Lots of people (awful people) have kids for their own ego rather than because they want to raise happy and healthy offspring. They don’t care about the world their children will grow up in.

It’s because of the prisoner’s dilemma. It is broadly agreed that everyone would be better off if everyone curbs their emissions, but for any one individual the choice is not so simple. For infividuals, a large reduction to their impact will likely hurt them economically more than it will help them environmentally. This is exactly why a lot of green legislation is driven by global agreements with countries all trying to put pressure on each other to reduce emissions.

Likewise, increasing government investment in green technologies could benefit the economy and the environment, but for any given politician the cost of turning against big oil may be a significant risk to their chances of re-election if not balanced out by a politically motivated and educated populace that is resistant to corporate propaganda. Campaign finance reform would help with this, but once again it’s a bigger risk than it’s worth to the politicians in power. Thus, we can’t simply rely on the self-interest of the wealthy to prevent collapse; we must co-operate and coordinate our efforts to solve the problem.

Take some time here on Lemmy and explain to people that they should make individual efforts to lower their own footprint. You’ll be met with every excuse in the book why they won’t do something to decrease their own burden, even going so far as to “explain” to you how dumb the suggestion even is.

The problem is that no one wants to decrease their own quality of life, they expect everyone else to do it. The person who is sitting in their AC house, cruising the Internet on their multi-hundred dollar phone, after driving around in their own vehicle…have convinced themselves that they are no the wealthy of the year spewing out way more emissions…it’s really the people flying private jets!

Everyone points to someone else as a bigger culprit, they are the ones who have to act first.