fourth child and I gave her the normal response of heartfelt congratulations, but my unexpressed thoughts immediately returned to “what sort of world will these children mature into?”
I find it hard to be optimistic, often the case with old men, but to have any chance of mitigating even the worst outcomes of climate change will require cooperation from all tiers of society, even politicians, those paragons of virtue.
Even now I have acquaintances who refuse to believe in climate change, thanks in large part to Rupert Murdoch’s trashy media.
Witnessing how the disastrous lack of cooperation has, and still is, playing out with the COVID-19 pandemic just reaffirms my belief that we as a species will not be able to work cohesively enough to effect any real change until the major climate tipping points are well behind us, ie far too late.
Because of my age I will escape before any major changes, but that doesn’t lessen my sense of guilt for the past, and sadness for the future generations and our co-tenants on this once beautiful planet.
Governments can be trusted
That’s not really a yes/no question.
Now they know how we felt growing up in the '60s & '70s with the threat of nuclear war and over-population threatening our not-so-distant futures. Reminds me of a dozen or more comics that dealt with the end of the world that seem quaint in retrospect. So, what else is new? Or, in other words, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Kids these daze. I don’t blame them for being confused. Good thing, bad thing was we had Led Zeppelin around back then.
From an anarcho-communist perspective, there is no difference. Capitalism is the dominant form of governance in the world today. Yes, even in China.
The Ayn-caps on the right haven’t realised that is they get their utopia then either capitalism will cease to exist or they will get new governments. They will not be nice governments either, think along the lines of Pinochet and you will be on the mild side of the possibilities.
The survey did not seem to be from an “anarcho-communist perspective” so I don’t see “Most young people” falling under that philosophy.
The role of government is largely influence by our capitalist system, but not the form of government - which is (supposed to be) a representative democracy. Sweden has a socialistic system with a representative democracy. Communism historically has been dominated by autocratic dictatorships. But there is no reason these economic systems must be wed to any particular government form. We can see in both of the examples it is simple for the leaders to divert wealth to themselves and screw the public. Thinking about these things being indivisibly linked is an error that the ones in power want you to make. The possibilities are much more broad.
I was just pointing out that from a certain point of view capitalism and government are inseperable.
That’s a mixed economy, part socialist and part capitalist. It’s far more moderate than what it is often presented as being.
That’s what M-Ls and the US government want you to think. The reality is that libertarian socialist movements keep popping up and are crushed before they get too big, as authoritarians don’t want the people getting funny ideas about equality and power dynamics. Where they have succeeded (Chiapas, NE Syria) it has been because the authoritarians have been distracted by bigger problems. Neither are perfect, but they do show that there is another way than what has been historically acceptable.
That is what the anarchists have been saying about socialism and communism for the last 150 years. However capitalism is a hierarchy and hierarchies are by definition not anarchist, otherwise they would not be hierarchies. Capitalism is a method of distributing power according to the private property that you own. If there is no government then the richest people will form one themselves, and it will not be a democracy of any description. It will also not be feudalism, as feudal lords had responsibilities towards the serfs and freemen living on their land.
Again, I don’t think the anarchist view sheds much light on the results of the survey. We really don’t disagree on any of your other points.
