I know the "bring them into this world" thing is overdone, but a big part of me feels it to my core.

I haven't seen a firefly in a couple years. If I had a child today, describing this bug to a child would be almost mythical.

How many things that we've taken for granted will a child born today never get to experience? Not shallow things like iPods, but genuine miracles of nature we're wiping out at an accelerating pace. I can't in good conscious bring a child into a world that so many are focused on absolutely destroying.

It's my protest to allow the pyramid of consumption to collapse. I will not bring a just another customer into the world. I won't bring a child here just so they can be a pawn to try to recover from poor planning.

We as humans need this population collapse. We need to learn how to organize society on long-term sustainability, not a pyramid scheme.

Every time I see this discussion, it's always framed like a call to action, that we need new children to bail out the sinking boat and keep it floating for another generation or two.

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taeric 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

An odd example, as fireflies are still pretty big in the places they have always been, aren't they? I know when I get to visit my childhood states, they are still there. Similar for cicadas and other bugs of my youth that I didn't realize were far more local than I expected.

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MSFT_Edging 2 hours ago | parent [-]

It was just a recently notable example. Even as of 2-3 years ago I used to see them a decent amount. They're a highly visible marker of an insect population that is dropping like a rock.

They're also a beautiful creature that I could imagine wishing a child of mine could experience the same way I did, which better illustrates the tragedy of the damage we're doing to the planet.

	▲	taeric an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I'm assuming you still live in the same place? My understanding the last time I took a dive on this is that the numbers are going down, but not in any way that is going to see them gone. You will need to go to where they are, though. And, alas, the PNW is not a place to find them.

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SamPatt 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>I can't in good conscious bring a child into a world that so many are focused on absolutely destroying.

Who is focused on destroying the world?

I don't think hardly any super villains exist. People might have a different assessment of what destroying the world means than you do.

	▲	forlorn_mammoth 16 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		SamPatt, it isn't necessarily individuals making individual decisions. Yeah, very few supervillains. But perhaps you've heard talk of things like "6th mass extinction event" or "global climate change"? both of which are direct consequences of our industrialized society? Look, I'm personally grateful for modern medicine and indoor plumbing, to name a few things. I don't want to go back to some idealized hunter-gatherer past (yes, I've tried it). And regardless of the actual truth of ecological and climate collapse, or your particular views on the actual truth of these, enough people see enough convincing evidence that the parent poster's view is supported by enough people to matter. We live in a blessed window.
	▲	MSFT_Edging 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Many people think a well manicured lawn sprayed with pesticides is preferable to local wildflowers and shrubs. They "have a different assessment" but they're still contributing to an extinction event. You don't need to be a super villain. You can simply be selfish. Once scaled to many many selfish people, you have a collective villain.
	▲	Larrikin an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		People shutting down efforts to transition from fossil fuels because they can make more money from fossil fuels and will be dead before they experience any of the consequences are the typical example.

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robotnikman 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I hate to say it, but I have been feeling the same way recently. I just don't see humanity being sustainable on this planet if we are relying on constantly producing more and more people. There has to be an equilibrium of some kind.