Dean Spears does not want to alarm you. The co-author of After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People argues that alarmist words such as crisis or urgent will just detract from the cold, hard numbers, which show that in roughly 60 years, the world population could plummet to a size not seen for centuries. Alarmism might also make people tune out, which means they won’t engage with the culturally fraught project of asking people—that is, women—to have more babies.
Recently, in the United States and other Western countries, having or not having children is sometimes framed as a political affiliation: You’re either in league with conservative pronatalists, or you’re making the ultimate personal sacrifice to reduce your carbon footprint. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, Spears makes the case for more people. He discusses the population spike over human history and the coming decline, and how to gingerly move the population discussion beyond politics.
When republicans are using the same exact language along with christian fascism to justify banning abortion your damn right it's political. People also aren't not having children as some sort of noble self sacrifice you dipshit we can't afford to have kids if we want to. If the population does plummet that much in 60 years it would be because you ghouls are killing us, starving us, and destroying the planet.
I fucking hate Dean Spears so much. Someone should throw him in a swamp in the everglades and film him getting ripped apart by alligators.
Opting out of reproduction is one of the smartest and most impactful things that the average person can do right now.
The world is an absolute dumpster fire, and the situation only seems to be deteriorating.
This is bullshit individualism. The smartest and most impactful thing an average person can do right now is engage in revolutionary socialist organizing. Way to completely miss the point of our critique.
You not having a kid is not going to meaningfully impact the massive systemic issues that cause this problem. Your take is just as bad as the guy in this dumb ass op ed.
I said "one of", not "the."
Your comment does not refute my assessment.
It is very far down the list of most impactful things one can do and tying one's intelligence to whether they do or do not have children does not sit well with me for a number of reasons.
I beg you to actually try to have a grasp on material conditions and societal coercion before you talk about things you clearly do not understand.
Smart and intelligent are not synonyms. Replace "smart" with "wise" if you prefer, which would also reduce ambiguity.
Frankly I find this insulting. I could just as easily say that you are the one who doesn't not understand. But I won't because I'd rather not be inflammatory. I'll just say that we'll have to agree to disagree on this and leave it there. I'm not going to engage on this any further.
No I think you should engage with the other posts in this threads that already explained why your thinking is flawed. You instead chose to avoid them and just regurgitate one of the points already critiqued in the comments here.