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Is this sensationalism?


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Maybe I am reading to much into it but apparently I'm supposed to believe that women of the world are going to decide not to have children if the rest of the world doesn't decide to take climate change seriously?

To me this story seems like sensationalism to extreme, but maybe it is simply hyperbole.

https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/3099448002

Why aren't journalist held to the same scrutiny that someone who maybe likes to make up their own science facts. Climate change may be a fact. But seriously?

I can imagine some scientist waving the climate change banner backing this story but maybe I'm wrong. 

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12 minutes ago, jajrussel said:

Maybe I am reading to much into it but apparently I'm supposed to believe that women of the world are going to decide not to have children if the rest of the world doesn't decide to take climate change seriously?

That's not how I read the article. You make it sound like blackmail, but the concern seems to be more about what kind of natural disaster-filled world they'd be bringing children into. Many women made the same choices during the Cold War, thinking they didn't want to burden children with an  irradiated, post-nuclear war landscape. 

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20 minutes ago, jajrussel said:

Maybe I am reading to much into it but apparently I'm supposed to believe that women of the world are going to decide not to have children if the rest of the world doesn't decide to take climate change seriously?

To me this story seems like sensationalism to extreme, but maybe it is simply hyperbole.

https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/3099448002

Why aren't journalist held to the same scrutiny that someone who maybe likes to make up their own science facts. Climate change may be a fact. But seriously?

I can imagine some scientist waving the climate change banner backing this story but maybe I'm wrong. 

Perhaps we were reading different articles. The one I read in your link presented, in a straightforward, factually based, level-headed way, several examples of people in general and women in particular expressing concern over bringing children into a world that potentially faced a dystopian future. Implicit in the structure of the article was that these were discrete examples, not a universal trend.

This point was emphasised within the final paragraphs where the writer stated " To be sure, the decision to not have children isn’t a full-on movement; it's more a discussion that’s beginning to bubble up in people’s consciousness." 

In summary, I found none of the extremism you saw, but rather a sober and interesting insight into a novel response to climate change. I think, as you suspected in your opening remark, that you were reading too much into it.

Edited by Intrigued
inserted missing word "children"
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25 minutes ago, jajrussel said:

I can imagine some scientist waving the climate change banner backing this story but maybe I'm wrong. 

Do you think this is an accurate or descriptive way to depict those concerned with climate change, that they march behind some kind of popular banner? I've looked into climate science and read enough expert findings to trust that we need active measures to reduce the impact of what humans have already done, and I really don't need somebody to raise a "banner" to follow. I suppose I resent such an image because it implies a kind of mindlessness, a willingness to follow a piece of cloth rather than an ideal you've researched and followed to its conclusions.

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I ultimately chose to have kids, but I"d be lying if I said I didn't consider throughout the process what challenges they may or may not face in their future as a direct result of our failure to act on climate change (drought, famine, extreme storms, refugee migration, war, disease...)

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