TB: Don't Give Up on Kids Because of Climate Change (Alexander)
Core Thesis
Climate change, while real and serious, is not an existential threat that warrants forgoing children. The argument for childlessness on climate grounds fails empirically (the risk is manageable) and strategically (it backfires by reducing the proportion of climate-conscious people in future generations).
Key Takeaways
The risk is overstated
- Climate change is not an existential threat. Sea level rise is "annoying, but not transformational" except for specific low-lying cities.
- We have already experienced ~25% of the warming expected by 2100, and life in the first world continues to improve.
- Prior generations had children during the credible existential threat of nuclear war. Climate risk is categorically lower.
The comparison argument
- If declining to have children is rational due to climate risk, the same logic would require that nobody in the developing world (facing far worse baseline conditions) should have children either.
- "Now, in the first world, is by far the best time to live in history." The threshold for not having children, if consistent, is impossibly high.
The strategic backfire
- Children of parents who are not concerned about climate change are less likely themselves to be concerned.
- Declining to have children on climate grounds likely shrinks the future pool of climate-conscious people — a strategic own-goal for the movement.
- Magnitude: maybe 5% of people avoid having children for this reason. The effect on national politics may be larger than the effect on carbon emissions.
The practical alternative
- Carbon offsets exist. Having children and paying carbon offsets is a coherent response that doesn't require foreclosing on parenthood.
Mental Models
- Second-Order Thinking — the second-order effect of childlessness-as-climate-activism is perversely counterproductive
- Inversion — inverting the question ("what happens if climate-concerned people stop having children?") reveals the strategic flaw
See also
- Politics and Political Epistemology — how motivated reasoning shapes political and personal decisions
- Human Nature and Evolution — risk calibration and the conditions under which humans historically reproduced
Source
Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten (Substack) Original article