The Harm to Others

The Harm to Others

Despite that I totally agree with the main arguments of antinatalism, I disagree with their main focus, which is undoubtedly on the created person. In my view, the main reason that it is always wrong to create a person is the inevitable harms that person would impose on others.

Procreation is not only a creation of a subject vulnerable to harms, but first and foremost a creation of a unit of exploitation and pollution.
While the person created is one morally relevant creature which would be harmed by being created, each person is hurting infinitely more morally relevant creatures during a lifetime.

It is very hard to accurately assess the harms caused by each person since it depends on various factors such as location, socioeconomic status, consumption habits, life expectancy, livelihood, diet and etc., however, regardless of any circumstances, harming numerous others is inevitable. And the most immediate and prominent harm is caused by what people eat.

Every person has to eat, and every food has a price. Unfortunately, most people are choosing the ones with the highest price – animal based foods. Therefore in most cases procreating is choosing that more fish would suffocate to death by being violently sucked out of water, that more chickens would be cramped into tiny cages with each forced to live in a space the size of an A4 paper, that more calves would be separated from their mothers, and more cow mothers would be left traumatized by the abduction of their babies, it is choosing more pigs who suffer from chronic pain, more lame sheep, more beaten goats, more turkeys who can barely stand as a result of their unproportionate bodies, more ducks who are forced to live out of water and in filthy crowded sheds, more rabbits imprisoned in an iron cage the size of their bodies, more geese being aggressively plucked, more male chicks being gassed, crushed or suffocated since they are unexploitable for eggs nor meat, more snakes being skinned alive, and more crocodiles and alligators being hammered to death and often also skinned alive to be worn, and more mice, cats, dogs, fish, rabbits, and monkeys being experimented on.

Each person directly consumes thousands of animals. More accurate average figures are varied according to each person location. An average American meat eater for example consumes more than 2,020 chickens, about 1,700 fish, more than 70 turkeys, more than 30 pigs and sheep, about 11 cows, and tens of thousands of aquatic animals, some directly and some indirectly (as many of which are fed to consumed animals).

American meat eaters are ranked as one of the highest per person meat consumers in the world, and so these figures are higher than the world average. On the other hand, most of the people who consume relatively little animal based foods, would choose otherwise if they could. The only reason they don’t is because they can’t afford it. Time and again it is shown that as soon as people’s financial status is better, one of the first things they do is increase their animal based food consumption. Economic improvement is always accompanied by an increase in meat consumption. Per capita meat consumption has been growing persistently everywhere in the world. Among low-income societies it doubled in the last 20 years, and in what is referred to as “middle income” societies it tripled in the last couple of decades.

In my view, the main reason these figures are very incomplete is not because they differ from place to place in the world, but because behind these numbers are suffering individuals whose personal stories are concealed by statistics. I am aware of the fact that it is always the case in mass scale atrocities, therefore I wish to elaborate, at least a little bit, about the life of an average chicken in the meat industry, so anyone who thinks that the evil of animal consumption starts and ends with humans killing animals, would get a more accurate view of what it is like to be an animal under the rule of the human race.

The miserable life of every chicken in the meat industry starts when they hatch. Instead of being born to a defending, loving, and guiding mother, the first experience of every chick, is seeing thousands of other babies helplessly chirping to their absent mothers in the incubator they are born in.
Usually at the age of 2-3 days, all the newborn chicks are aggressively thrown into boxes and are shipped to the sheds where they would spend their entire miserable lives.
Despite that naturally chickens are social animals who spend most of their time foraging, they are forced to live their entire lives in crowded, dirty, soaked with ammonia warehouses, with no chance for any normal social structure, or any normal chicken behavior such as perching, foraging and dust bathing, no natural food, no sunshine, and no fresh air, which are all very essential for each chicken.

As the chickens grow, each one suffers not only from the diminishing space, but also from a series of severe health issues. That is mainly because chickens are being manipulated to grow about three times faster than normal, through a suited diet, special lighting plans, but mostly genetic modifications which aim to enlarge the more profitable body parts at the expense of the least profitable body parts of each bird. That causes each chicken to suffer from painful skeletal and metabolic diseases. At some point most of the chickens in each shed suffer from chronic pain and lameness.
The accelerated growth also prevents the chickens’ hearts and lungs from keeping up with the rest of the body, and so many suffer from related illnesses, among them is cardiac arrhythmia and a heart attack. That is particularly amazing considering that chickens are slaughtered at the age of 7 weeks.

As the sheds get more crowded and filthier, the chickens who are forced to sit in wet, dirty, soaked with ammonia ground, develop painful blisters, lesions and ulcerations all along their already aching bodies. They often also develop painful eye infections as a result of the high ammonia concentration.

Their miserable lives are ended only by a miserable death. But before the chickens are slaughtered they suffer additional harms in the form of aggressive catching and loading into the trucks, a horrible ride to the slaughterhouse in an extremely crowded truck, under every weather condition, no matter how freezing it is outside or alternatively how hot and dry it is, the chickens have no cover. Since it is unprofitable neither to feed the poor birds in their last day nor to give them any water, the chickens are starving and are dehydrated, a horrible condition which further contributes to the already extreme pain and stress.

The chickens are then aggressively pulled out of the cages in the trucks and aggressively shoved upside down into shackles on a conveyor belt. They are supposed to be stunned by electrified water, but many aren’t and so their throats are slashed while fully conscious. Some are even thrown into the boiling scalding tank, which looses their feathers before plucking, while still fully conscious, that means that they will be conscious when the plucking knives tear their bodies.

No matter if it is 2,020 chickens that each person consumes during a lifetime like the average American, or much less like the average Congolese, no chicken should ever experience none of the described above. But currently, every year more than 60 billion chickens do. More than 2,000 chickens are born into this nightmare every single second.
And that’s only one species out of many who humans commercially exploit.

Since most humans, more than 95% of them actually, are not even vegans – the most basic and primal ethical decision one must make – procreation is practically letting a mass murderer on the loose.

Factory farming is the worst and cruelest way people feed themselves. But it is not that other options are harmless. It is impossible to eat without harming someone, somewhere along the line. And it takes a very long line to make food, any food. Much longer, and much more harmful than people tend to think.

Agricultural areas are not god given, they are human taken. Each was once the living space of other creatures, who were killed, chased away, starved (as people have destroyed their food sources), dried (as people took control of their water sources), being exposed to predator (as people have destroyed their dens and other hiding places), restricted by fences, polluted by chemicals people constantly spray, and even burned alive during slash-and-burn.
And all this is not an historical description of how agriculture has started, it all still happens all the time. Billions of animals are constantly being poisoned, starved, dehydrated, chased away, polluted, trampled by tractors, combines, ploughs and harvesters, their homes are being destroyed and etc. All are common harms inherent to agriculture, and happening every single moment.

The most direct and immediate harm of agriculture (besides factory farming of course) is the spread of poisons such as pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. More than 2.5 million tons of poisons are spread all over the world every year. Each gram is aimed to kill any creature in the area, and any potentially competitive plant in the area. Much of these poisons also harm creatures living far from the originally sprayed farms, as chemicals tend to drift by wind and washed by rain. And with such an intensive use, tons of poisons drift miles away. The estimation is that almost 100 million fish and birds die each year from pesticide poisoning, and about a billion are harmed by it.

Another types of chemicals intensively used in agriculture which are also harmful, are fertilizers. Studies show that about half of the fertilizers evaporate or are washed, and so pollute ecosystems outside the farms, mostly aquatic ones, as the chemicals often reach rivers and lakes.

A more direct harm of fertilizers is that some are made out of animals. Most fertilizers are synthetic, but some, mainly in organic farms, are made of animals’ bones, blood, feathers and of course manure. Obviously none of which are originated from wild animal who died naturally, but from factory farmed animals who were tortured and murdered. So anyone who wants to avoid the use of synthetic fertilizers, is bound to indirectly subsidize factory farming, by making animals exploitation more profitable.

Many people care about trees being cut in rain forests, but as always only few are doing something about it. Usually the few who do, hold the meat industry responsible. Although indeed most of the trees in the rainforests are cut for grazing, they are also cut for growing some of the most basic crops most humans consume on a daily basis, for example nuts, sugar, tea, coffee, several types of fruits and vegetables, and even the most common raw material for most of people’ clothes – cotton.
It is theoretically possible to avoid supporting the destruction of rain forests specifically, if people are extremely careful with every detail regarding every food item they consume (including each and every ingredient and each and every phase their food has gone through before they consumed it), however it is absolutely impossible for people to avoid their share in land clearing in general.

Not only that people can’t avoid land clearing, they also can’t avoid its destruction by the various harmful agriculture technics used to “improve” it. Usually this improvement involves total alteration of the soil so it can best fit the crops humans want to plant, and not the ones who originally grew there, and fed and covered numerous other animals.
Along with the intensive use of herbicides, basically the goal is to “humanize” the area, meaning turning it from a habitat of various animals, into one that is “clean” of any other creature and of other creatures’ favorite plants, and making it solely suitable for human uses.

Water is also “humanized” as humans use and control most of the accessible fresh water in the world. And most of the use is not for drinking but for producing food. Meat is notoriously water wasteful, but the production of many vegetables also requires plenty of water. According to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers it takes 17,196 liters of water to produce 1kg of chocolate, 3,025 liters of water to produce 1kg of olives, 2, 497 liters of water to produce 1kg of rice, and about the same amount for 1kg of cotton. It takes 1,849 liters of water to produce 1kg of dry pasta, 1,608 liters of water to produce 1kg of bread, 822 liters of water to produce 1kg of apples, 790 liters of water to produce 1kg of bananas, and 287 liters of water to produce 1kg of potatoes.
Humans’ excessive use of water leaves entire regions dried, and all the beings living there are left to dehydrate.

Plenty of water is also being used after the cultivation stage. The production of food requires a lot of water for washing, cooking, boiling, cooling industrial machinery and etc. But probably the most harmful aspect of food processing is energy, which is obviously inherent to each and every part along the process of each and every food item. Almost each and every food item goes through several processing stages. Many require removal of unwanted parts, cleaning, grinding, liquefaction, drying, sorting, coating, supplementation of other ingredients, cooling, heating, baking, steaming, freezing and etc. All stages are energy-intensive, and the vast majority of it comes from fossil fuels.

The world is still controlled by oil. It is still the oil age. Humans grow food using oil based fertilizers and pesticides. Plastic and construction materials are oil based. Many pharmacological products are made of oil. Even synthetic cloths are manufactured using petrochemicals. Heat and transportation are still to a large extent oil based. Currently, about 100 million barrels of oil are consumed every single day.

Energy production methods other than fossil fuels are also harmful. Hydraulic dams for example dehydrate entire habitats, wind turbines are responsible for many bird killing, solar panels are composed of heavy metals, but they are still less harmful than fossil fuels, yet humans, as usual, choose the most harmful option. And since there is little control over the chosen energy production method used for each food item, people are bound to participate in severely harming other creatures. They can’t really even choose the least harmful method, and most certainly can’t choose a harmless one, as there is no such thing.

Another stage in food production that is responsible for a lot of energy consumption (maybe even the most) is food transportation.
Each person in the world contributes in one way or another to what is referred to as the food superhighway. The food superhighway never stops moving. It is made possible by a vast network of ship lanes and flight paths. Without it people would run out of food. On any given moment there are 6 million containers moving around the globe. Each and every country is highly depended on long-distance food, so everyone, everywhere participate in a global food system.

And this global food system is extremely wasteful in terms of energy since much more energy is wasted on shipping the food than is received from the food. That is since the calories of energy in the form of fuel that it takes to air freight food, outweighs the nutritional energy in the food itself. In some cases the energy consumed in air freight of food is more than 130 times the energy of the food.

Some foods travel thousands of miles during the process stage only, before they are sent all over the world as export. It is very difficult to accurately calculate the mileage of each food item since many foods are composed of several ingredients which each has travelled long distances as well. From the field to the first processing stage, than to the next processing stages, then to the pack house, then to the storage warehouse, and only then to the airport or harbour. All that is for each ingredient of each final food item.

People can have now what they want all year round from all over the world. Fresh potatoes for example are imported from Egypt to the rest of the world in the winter. Egypt produces over 4.5 million tons of potatoes every year. To produce that amount in such an arid land that has no nutrients, it requires much effort, especially when it comes to water. It takes 500 liters of water to produce 1Kg of potatoes. In some farms the water is pumped from deep water sources using heavy machines which use a lot of energy. Egypt is one of the world’s biggest potatoes exporters despite that it is not a plant native to Egypt. They import the seeds from Scotland. They also import Irish peat to retain moister, and to cushion the potato against bruises during export. Before reaching Egypt, the peat and the seeds have already gone through nearly 13,000 km. The potatoes go through 320 kilometers by road to the Suez Canal. And from there they travel to the importing countries.

It is very difficult to estimate the harmfulness of the global food system since it plays a significant part in many harms such as air pollution, climate change, noise, vehicles and vehicles’ spare parts manufacture, car accidents, waste and etc.

All the harms involved in animal based food can theoretically be avoided if all humans would decide to go vegan. But that’s not going to happen. And anyway, not all the harms involved in plant based food can be avoided. Avoiding all food items that cause air pollution, water pollution, noise pollution, climate alteration, land alteration, land clearing, land destruction, trampling, water waste, poisoning and etc., is simply impossible.

Despite the high cost of food production at others expense, people as a whole are so indifferent, that globally, every year about third of the food produced for human consumption – approximately 1.3 billion tonnes which is 41 tonnes each second – gets lost or wasted. Some is immediately being discarded after harvest since it doesn’t meet the required commercial standards, and the majority is wasted by the consumers.
Almost half of all fruit and vegetables produced are wasted. 8% of greenhouse gases heating the planet are caused by food waste. If food waste was a country, it would be the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after USA and China. Eliminating global food waste would save 4.4 million tonnes of C02 a year, the equivalent of taking one in four cars off the road.

And that’s only the carbon footprint of wasted food. Researchers from Lund University in Sweden found that avoiding having a child can save an average of 58.6 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions per year.

A study by statisticians at Oregon State University concluded that in the United States, the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environment-friendly practices people might employ during their entire lives such as driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.

And according to another study called Global Demographic Trends and Future Carbon Emissions, from more than a decade ago (meaning its conclusions are known for more than a decade), reducing fertility rates so as to match the UN’s ‘low fertility’ projections rather than the ‘medium fertility’ projections, which corresponds to an average difference of 0.5 children per breeder, would likely result in a yearly reduction in GHG emissions of 5.1 billion tons of carbon by 2100. 5.1 billion tons per year is more than five times the annual emissions savings we would achieve in 50 years by doubling the fuel efficiency of the world auto fleet, or by halving the average kilometers traveled per car, or by tripling the number of nuclear reactors currently providing electricity around the world, or by increasing current wind energy capacity 50 times, or by halting all deforestation everywhere around the world. Reducing population growth could provide more emissions reductions than all five of these other measures put together.
The study’s authors estimate that following the low rather than the medium fertility projections would account for between 16% and 29% of required emissions reductions by 2050.

Bedsides severe climate alteration, breeding is also an act of plundering, as each procreation further enhances robbing resources from others. One of these resources is water.
I’ve already mentioned some water use figures of some vegan food items to show that water waste is unavoidable even if people really cared and tried. But most people don’t care enough even to go vegan. Obviously water waste is far from being the worst thing about consuming meat. The primal reason not to eat meat, or not to create a new person that might eat meat, is because meat is produced with the pain and misery of the animal it is made of, not because it is water wasteful. But the point here is how little people care about things in general, about the animals they contribute to their torture, and about the animals (including humans) who they contribute to their water shortage by consuming water wasteful products such as one burger who takes about 3,000 liters of water to produce, or a chicken which takes around 9,000 liters of water to produce.

And obviously it’s not just food. It takes more than 33 liters of water to produce just one of the ‘chips’ that typically powers laptops, smart phones and iPads. A single smartphone requires 240 gallons of water to produce. And it even goes further than that as every bit and byte people consume over the internet has an indirect cost in terms of water waste due to the enormous cooling demand in data centers.

Even water is highly water wasteful, as it takes about 4 liters of water to produce a one liter plastic bottle of water. And not only is a lot of water involved with water consumption but also a lot of oil. 63 billion gallons of oil are used every year to supply, just the U.S, with plastic water bottles.

The harmfulness of bottled water is not only their wastefulness but mostly their pollution.
A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute. Less than half of the bottles are collected for recycling and less than 10% of those collected are turned into new bottles. Most plastic bottles end up in landfill or in the ocean.

And bottles are only part of the enormous plastic pollution.
Humans have produced more plastic over the last ten years than during the entire last century. Half of it is just thrown away. That’s enough to circle the earth four times. Only five percent of the plastics produced are recovered. It is estimated that more than a trillion plastic bags are used worldwide annually. Only 1% of plastic bags are returned for recycling. Americans throw away 100 billion plastic bags annually. That’s about 307 bags per person!
Plastic packing for food makes up the majority of municipal waste in America. 80 million tons of waste in America alone, every year, comes from plastic food packing. About a third of the 80 million tons of plastic packaging produced annually is left to flow into oceans; the equivalent of pouring one garbage truck of plastic into the ocean every minute. This is expected to increase to two per minute by 2030 and four per minute by 2050. The average person produces half a pound of plastic waste every day.

Virtually every piece of plastic that was ever made still exists in some shape or form.
It takes 500-1,000 years for plastic to degrade. About half of plastics float and it can drift for years before eventually concentrating in the ocean gyres. Plastic in the ocean breaks down into such small segments that pieces of plastic from a one liter bottle could end up on every mile of beach throughout the world. SES (Sea Education Society) scientists studied plastics in the Atlantic and calculated there are 580,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer.
One million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals are killed annually from plastic in the oceans. 44 percent of all seabird species, 22 percent of cetaceans, all sea turtle species and a growing list of fish species have been documented with plastic in or around their bodies. In samples collected in Lake Erie, 85 percent of the plastic particles were smaller than two-tenths of an inch, and much of that was microscopic. Marine species of all sizes, from zooplankton to whales, are forced to eat microplastics, all the time.

The plastic production is set to double in the next 20 years and quadruple by 2050. Humanity is producing billions of tons of single use plastic products that will often be used for no more than 5 minutes, but will have a harmful impact for more than 500 years. That’s insanely selfish.

And it is not just plastic. An average American consumes about 45,000 pounds of metal (through the consumption of various products) during a lifetime. Each pound of metal must be mined, processed, transported and manufactured into consumable products, all stages are considerably polluting. For example, currently, about 25,500 tons of silver are consumed every year. There is some of it in every car, computer and phone, as well as many other products.

The extraction of raw materials which includes drilling, digging, cutting, refining, smelting, and pulping, releases chemical substances and carbon dioxide, and pollute the air, water and land. It also destroys habitat for innumerable animals.
Gold mines for example produce enormous amounts of waste, some of it is toxic metals such as Lead, Nickel, Cadmium, Copper, and Bromine, which end up in rivers, lakes and oceans, hurting aquatic animals.

Humanity as a whole throws about 100 million aluminum and steel cans every day.
The world’s beer and soda consumption uses about 200 billion aluminum cans every year. That is 6,700 cans every second – enough to go around the planet every 17 hours.
It takes more energy to mine and produce aluminum than any other metal. The energy it takes to make 4 soda cans is equivalent to filling one of these cans with gasoline.
Aluminum is very toxic for fish. Acid rain containing aluminum harms fish’s gills which cause them to suffocate. In fact aluminum is the only abundant element on earth that is of no use to any biological function of any being. How typical is it of humans to fill the planet with a material that organisms don’t use and that some are severely hurt by.

Everything takes energy to produce. Producing paper not only involves cutting down trees (93% of paper comes from trees), it takes twice the energy used to produce a plastic bag. Water is also being wasted to produce paper. It takes an average of 5 liters of water to produce one piece of A4 paper. Although it was predicted that the electronic revolution would lessen the paper usage, demand for paper is expected to double before 2030. U.S offices use 12.1 trillion sheets of paper a year. Paper accounts for 25% of landfill waste and 33% of municipal waste. With all the paper people waste each year, they can build a 12 foot high wall of paper from New York to California!

Every day each person produces 20 gallons of sewage. Over a lifetime, that is 567,575 gallons.
Each person sends about 64 tons of waste to landfills over a lifetime.
Americans generate 30 billion foam cups, 220 million tires, and 1.8 billion disposable diapers every year, according to the Green Schools Alliance.

Since as opposed to the common way people present it, procreation is not having a baby but creating a person, I have focused here on harms people commonly cause throughout their lifetime, and not particularly when they are babies. However it is impossible not to specifically refer to the harm of disposable diapers, mainly in terms of non-degradable waste, and pollution during the production phase.
The number of diapers babies are using depends on when they are starting to regularly use the toilet. On average, most children are potty-trained by around 35 to 39 months of age. Considering that in the first year of life, babies are consuming about 3,000 diapers, and in the second year between 1,500 and 2,000, the estimations are that each baby adds about 6,000 diapers to landfills, where they will not compost or biodegrade.

People can choose to use cloth diapers instead of disposable ones, but they don’t. About 95 percent of American parents choose disposable diapers over reusable ones.
And even if more people would have chosen reusable diapers, that option also has a very high environmental impact due to the energy and water costs of laundering cloth diapers, as well as the environmental impact of cotton production (a crop which is one of the highest in terms of pesticide use) and the harm caused by detergents which I’ll immediately address. A life-cycle analysis, conducted by the Environment Agency in the UK, compared the manufacturing, disposal, and energy costs of both diaper types and found that based on average laundry habits and appliance efficiency, the overall carbon emissions created by cloth diapering were roughly the same as those of using disposables.

Another significant harm involved in doing laundry, and with every other way people are cleaning their things and themselves, is the use of cleansing agents. People harm others even when they clean themselves, their dishes, and their clothes.
There are two kinds of detergents with different characteristics: phosphate detergents and surfactant detergents. Detergents that contain phosphates are highly caustic, and surfactant detergents are very toxic. The differences are that surfactants are used to enhance the wetting, foaming, dispersing and emulsifying properties of detergents. Phosphates are used in detergents to soften hard water and help suspend dirt in water.

Detergents can have poisonous effects on all types of aquatic life if they are present in sufficient quantities, and this includes the biodegradable detergents. All detergents destroy the external mucus layers that protect the fish from bacteria and parasites, plus they can cause severe damage to the gills. Most fish will die when detergent concentrations approach 15 ppm (parts per million).

Detergents also add another problem for aquatic life by lowering the surface tension of the water. Organic chemicals such as pesticides and phenols are then much more easily absorbed by the fish. A detergent concentration of only 2 ppm can cause fish to absorb double the amount of chemicals they would normally absorb.

Another major harm of detergents occurs when the phosphorus and nitrogen compounds get concentrated in rivers. These two nutrients enable increased growth of aquatic plants (algae) that invade the entire aquatic area. When plants die, their decomposition consumes oxygen from the aquatic environment. Added to this is the consumption of oxygen due to the decomposition of the surfactants present in the detergents. Fish and invertebrates do not find adequate levels of oxygen and die by asphyxiation.

And before people are harming others even when cleaning – among other things their clothes – their clothes are harmful from and all along their production process.
From the growth of water-intensive and pesticide-intensive cotton, to the use of oil and coal to transport it to the manufacturing countries, to mass scale workers’ exploitation, to the release of dyes and other chemicals into water sources, to the huge waste of thrown out clothes, the garment industry is highly harmful. Every human is bound to harm others simply by using cloths.

Cotton which represents nearly half of the raw material used to make clothes, is responsible for 18% of worldwide pesticide use and 25% of total insecticide use. It is also extremely water wasteful as up to 20,000 liters of water are needed to produce just 1kg.

According to figures from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), it takes 3,781 liters of water to make a pair of jeans, from the production of the cotton to the delivery of the final product to the store. That is more than 14,000 glasses of water, and it also equates to the emission of around 33.4 kilograms of carbon equivalent.
And people also need a shirt to wear with their jeans. A single cotton T-shirt requires over 700 gallons of water, or 2649 litters. So that’s already about 6430 litters of water without even mentioning socks, underwear and shoes.

Huge quantities of fresh water are also used for the dyeing and finishing process for all clothes. It can take up to 200 tons of fresh water per ton of dyed fabric. Of the total fiber input used for clothing, 87% is incinerated or disposed of in a landfill. Around 20 % of wastewater worldwide comes from fabric dyeing and treatment.
Every year the fashion industry uses 93 billion cubic meters of water which is enough to meet the consumption needs of five million people.

The fashion industry is not only extremely water wasteful but it is also extremely water contaminating.
In most of the countries in which garments are produced, untreated toxic wastewaters from textiles factories are dumped directly into the rivers. Wastewater contains toxic substances such as lead, mercury, and arsenic, among others, which are extremely harmful for aquatic creatures. Another major source of water contamination is the mentioned massive use of fertilizers for cotton production, which heavily pollutes runoff waters.

Unlike cotton, synthetic fibers such polyester nylon and acrylic, have a lower water footprint, because they can be washed at lower temperatures, and dry quickly. However, they are made of fossil fuels, they are non-biodegradable, and several studies have shown that one load of laundry of synthetic fiber clothes can discharge 700,000 microplastic fibers, which release toxins into the environment. Estimates show that every year approximately half a million tons of plastic microfibers from washing clothes end up in the ocean.

In recent decades, fast fashion has further increased the harms of the clothing industry. Fashion brands are now producing almost twice the amount of clothing compared with a couple of decades ago, with most being cheaper than ever. And so people now are purchasing much more clothes than they did in the past. Out of about the 100 billion pieces of new clothing being produced each year, 80 billion are purchased and most of the rest are being thrown away.
This trend results in large amounts of textile waste, most of which is incinerated, landfilled and very little is being donated.

And the same goes for many of the clothes which are purchased.
According to The New York Times, nearly three-fifths of clothing ends up in incinerators or landfills within a year of being produced. The average American throws away 32 kilograms of clothing and other textiles each year. Less than 1% of used clothing is recycled into new garments.

And since nowadays much of peoples’ shopping is done online, and so clothes are being shipped across the globe, additional waste in the form of vast amounts of bags, much of it made of plastic, is being produced.

The global apparel industry emits 1.7 billion tons of CO2 per year which accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions and is more than the amount produced by international flights and shipping.

Some call this extremely partial list of examples of harming others – ‘harming the environment’, as if the environment is the one who gets hurt. But it is not the environment, it is the creatures living in it who get hurt. And it is not ‘environmental harm’ but suffering of sentient creatures. It is exploitation of creatures who are in a weaker position. It is an historical crime. It is absolute domination over the earth. It is injustice. It is speciesism. All of these are much more accurate descriptions than ‘harming the environment’.

Living on a planet with limited resources, no one can really avoid getting in conflict with others. Every action people make affects others, so it is even theoretically impossible to fulfil the most basic ethical requirement – do no harm. And practically, it is far from being the case that people are harming only since and when they cannot do otherwise. I wish people were harming others only for survival reasons. Reality is unfortunately much crueler. People harm, exploit, torture, humiliate, deprive, attack, ignore, abuse and whatnot, for much less essential reasons. Other animals mostly don’t harm others if it is not necessary for their survival, but this is far from being the case when it comes to humans who very often harm out of selfish reasons. They don’t harm others because they have things that they need, but mostly because they have things that they want.

In addition to animals harmed by people who directly consume them, and to animals harmed by people who pollute their air, land, food and water, steal their water, destroy their habitats, altering their climate, throwing their waste into their homes, bombard their homes with noise and light, and etc. other humans are also victims of people’s want of things.

As opposed to what most people want to believe, there are still slaves around the world and it is actually quite a common phenomenon, not to mention workers’ exploitation which is so abundant that there is no country in the world where it doesn’t exist. Most people don’t consider workers’ exploitation that is common in mines, the construction industry, the agriculture industry, and of course in sweatshops, as slavery, but I fail to spot the fundamental difference. When people can theoretically leave their horrible job but practically can’t, when people work very hard for very long hours with very few breaks if any, when they can’t fight for their rights or even negotiate some of their working conditions, when they must jeopardize their physical and emotional health, when the pay is barely enough for them to survive, even if formally it is not slavery, practically it is.
Modern slavery is everywhere. Practically it is impossible for people to avoid supporting it, and most don’t want to. They enjoy a high level of living largely because of this modern slavery. They can buy cheap commodities such as chocolate, coffee, clothes, salt, sugar, rice, wheat, mobile phones, shoes, toys, and etc. thanks to the misery of others.
Modern slavery is mostly a product of structured poverty, and as long as poverty exists, slavery would exist too. It is not very likely that people would end poverty and slavery any time soon, and so slavery is probably here to stay.  Every human supports slavery in one way or another. Some do it sorrowfully and unintentionally, and most indifferently. But everyone, somehow, encourages this gruesome human feature which is as old as civilization, and shows no signs of decline. Therefore every creation of a new person is also a creation of a modern salve or a modern enslaver.

A Firmer Defense of Antinatalism

The common counterarguments to some of the common antinatalist arguments are not very challenging (or even logically valid in some cases), so I think most antinatalist arguments can easily stand up to the opposition, but still, I think that the argument of harm to others is much firmer and more invulnerable.

For example, the common counter argument to the consent argument, is that it is impossible to get a formal consent from the ones who don’t exist, but they do give a “hypothetical consent” by retroactively affirming their creation.
Considering the harms to others, counterarguments such as hypothetical consent or that it is illogical to ascribe consent to non-existing persons, is irrelevant. That is since many of the creatures who will be harmed by the person who will be born, do exist, or will exist to be used by that person, and since existing sentient creatures will most certainly not give their consent to be harmed by that person and for that person’s sake. Not only the person who is about to be born is going to be harmed as a result of its existence, but also thousands of others who would be harmed as part of providing the living support for that person. A “support” none of them has ever gave consent to. In this case I think it is safe to say that hypothetical consent won’t be given.

Before discussing the relevancy and feasibility of obtaining consent from a person who doesn’t yet exist, we must obtain consent from everyone who would be harmed by that person’s existence. Even if we could have obtained consent from non-existing persons before creating them, we first must ask everyone who would be sacrificed and otherwise harmed by these persons. We must get their consent to be genetically modified so they would provide the maximum meat possible for the to-be born persons. We must get their consent to be imprisoned for their entire lives. We must get their consent to live without their family for their entire lives. We must get their consent to suffer chronic pain and maladies. We must get their consent to never breathe clean air, walk on grass, bath in water, and eat their natural food. We must get their consent to be violently murdered so the to-be born could consume their bodies. We must get their consent to destroy their habitats, pollute their land, water, and air. But no one is asking them. And it is not even because everyone knows they would never give their consent, but because others’ harms matter so little to people, that no one even thinks they must be asked.

Another example is the antinatalist argument that it is not in the interests of non-exiting persons to exist, or that they have a right not to be hurt by existence, which is usually replied with the claim that the non-existing persons have no interests or rights, and that there is no way of knowing what will be their preferences, and that most people are glad they were born. There are several ways to reply to these pro-natalist arguments but the main one is that each procreation involves massive and inevitable violation of rights of all the sentient creatures who would be hurt by each created person. It is impermissible to procreate, first and foremost, since there is no right to hurt existent others. The argument of the harms to others neutralizes the pro-natalist claim that only existent persons have rights (I disagree with this assertion and think that it is actually a violation of the rights of a child to bring it into the world, and that future generations do have rights which existent people must respect), since obviously when the focus is on the harms inflicted on existent others, rights violation is not even questionable. Even if pro-natalists insist on misunderstanding the point and misrepresenting the antinatalist argument regrading rights and interests violation, still, bringing a new person into the world is certainly a violation of the rights of any existing creature who would be hurt by that person.

Another example is that although most people, even ardent pro-natalists, agree that reducing suffering is more ethically important than increasing happiness, they disagree that this implies abstaining from procreation despite that the creation of a person assures at least some suffering, while nonexistent persons never suffer. They disagree because they claim, obviously falsely, that the happiness experienced by the created person would far exceed the suffering, and that nonexistent persons never suffer but are also deprived of happiness. However, once they accepted that reducing suffering is more ethically important than increasing happiness, even if we accept the false assertion in their argument and agree that a person’s happiness would surly exceed its suffering, they can’t argue that the happiness of one person can exceed all the suffering of its numerous victims. Obviously compensation for suffering can’t be applied between different persons, but even if cross person compensation was relevant, it could never be the case between humans and all of their victims.

Some antinatalists claim that it is wrong to bring a person to an unfair and unjust world. That is usually replied with the utterly false claim that the people creating the person are not part of the problem and that they would do everything possible that their child’s life would be as fair as possible, and that their child would be as fair and as just as possible.
Obviously this reply is ridiculously naïve, unaware and ignorant in any case, but it is especially so when it comes to harming others, as every person would harm others in various ways, even if that person would be vegan from birth and until death, and be born to highly ecologically aware parents. Even if there was a distant tribe of people who only gather their food and never hunt or fish, life would still be a constant and inevitable struggle over resources. And children are not born in such tribes, and would probably be lifelong meat eaters.

If procreation was necessary then it would have been sensibly of people to do everything they can so their child would be as fair and as just as possible, and focus on minimizing suffering to the least possible. But it is not. There is no physical obligation to create new people. No one has to procreate. And since procreation is always a harm to others, everyone must never procreate.

Lastly, the argument that procreation is a gamble on someone else’s life is usually countered by the claim that it is a very safe gamble since most people are happy that they were born and so they have no reason to think it would be different with their expected children, and therefore are ready to take that risk. There are plenty of ways to counter this claim, mainly by arguing that there is no need to take that risk, and that people are mentally structured with optimistic biases and adjustment ability which causes them to wrongly estimate the chances that something bad would happen to their children, as the bitter truth is that lives can be destroyed in a split of a second. But the main argument should be that procreation is not a gamble that the one born would be happy and won’t suffer, but a decision that many sentient creatures would suffer for the sake of the one born. It is not a gamble, it is a ruling, a ruling against many for the sake of one, which there is absolutely no grantee that would even be happy and not miserable. In fact it is quite certain that it won’t be happy because almost no one is, and the chances of misery are higher than most people want to think. But again, the harm to others should be the main issue, since even if the child would be the happiest human that ever lived, there is no way to avoid all the harms caused by that person, and so it is morally wrong to create it even if the risk was truly minor or even if it was guaranteed that the person would be happy.

Though creating someone is a risk taken at that person expense, and it is truly a gamble on someone else’s life, in terms of general harm, procreation is not at all a gamble or risk, but absolute certainty. Creating a person is not taking a risk that harms would be inflicted, since it is absolutely certain that the person created would severely harm others. Even if the person created would have a great life which s/he is glad to have, it is absolutely certain that serious harms would be inflicted by that person. Procreation is not taking a risk of causing harms, it is indifferently deciding to cause harms.

Procreation is not only creating a subject of harms and pleasures, but a small unit of exploitation and pollution, so the question is not is it justified that someone would impose harms on another person so that that other person would experience pleasure, but is it justified that someone would impose immense harm on many others so that the person created would experience pleasures.
The question people must ask is not only is it ethical to impose harms on someone (hoping that the pleasures that someone would experience outweigh the harms), but is it ethical to impose immense suffering on many others so that the person they decided to create would experience pleasures. Since it is never ethical, procreation is never ethical.

But it is not the effectiveness of the ‘harm to others’ argument in terms of avoiding difficulties that other arguments have to face, rather it is much simpler. Procreation is creating a new center of suffering which didn’t have to be created. It is a center of suffering since it would suffer, and would cause much more suffering to others.

The common claims by antinatalists are definitely ethical but in most cases they focus on the harms to the expected child and not the harm the expected child would cause to others. It is not that the issue never comes up, but almost never as a main argument, and usually only as minor fortifications of the main claim which is the child’s welfare. And even in these cases it is usually in the frame of concern for the environment, overpopulation, and orphans. Claims which are all valid and strong in themselves, but none should be the focus of the argument. The heart of the matter must be the harms the child would certainly cause. Harms which are unavoidable except of course by not procreating.

When creating a new person, people don’t just force life on that person, but they also force that person on other living creatures. They force many others, probably thousands of sentient creatures, to be hurt by that person. Procreation is always a harm because someone always gets harmed by the existence of someone being born.
Every creation of a new little exploitation and pollution unit is a crime, not only because as opposed to other species humans can choose not to procreate, but since the price of human procreation on others is extremely higher.

The greatest crime of procreation is creating a new and unnecessary unit of suffering, exploitation and pollution, which is added to the already billions of units of suffering, exploitation and pollution. Units of suffering, exploitation and pollution mustn’t exist.

Besides and beyond the personal harm each exploitation and pollution unit would cause, which is a very unequivocal argument against procreation, the fact that much of the human harm is largely a consequence of human society and not of specific humans, is an unequivocal argument against the whole human race. Many harms are unavoidable. As earlier mentioned, everyone has to eat and every food has a price, even vegan, local, organic and seasonable. People must eat and food must hurt someone at some point. It is possible to significantly reduce the harms but not to avoid it. It is impossible to entirely avoid using fertilizers, packages, pesticides, transportation, water, energy, and producing waste. And that is anyway relevant for extremely tiny minority of people who care enough to choose the least harmful options at any given time. Even most vegan and environmentalists are not doing that. Most vegans simply consume plant based food, and most environmentalists still hardly connect food with environmentalism. In recent years there is a positive awaking in that area, but still it mostly regards dolphin safe tuna, food’s carbon footprint, bottled water, and avoiding six pack rings.
And of course the vast majority of people are extremely far from even being aware of all that, not to mention considering it, or even thinking that they should. There is no way to avoid harming others even if everyone tried, and currently the vast majority of people not only don’t want to, but support the exact opposite direction.
Not even one horror that humans inflict on others has really totally been eradicated. They’re all, in one way or another, still here. War, rape, torture, murder, plunder, fur, leather, circus, zoos, horse racing, colonialism, turning animals to sumpters, enslavement of nonhuman animals for agricultural labor, tusking, circumcision, bullfights, genocide, hunting, isolation, wool, forced hospitalization, slavery. They are all still here. Even stoning, throwing over the roof, and burning at the stake are still around, and for the same mad reasons, just as it was hundreds of years ago. All these horrors were invented by the human race and all are still maintained by the human race. The human race has managed to start all these atrocities and didn’t manage to completely end even one of them. And that is one of the main reasons to end the human race by forced sterilization.

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