Jack

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).

• 0 of 58.6 tonnes of CO2e/year because I'm childfree,
• 0 of 2.4 tonnes since I'm carfree (never bought a car, I don't even have a driver's license),
• 0 of 1.6 tonnes per flight (tho I did fly once in my life, more than a decade ago),
• 1.47 for electricity because I don't buy ethical green energy,
• ? because I'm vegan, so that reduces my footprint a lot, but I'm not sure what to deduct the 0.82 from,
• ? because of cold washing laundry, but I don't know what to deduct the 0.25 from,
• 0.272 tonnes for using a computer to access the internet,
• ? for several other things tho at an order of magnitude lower than the big ticket items.

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.

https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2017/07/co2_saved/giv-3902H9Q7lx2HE5M7/

So it's okay to help yourself in the short term, and by doing so help make the biosphere unlivable?

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.