Scott Alexander of Astral Codex Ten (formerly Slate Star Codex) wrote a piece on this topic as well: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/please-dont-give-up-on...
First part boils down to the classic catholic strategy of "outbreed the enemy" with handwavy reasoning along the lines "worst things are not going to be happen to first world peoples". Some cherry picked factoids sprinkled here and there like sea level rise in SF and NYC. Total red herring.
In Europe we already saw the migration crisis from Syria and how it was a great polarizing tool. There is no border wall that can be built (let alone be moral in any shape or form) to keep out billions of starving and misplaced from the global south and keep us in the first world nice any cozy.
Then the part about the carbon cost of raising children goes to the tehcno-utopian realm of carbon capture with some really optimistic dollar numbers.
I'm 40 and probably going to have kids, but if I were young I'd totally hold older generations feet to the fire and tell governments: "fuck you, if you don't get your shit together and start doing something meaningful about the climate catastrophe, I'm not going to have kids".
What exactly makes this so immoral? Edit: The border itself.
Meanwhile a friend younger than me is trying to have her first kid.
The fear is there but not evenly distributed. I personally am a bit of an antinatalist, at least to the degree that I feel its irresponsible to be having new kids while an overloaded foster care system still has children in need of parents.
My children are pushing 30. With everything that's going on, and how dark the future looks, it's rare that a day goes by that I don't wonder if I did them a disservice by having them.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/carbon-costs-quantifie...