For a long time it seemed like climate change was like a big snake with no rattle. Industrialized countries have been pretty much oblivious to their contributions to the growth of this big dangerous snake. Now the big snake has a rattle, and it’s getting louder.
The unpredictability of our weather feels like we’re walking through the tall grass with lions and tigers lurking and ready to pounce. It’s hard to say how and when the next bad thing might happen, but something bad seems to be lurking out there somewhere.
At the root of our contribution to climate change is the number of humans scurrying around. How many people is too many? I don’t know the ideal number of people, but there’re certainly too many people now. Without kids, your carbon footprint can become more like a carbon thumbprint if you don’t consume excessively.
An overwhelming majority of scientists consider manmade contributions like pollution to at the least to be a factor in climate change. It’s a numbers game, the more of us there are the more pollution there is. Seven billion plus people either striving towards or maintaining a western style of living is tough on our only planet (in the picture, that’s the Earth as seen from Mars) and it’s showing.
People considering having fewer or no kids would be a huge benefit for climate change. We could even continue polluting without much concern if here were just a lot fewer of us.