# Climate change activists deserve Trump **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 8, 2016, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198 "2016-12-08T12:44:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Covert\_Harris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f6c823/32.png) [@Covert\_Harris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Covert_Harris)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/41 "2016-12-08T17:14:12Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > The payoff comes several decades in the future, when the two-child family ends up with a dozen carbon-spewing descendants, and the child-free couple is longer spewing _any_ carbon (because they have died of old age). The grand total of carbon emitted by the child-free couple is less than the family tree of the two-child family, even if the child-free couple drives Veyrons and lives in a 4000-square-foot five-bedroom home heated to 76 degrees in a Yukon winter. Machine, I didn’t see this before I just responded with the same point. It is so refreshing that you can see this. I don’t know why it is so hard for others, other than the urge to have babies is so strong that it blinds people. My wife says that’s the only purpose of mankind, so I should quit carping about it. It’s interesting, though, that the urge to have children is social, and not biological, while biological evolution causes people to assemble in societal groups for survival, so it’s related. My wife wanted children when we were first married, and our disagreement about it caused a temporary separation. We reunited when she agreed to give it a couple of years before revisiting the question. She completely lost the itch, when not scratched for two years, and now thanks her lucky stars we never had any. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/42 "2016-12-08T17:26:09Z")
> [@Grey](#): > > True. Man in the 60s, one could look over over LA and see nothing but majestica rolling banks of smog and now, just stupid blue sky. That is a good example of how many that do reach for the FUD do forget, since technology is a big reason for the degradation it is a problem that can be solved by changes in our technology. Of course controlling the population at the same time is important, but one big thing that many contrarians miss is that one very important result of education and economical progress is that families then \*\*do \*\*control the number of offspring they get (they figure out on their own how costly it is to have many children). The access to education and economical development then are very important things to do, not only for the fight against poverty all over the world but also to fight climate change. Unfortunately many conservatives do think that helping developing nations to [leapfrog](http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/from-paris-to-kigali-india-to-leapfrog-to-climate-friendly-technologies-while-achieving-its-development-goals/)directly to new ways of making and distributing energy is a sin (as many conservatives tell us: ‘why waste billions on an item that is a “hoax”?’). ---
**Author:** ![The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_King_of_Soup)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/43 "2016-12-08T17:39:50Z")
> [@](#): > > There are as many people today suffering abjectly in thirst, starvation, filth, disease and violence than existed on the planet when I was born. Not even close to true. [During the first half of the last century, the growth of the world population caused the absolute number of poor people in the world to increase, even though the share of people in poverty was going down. After around 1970, the decrease in poverty rates became so steep that the absolute number of people living in extreme poverty started falling as well. This trend of decreasing poverty – both in absolute numbers and as a share of the world population – has been a constant during the last three decades.](https://ourworldindata.org/world-poverty/) For someone who came of age in the “fifties and early sixties,” the OP seems not to have paid any actual attention to what he thinks is the most fundamental problem we have. He came of age in time to read The Population Bomb, and apparently stopped there. There was once a fairly direct logical pathway by which one could assume even a sustainable increased population was antithetical to curbing global warming – when it correlated with deforestation. [It doesn’t anymore.](http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/326911/icode/) As for the hand-wringing over water, it is cruel and incorrect to blame the problem on overpopulation: [the vast majority don’t have access to enough water to waste it](http://www.unwater.org/water-cooperation-2013/water-cooperation/facts-and-figures/en/)–that’s the fault of the privileged. And it’s actually a pretty solvable problem. Stop the privatization of water resources, change the Western hemisphere’s diet a little, invest in desalinization. If the OP wants to respond to environmental issues by forgoing children, that’s his privilege, although I suspect that even so, there are large families in the world that have left less of a mark on the environment just through relative lack of consumerism. But his assertion that intellectually inferior babies are part of the problem is factually as well as morally repulsive. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/44 "2016-12-08T17:44:54Z")
OP, this was basically a [Bill Burr bit.](https://youtu.be/sp3nsgTQNiI) ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/45 "2016-12-08T17:54:02Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Most Republicans I know don’t think that. So where does that leave us? From _Mother Jones_–but there seem to be some[actual “facts” here](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/trumps-new-hhs-secretary-tried-curb-contraceptive-access): > [@](#): > > Last week, Donald Trump announced that Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), an orthopedic surgeon known for fierce criticism of the Affordable Care Act, is his choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the roughly $80 billion federal agency whose 80,000 employees are tasked with administering numerous programs relating to Americans’ health, including the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate—which requires employer-sponsored health insurance to cover birth control without a copay. Of course he’s opposed to abortion. But that’s not all. > [@](#): > > [ul] > [li] **Personhood rights for fertilized eggs** : In 2005, Price co-sponsored the Right to Life Act, a bill that proposed defining life as beginning at conception. In practice, this would mean that zygotes would have received full legal rights and protections, making forms of birth control that might expel an already-fertilized egg—the IUD or the morning-after pill, for instance—illegal. Price is a member of the anti-abortion Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which has also aligned itself with the personhood movement, publishing a resolution in 2003 that defined human life as beginning at conception…[/li][li] **Defunding Planned Parenthood:** Price has repeatedly voted to defund the women’s health provider. Planned Parenthood is an important source of affordable birth control access for women in all income brackets. Defunding Planned Parenthood could very likely lead to a loss of contraceptive access and a subsequent rise in births: A February 2016 study published in the _New England Journal of Medicine_ showed that when Texas cut state funding for Planned Parenthood, there was a “sharp decrease” in the use of some contraceptives in the counties that had been served by Planned Parenthood. Also, the rate of births among low-income women who had previously had contraceptive access went up.[/li][/ul] Lots more at the link. You seem to know the elite Republicans of California. I doubt they’re typical. (Trump tends to prefer Surgeons to Real Doctors.) ---
**Author:** ![excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e8c25b/32.png) [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/excavating_for_a_mind)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/46 "2016-12-08T18:43:59Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > … > The OP sounds like he or she would just prefer those brown people just all suddenly die… Where did THAT come from? ---
**Author:** ![Neo-Calredic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/96bed5/32.png) [@Neo-Calredic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neo-Calredic)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/47 "2016-12-08T18:48:51Z")
> [@Covert\_Harris](#): > > Climate change is a red herring. The root problem is overpopulation. Trying to cure the effects of six billion too many people with environmental laws is like fighting leprosy with band aids. The effects of overpopulation can be retarded by a few years, but not halted in their inexorable march toward oblivion of polite civilizations. > > There are as many people today suffering abjectly in thirst, starvation, filth, disease and violence than existed on the planet when I was born. And worse than atmospheric destruction is the fact that water tables around the world are being sucked dry and can’t be replenished by rainfall, even if people wised up, which of course they can’t, because of inferior intellect on average coupled with an overweening bias for babies. > > I am not a hypocrite, like Al Gore, because I walked the walk. My wife and I decided not to have children, because we could not countenance being part of the problem, even symbolically, since one family can’t make a measurable difference; people would have to be smarter, educated, and responsible at large. I calculated that by not having children, over three generations, starting with mine, I will have used up resources and polluted 1/16th as much as a couple whelping two children, with their progeny following numerical suit, and 1/22nd as much as a couple with three. Compare that against a numbskull with three kids recycling cans, driving a Prius instead of a Hummer, and teaching his children not to run hot water more than necessary. > > DISCLAIMER: Of course, speaking hypothetically, at some point societies would have to permit some children to be produced. But by that time they could be selected for adequate intellect. So, who gets to decide who lives and who dies? And at what age do they decide if a kid displays “adequate intellect?” How do we stop the “unworthy” from reproducing – some kind of mass sterilization program, or just good old fashioned genocide? ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/48 "2016-12-08T19:11:43Z")
> [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](#): > > Where did THAT come from? From the OP: > [@](#): > > DISCLAIMER: Of course, speaking hypothetically, at some point societies would have to permit some children to be produced. But by that time they could be selected for adequate intellect. A bunch of deaths would just make that perfect day come more quickly. The OP’s screed reminded me of white supremacist attempts to take over the Sierra Club–“the environment isn’t the issue–all those illegals are!” ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/49 "2016-12-08T19:31:43Z")
I can think of many caveats. 1. There are way fewer poor, ignorant, sick and starving people now compared to when op was born. 2. Almost all the population growth that will occur in the 21st century will occur in Africa. If you want to address overpopulation, start there. 3. On a long enough time line, we will be able to mine the solar system for resources. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/50 "2016-12-08T20:54:35Z")
> [@Covert\_Harris](#): > > Climate change is a red herring. The root problem is overpopulation. Overpopulation is a red herring. The root problem is agriculture. Destroy all farmland on earth and ban all forms of agriculture, and the problem will fix itself. ---
**Author:** ![Covert\_Harris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f6c823/32.png) [@Covert\_Harris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Covert_Harris)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/51 "2016-12-08T20:55:33Z")
> [@The\_King\_of\_Soup](#): > > Not even close to true. Regarding my statement that more people today are living under abject conditions than there were people on the planet when I was born. There were fewer than 2.4 billion people on the planet when I was born in 1943. UNICEF reports that about 2.5 billion people today live without sanitation, for one example. There are tons of data available about this subject, and a person can interpret it anyway he wants to. ---
**Author:** ![UberArchetype](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/2bfe46/32.png) [@UberArchetype](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UberArchetype)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/52 "2016-12-08T21:27:15Z")
Never thought I would ever agree with anything coming out of your keyboard: > [@GIGObuster](#): > > That is a good example of how many that do reach for the FUD do forget, since technology is a big reason for the degradation it is a problem that can be solved by changes in our technology. And one of the biggest (soon the be THE biggest, in my estimation) technology companies is already leading the way: [Google](http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/6/13852004/google-data-center-oklahoma-renewable-energy-climate-change) is no longer just for “finding” answers - they are creating them. We’d be headed back in the direction of a healthy planet If we could just get the chemists and physicists to pitch in and figure out how to post-process the CO2. Too bad economic incentive trumps environmental incentive every time. No pun intended. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/53 "2016-12-08T21:46:35Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Geniuses are so undervalued these days. They are. And I’m sure the OP is one of them. I found it odd that there’s nothing there about clean energy or the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere even though the OP is supposed to be opining about climate change, but I assume that’s just a limitation of my feeble intellect. From what I understand, the OP advocates an authoritarian regime that licenses children, and there appears to be something there about eugenics whereby only correct children are permitted, notably those that meet the OP’s standards of genius. I believe one can also read an implication there of well-intentioned mass murder, whereby a sort of Final Solution is imposed on a majority of these carbon-emitting humans to which the OP has taken such a dislike. And here we are with our heads in the sand trying to figure out how to use all this abundant clean energy that’s all around us so that we stop polluting the atmosphere! It takes a genius to think outside the box and realize that the real problem isn’t CO2 or nitrous oxides, it’s us! > [@Covert\_Harris](#): > > I said I would try to stop posting here (but never trust a Prankster) when I thought the moderator was going to deep six my OP. But it’s still here, so, so am I. Oh, man, the first few words of that started off so well! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Vicsage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e68b1a/32.png) [@Vicsage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vicsage)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/54 "2016-12-08T22:39:23Z")
We almost took care of the population problem in the 90’s. It seems the Germans almost released into the wide use a bacterium called Klebsiella planticola that had been modified to increase the production of lactose fermentation of agricultural wastes. The residue would have been used as fertilizer. The new bacteria, would over time, kill any plants with roots. In theory it could have spread from any field it was used on. Not much left without plants with roots. Plankton maybe. We’ll screw up soon and the population problem will take care of itself. ---
**Author:** ![excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e8c25b/32.png) [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/excavating_for_a_mind)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/55 "2016-12-08T22:49:13Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > From the OP: > > > [@](#): > > > > DISCLAIMER: Of course, speaking hypothetically, at some point societies would have to permit some children to be produced. But by that time they could be selected for adequate intellect. > > A bunch of deaths would just make that perfect day come more quickly. The OP’s screed reminded me of white supremacist attempts to take over the Sierra Club–“the environment isn’t the issue–all those illegals are!” OK. The idea that brown people have inferior intellect and need to die is yours. Or, is this just your projecting on the OP to enable you to call out RACIST as an ad hominem attack to try and scare people away from listening to the non-racist message? Of course, using (perceived) intellect as a criteria for birth is pure poppycock. You’d never get people to agree what level is adequate, or even how to evaluate for it. Besides, every attempt to improve humans through selective breeding has been ineffective to disastrous. Diversity seems to be much more important than any specific trait when it comes to genetics. ---
**Author:** ![Vicsage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e68b1a/32.png) [@Vicsage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vicsage)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/56 "2016-12-08T22:55:03Z")
Have eugenics on people ever been tried over multiple generations? ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/57 "2016-12-08T23:16:09Z")
Someone made a good point: It’s often the world’s richest 1 billion people, who consume a vast deal of resources and emit lots of trash and pollution, who pull their hair out by the roots and panic over overpopulation and claim that the Earth’s population must be reduced. In the meantime, many of the other 6 billion leave a much smaller per capita footprint on the environment. In other words, wealthy polluting Americans pointing the finger at the large African population. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/58 "2016-12-09T02:38:45Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > My point is that the “half as many people = half the environmental impact” relies on the childless couple living at the same standard as the two child family … which is unusual … people with twice the money in hand will live at a higher standard of living … thus have a higher “footprint” on the environment … > [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > The payoff comes several decades in the future, when the two-child family ends up with a dozen carbon-spewing descendants, and the child-free couple is longer spewing _any_ carbon (because they have died of old age). The grand total of carbon emitted by the child-free couple is less than the family tree of the two-child family, even if the child-free couple drives Veyrons and lives in a 4000-square-foot five-bedroom home heated to 76 degrees in a Yukon winter. As someone who has never had children, I like this logic, as it absolves me of responsibility for anything. For example: “OK, I may regularly commit sexual assaults. But you know who the real monsters are? People who have children. Because even if they never do such a thing, the two-child family may end up with a dozen descendants, and if some proportion of them commit sexual assaults, the total sexual assault footprint may be much higher.” The only difference between this argument and **Machine Elf** ’s is that _he’s omitted the first line_ – the part where any culpability whatsoever is acknowledged. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/59 "2016-12-09T03:16:33Z")
They don’t deserve Trump, few do. Lawyers, sure. Vegans and hipsters, maybe. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2016, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198/60 "2016-12-09T03:24:44Z")
> [@Covert\_Harris](#): > > Regarding my statement that more people today are living under abject conditions than there were people on the planet when I was born. > > There were fewer than 2.4 billion people on the planet when I was born in 1943. UNICEF reports that about 2.5 billion people today live without sanitation, for one example. > > There are tons of data available about this subject, and a person can interpret it anyway he wants to. By simple math, there are ~4.9 billion people today who live WITH sanitation, more than twice the number of people who were alive when you were born. Incidentally, when you were born, there was a massive global war going on - the most destructive in history - and it has not (yet) been repeated, which I take as a positive sign. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-activists-deserve-trump/774198.md?page=4)