Having a child adds approximately 58.6 tonnes CO2e per year.
The maximum average CO2e per person per year to reach the Paris climate agreement goal of a 1.5 °C, is about 3-10 tonnes. We could do this with a 0.01 fertility rate for a few decades, until we’re not catastrophically overpopulated anymore.
There is a difference between sustainable, non-sustainable, and catastrophically unsustainable; and it’s an important difference. Having a locavore diet is very easy where I live, except for vitamin B12 supplements which are not locally sourced or made. I don’t know what you mean by “survive the winter”, it’s not an issue where I live. I only use salt and turmeric when I prepare food - tho some processed food I buy contains other spices.
860 miles by car
So about 0.272 tonnes of CO2e per year per https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-ton-carbon-dioxide ?
Of a total of about “2.1 tonnes per person annual emissions budget necessary by 2050 to meet the 2 °C climate target (Girod et al 2014)” per https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541#erlaa7541r22 (Girod 2014 seems to be paywalled).
That total seems below the 2.1 tonnes of CO2e per year sustainable target per person by 2050.
I don’t think “kill fewer people” is splitting hairs.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/16/biden-oil-drilling-production/ :
As he campaigned for president in 2020, Joe Biden made a bold promise at a New Hampshire town hall, adding repetition for emphasis: “No more drilling on federal lands. Period. Period. Period. Period.” […] The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has. […] The country is expected to produce 13.2 million barrels of oil per day on average this year — millions of barrels more than Saudi Arabia or Russia.
“producing more oil than any country ever has” is making the biosphere unlivable, and causing a mass extinction which will kill more people.
If enough people vote for green parties, we can reverse anthropogenic climate change and stop the anthropocene extinction. If however we keep voting for the omnicidal lesser evil, then we’re voting for omnicidal evil, and complicit in killing more people.
Some things are sustainable, others are not - by orders of magnitude.
Growing a tree, and then cutting it down to boil water is sustainable.
Producing more oil than any country ever has, is absolutely not sustainable.
Accessing the internet using an open source OS on hardware other people threw away, is sustainable, even when following the categorical imperative where the other 8 billion people also do it.
I don’t think fear of persecution and resistance to authoritarianism is selfish. I think some things are vastly worse than others, e.g. wiping out more than 50% of genera and more than 70% of species, and making the biosphere unlivable for most creatures larger than mice - is incredibly selfish; and being complicit in genocide is a line some people won’t cross no matter if it may benefit them personally in the short term. I understand most people have very different priorities, and care more about their own short-term goals even if those goals make them complicit in omnicide.
Some things are sustainable, others are not - by orders of magnitude. Some of the former are not sustainable when done by billions of people.
So it’s okay to help yourself in the short term, and by doing so help make the biosphere unlivable?
“Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses, and American universities - and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, […] you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: ‘The public sucks. Fuck hope.’” – George Carlin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBrbXOmnW70
I don’t completely agree: slavery is now illegal; so there’s hope they’ll one day vote to oppose omnicidal biosphere destruction, and genocides.
There’s a difference between saying you want to stop something, vs saying that thing is not going to happen “Period. Period. Period. Period.” when you end up doing the thing anyway.
If you care about honesty, and in this case if you care about a biosphere in which people are able to live, then it matters.
It’s possible to do things, and to be honest.
So maybe the right-wing Biden shouldn’t have promised with “Period. Period. Period. Period.” something the even more right-wing Republicans’ judges could strike down.
I’m not offended - I understand most people have very different priorities. I personally think that preventing a mass extinction event is more important than police, doctors, schools, roads (for cars), and fascism; because I happen to think that a catastrophic climate cascade means nothing else matters. Healthcare is nice, but doctors will all be dead when the biosphere becomes unlivable.
I don’t stand with the genocidal Hamas voters, nor with the genocidal Israeli voters.
As he campaigned for president in 2020, Joe Biden made a bold promise at a New Hampshire town hall, adding repetition for emphasis: “No more drilling on federal lands. Period. Period. Period. Period.” […] The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has. […] The reality is the United States is already dominant. The country is expected to produce 13.2 million barrels of oil per day on average this year — millions of barrels more than Saudi Arabia or Russia. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/16/biden-oil-drilling-production/
They’re not the same, but if you look at the big picture, like a livable vs an unlivable biosphere, then the slightly-lesser evil is still omnicidally evil (and helping with a genocide).
As he campaigned for president in 2020, Joe Biden made a bold promise at a New Hampshire town hall, adding repetition for emphasis: “No more drilling on federal lands. Period. Period. Period. Period.” […] The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has. […] The reality is the United States is already dominant. The country is expected to produce 13.2 million barrels of oil per day on average this year — millions of barrels more than Saudi Arabia or Russia. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/16/biden-oil-drilling-production/
The slightly-lesser evil is still omnicidally evil.
To convince Greens or Carlins (people who don’t vote because the Democrats are still too evil from their point-of-view) to vote for Democrats, you need to understand yourself and them. Once you do that, you’ll be able to offer more convincing arguments to support your position.
If you’re voting for Democrats, you possibly agree with the following scale of evilness:
The thing is that some Greens see the world very differently:
The Greens’ (and Carlins’) priorities are very different. They may think that choosing to make the biosphere unlivable is the worst thing you can do, because without a biosphere that supports life, nothing else matters.
As he campaigned for president in 2020, Joe Biden made a bold promise at a New Hampshire town hall, adding repetition for emphasis: “No more drilling on federal lands. Period. Period. Period. Period.” […] The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has. […] The reality is the United States is already dominant. The country is expected to produce 13.2 million barrels of oil per day on average this year — millions of barrels more than Saudi Arabia or Russia. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/16/biden-oil-drilling-production/
They may think that torturing trillions of fish to death every year, and enslaving hundreds of billions of animals in torturous conditions every year, is worse than all genocides and wars in all of history combined. They think that voting for someone who enables even a single genocide is a line they won’t cross.
They may think that given the choice between popular Hitler, popular Stalin, and unpopular Gandhi; they’d rather vote for Gandhi than the popular lesser evil, because that specific evil is omnicidally evil. That it’s better to vote for good and fail, than it is to vote for evil and succeed.
As he campaigned for president in 2020, Joe Biden made a bold promise at a New Hampshire town hall, adding repetition for emphasis: “No more drilling on federal lands. Period. Period. Period. Period.” […] The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has. […] The reality is the United States is already dominant. The country is expected to produce 13.2 million barrels of oil per day on average this year — millions of barrels more than Saudi Arabia or Russia.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/16/biden-oil-drilling-production/
The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has. […] “If you were to show someone who came from Mars the line of U.S. oil and gas production over the last 15 years, they probably would not be able to tell whether a Republican or Democrat was in the White House,” said Jason Bordoff, founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. […] The reality is the United States is already dominant. The country is expected to produce 13.2 million barrels of oil per day on average this year — millions of barrels more than Saudi Arabia or Russia.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/16/biden-oil-drilling-production/