Having a child is one of the highest‐carbon decisions made by affluent individuals. Does this uncomfortable fact mean they should limit biological family size? This salient question also forces attention to two key issues. One is just how demanding individual climate justice duties are. The other is the danger of ‘ivory tower’ reasoning by privileged philosophers. On some topics, it is imperative carefully to integrate philosophical discussion with sociological and psychological research. Assuming individual climate justice duties include cutting one's carbon impact, the discussion goes as follows. Should affluent couples and individuals have no biological children, because of the carbon cost? Not unless emissions‐cutting duties are extremely demanding, or we make dangerous, generalised socio‐psychological assumptions. Is there any individual duty to consider carbon impact when determining family size? Yes, because individual emissions‐cutting duties are more than trivially demanding. Should all duty‐bearers ‘stop at’ some fixed maximum number of biological kids? Not unless that number is one and we are prepared to accept very demanding individual emissions‐cutting duties and make problematic sociological assumptions. Finally, the article outlines three further individual duties following from the ‘uncomfortable fact’: to raise good climate citizens, become activists, and cut the family carbon footprint.

中文翻译：

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为什么在气候紧急情况下可以允许生孩子


生孩子是富裕人士做出的碳排放最高的决定之一。这个令人不安的事实是否意味着他们应该限制亲生家庭的规模？这个突出的问题还迫使人们关注两个关键问题。一个只是如何个人的气候正义义务要求很高。另一个是特权哲学家进行“象牙塔”推理的危险。在某些主题上，必须小心地将哲学讨论与社会学和心理学研究结合起来。假设个人气候正义职责包括减少碳排放，讨论如下。由于碳成本，富裕的夫妇和个人是否应该没有亲生孩子？除非减排义务极其苛刻，或者我们做出危险的、普遍的社会心理假设。在确定家庭规模时，个人是否有义务考虑碳影响？是的，因为个人减排税的要求非常高。所有责任承担者都应该“止步于”某个固定的亲生孩子最大数量吗？除非这个数字是一并且我们准备接受非常苛刻的个人减排义务和做出有问题的社会学假设。最后，文章概述了“令人不安的事实”带来的三项进一步的个人职责：培养良好的气候公民、成为积极分子以及减少家庭碳足迹。