Father watching daughter and son riding bicycles

Comments 7

هل يسبب الأطفال الاحتباس الحراري

May 21, 2018 Bjørn Lomborg

كوبنهاجن- في جميع الثقافات فإن تربية الأطفال تعتبر مصدر مهم للشعور بالسعادة والرضا ولكن هناك مجموعة من النشطاء والعلماء والصحفيين الذين يجادلون بإن على الناس ان يفكروا مليا قبل ان يتناسلوا .

لقد سأل مذيع الراديو العام ن بي ر في الولايات المتحده الأمريكيه :" هل يجب ان يكون لدينا اطفال في عصر التغير المناخي ؟" كما ارادت مجلة ذا ناشين ان تعرف " كيف تقرر ان تنجب الاطفال في عصر يعيد فيه التغير المناخي تشكيل العالم ؟ وتنصح صحيفة الجارديان القراء: " هل تريدون محاربة التغير المناخي ؟ انجبوا اطفال اقل ." ولقد حذرت صحيفة نيويورك تايمز بإن انجاب الاطفال هو اسوأ عمل بيئي يمكن ان يقوم به اي انسان .

ان المرأه الامريكيه التي تنجب طفلين وتتحول لاستخدام سيارة فعاله في استهلاك الوقود وتقود سيارتها لفترة زمنيه اقصر وتقوم بعملية اعادة التدوير وتركيب مصابيح اناره فعاله ونوافد توفر الطاقه ستتسبب بضرر يوازي " 40 ضعف ما قامت بتوفيره بسبب تلك الافعال " وفي العام الماضي انخفض معدل الخصوبه في الولايات المتحده الأمريكيه لمستوى قياسي.

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Bjørn Lomborg

Writing for PS since 2005
160 Commentaries

Bjørn Lomborg, a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School, is Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which seeks to study environmental problems and solutions using the best available analytical methods. He is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Cool It, How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place and The Nobel Laureates' Guide to the Smartest Targets for the World, and was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2004.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 7 in all 7 Comments on this article

Eric C Jul 14, 2018

Lomborg says you can eliminate all your descendants CO2 emissions (1350 tonnes) for $23,400, so $17.33/tonne. Gosh that's not much. Why don't we pay $17.33/tonne to eliminate all the world's 45 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted per year. That would be $785 billion/year. The World GDP is $80,000 billion/year so that is less than 1 percent. Is Lomborg telling us that global warming can be easily solved by spending less than one percent of GDP? What are we waiting for? Or perhaps $17.33 is a meaningless number with respect to the real cost of eliminating CO2 emissions. Oil company revenues were over $5,000 billion for example.
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mdello @hotmail.com Jun 18, 2018

It's all about the expected impact of your marginal action. I'm happy to bite the bullet and say that, simplistically at least, sure, maybe our ancestors caused more harm than people who fly a lot or eat animal products today. But our hunter-gatherer ancestors couldn't fathom such a future, or such an impact. Today, we can predict the impact of having a child, and we have a duty to do so.

What ones' child might do in 2-3 decades might be their choice, but that doesn't erase the fact that you can predict the impact of having a child. If the act of having a child is expected to increase global emissions by 20 tonnes of CO2e per year on average (to use an arbitrary value), it doesn't matter that your kid will have a choice to emit more or less. You know what the expected value is, so by having a child, that is your expected impact.
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Henry Engelking Jun 16, 2018

Interesting economic analysis, but the point about the joy in having children is far more important to a meaningful life. Parents having only 2 children will not increase the population and most of the developed world are having less than 2 children per family on average. It is difficult to believe this advice is taken seriously. Those giving this advice should lead by example.
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Holly Louise May 29, 2018

Thank you Bjorn for this excellent piece.
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ben welgoed May 28, 2018

Trying to make any sort of case that 7, edging on 8, billion hungry and endlessly consuming large living beings are harmless to the planet is truly a lost cause. There is no argument that actually holds water in favor of the notion that we humans can keep on keeping on, expanding our numbers forever.
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Justin Harbour May 27, 2018

To be clear, every one of the articles cited in this paragraph is a summary of or based on scientific reports about the effects of reproduction on the climate. These articles are not official positions of the publications, or editorial statements to be construed as representative of the consensus of the publication itself. It is not clear why the writer did not cite the science cited in those articles directly and instead chose to cite the reporting of that science.
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Michael Public May 22, 2018

It greatly depends who is procreating. The average republican wants to drive a 5 litre Camaro, switch back to coal and work inside a smokestack. It would be better for the planet if Republicans refrained from breeding.
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