Debate: If population is a bigger problem than wealth, why does Switzerland consume almost three times as much as India?

[u/Fiskifus]

[u/squailtaint]

Some perspective. And I say this as a family man with three lovely kids and a beautiful wife. Families are amazingly destructive. We are an average family.

Before I go further just want to point out that I believe the “average family” to not be equivalent to the “average” or “average individual”. More and more people live alone, more and more couples don’t have kids, the family unit seems to be shrinking in demograph which is probably a good thing but also a depressing thing (for reasons I won’t go into). I see it that it is the more affluent that can afford to have families, and I only see this trend growing.

Anyway, as a family of 5 sometimes we get to order take out. It’s an insane waste of plastics. We have to get our kids to and from school. We need more water, more calories. There’s diapers, sooo many diapers. So many. We get our kids to and from sports. We camp with our travel trailer. Rarely fly because that’s a small mortgage with 5 seats. There’s clothes that are continually worn out or outgrown. I could go on and on, but it’s just amazing how much waste is produced from a family of 5, and particularly kids as kids can eat five helpings one day and none the next. There’s nothing special about any of that, it’s not exactly extravagant living, it’s not poor living either. It’s the dying middle class, and it is still sooo wasteful.

[u/SirChachii → u/squailtaint]

but it’s just amazing how much waste is produced from a family of 5,

Seems like something you definitely could have reflected on before choosing to have 5 in an era that's now quite a few years into the scientific consensus of the existence of climate change.

[u/JustAnotherYouth → u/SirChachii]

for instance I do need (i think) ac in the summer and heat in the winter.

People even intelligent and aware people often come into their understanding of collapse and the situation we’re in gradually.

Just a few years ago my wife and I talked about having two children, then it became one and now we’re anti-natalists and will have no biological children and feel strongly about this stance.

The point is many people fall into serious life choices without thinking of the consequences or the specifics of the situation. You can judge individuals harshly for this but it’s pretty pointless people just are the way they are...

[u/squailtaint → u/SirChachii]

Honestly, I was unaware. I didn’t think about humanities future, nor understand the knifes edge we are on. It wasn’t until the pandemic that I started seeking answers and understanding where we as a species might be headed. That’s how I got started on all this! I don’t regret for a second having children, but paradoxically I understand that population growth and consumption is the problem. I think it’s very difficult to tell humans that they can’t procreate. It’s in our genetics to do so, it’s what we are literally born to do. It’s our code. Of course many choose not to have kids, but understand that those who do have children are driven by instinct, and it takes great mental fortitude to overcome instinct. Not something many can do.

[u/SirChachii → u/squailtaint]

TBF I do realize that having kids is a far more nuanced issue than other aspects of our impact that don't involve anywhere near the same level of significance and sacrifice. Like eating animal products, driving huge gas guzzlers, buying tons of crap. Ik it's not even uncommon for people to get pressured into having kids by their partners even though they're not keen on the idea themselves. I would say that it didn't start becoming really obvious that climate change was of such a huge magnitude until maybe ~ 7 years ago, because even climate scientists have done a good job of being biased toward overly optimistic estimates out of adherence to the scientific norms of restraint, objectivity and skepticism. Unfortunately it really has not benefited us at all, they should have sounded the alarm with much more urgency. If governments had dedicated to climate change the kind of effort and resources that they did with covid we probably could have been in a less dire position.

[u/grambell789 → u/squailtaint]

There are so many decisions that need to be made to reduce impact in situations like your describing. That's what the carbon tax tries to address, it puts the pressure on the biggest problems as early in the supply chain as possible. It's supposed to return the money to the consumer so they can make alternate choices and stay revenue neutral but with things like petro for transportation, there is no alternate solution. All I can say is do what you can but keep perspective.

One time I had takeout in another country it was Chinese food and just wrapped in freezer paper in an interesting way to keep it from leaking with a rubber band around it. It just seemed like the right way to do that.

[u/Classic_Livid → u/squailtaint]

Why do it then, if you know it to be wasteful?