\t\t\t\tBy Roy Scranton July 16, 2018 NYT<\/p>\n
Climate Change and Parenting<\/a> Take the widely cited 2017 research letter by the geographer Seth Wynes and the environmental scientist Kimberly Nicholas, which argues that the most effective steps any of us can take to decrease carbon emissions are to eat a plant-based diet, avoid flying, live car free and have one fewer child \u2014 the last having the most significant impact by far.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n …<\/p>\n To take Wynes and Nicholas\u2019s recommendations to heart would mean cutting oneself off from modern life. It would mean choosing a hermetic, isolated existence and giving up any deep connection to the future. Indeed, taking Wynes and Nicholas\u2019s argument seriously would mean acknowledging that the only truly moral response to global climate change is to commit suicide. There is simply no more effective way to shrink your carbon footprint. Once you\u2019re dead, you won\u2019t use any more electricity, you won\u2019t eat any more meat, you won\u2019t burn any more gasoline, and you certainly won\u2019t have any more children. If you really want to save the planet, you should die.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n …<\/p>\n Living ethically means understanding that our actions have consequences, taking responsibility for how those consequences ripple out across the web of life in which each of us is irrevocably enmeshed and working every day to ease what suffering we can. Living ethically means limiting our desires, respecting the deep interdependence of all things in nature and honoring the fact that our existence on this planet is a gift that comes from nowhere and may be taken back at any time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n …<\/p>\n Roy Scranton is a professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. This essay was adapted from his new book, \u201cWe\u2019re Doomed. Now What? Essays on War and Climate Change.<\/a>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Roy Scranton July 16, 2018 NYT Climate Change and Parenting … Take the widely cited 2017 research letter by the geographer Seth Wynes and the environmental scientist Kimberly Nicholas, which argues that the most effective steps any of us can take to decrease carbon emissions are to eat a plant-based diet, avoid flying, live … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,13,15,17],"tags":[263,353,354,358,427,614,761,810,1308,1367,1644,1838],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-sergneri","4":"has-excerpt","5":"post-2003","7":"format-standard","8":"category-climate-change","9":"category-feminism","10":"category-politics","11":"category-science","12":"category-thinking-about","13":"post_tag-biological-adaptation","14":"post_tag-carbon-capture","15":"post_tag-carbon-dioxide","16":"post_tag-carbon-sequestration","17":"post_tag-climate-change","18":"post_tag-environmentally-destructive","19":"post_tag-global-climate","20":"post_tag-having-a-child","21":"post_tag-planet-b","22":"post_tag-procreation","23":"post_tag-suicide","24":"post_tag-waste-carbon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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