Study: Fewer Kids = Cooler Planet

The study goes on to say that if couples had two children instead of three they could cut their family's carbon dioxide output equivalently to the amount of CO2 produced by 620 return flights a year between London and New York.

Speaking of which, how's George "Flying Is Dying" Monbiot's new baby doing?

I have another great idea, lets promote euthanasia and allow the elderly and sick to die so they don't exhale any CO2. This article makes treehuggers seem like Nazis. I don't think this is a good thing. Look at Spain, where people are not having children and the immigration from Africa is huge. The population is changing, which may not be a bad thing, but there seems to be a decline in the birthrate in the western world and it is increasing in the third world. If this continues, the culture of the third world will overtake western culture. I'm not prepared for the barbarism these people practice such as female circumcision and punishments for crimes with amputations or stoning women to death for showing their faces.

While I see the intent of this article I feel that the results are far too generalized. Take a family with 1-2 children who drive 2 large SUVs, don't recycle, eat meat at every meal, use formula and disposable diapers and generally do not give any thought to their environmental impact. Then take a family with 3-4 children who use alternative fuels, bike or walk, recycle, compost, garden, eat vegetarian, breastfeed, cloth diaper and/or use elimination communication and everything else involved to live a life committed to preserving the environment. I would think that the larger family would be leaving a smaller impact on the world than the smaller, but much more wasteful, family.

That's good to see that this is coming to light, but did we need a study to know it? I think that many people have figured that having 5 kids probably isn't a good thing. At least that's assuming that god didn't tell you to cover the Earth -- you always have to listen to him despite your conscience, right?

This is a position that is not new, but has not managed to gain many followers. I can only hope that more people pay attention to it and reduce their impact on the environment by having fewer children.

This is definitely an issue that needs to be discussed. We must be careful in our comments about fewer people, because the path to get there is fraught with moral issues. I don't just mean the obvious issues, either. We don't want the most educated and ethical people to raise the fewest children, but mandating family size is not a very humanist approach either.

Tough topic, but it is very important from an environmental perspective.

I think that the real issue is not the people who choose to have 5 children; it's the people who have them by default because they are uneducated about family planning. The whole abstinence is the only 100 percent effective form of birth control idea only works if kids remember to "put their abstinence on". Somehow, I always found it a little easier to remember a condom.

Trish, i think a good bit of this has to be looked at long term. How are the grandchildren of those 2 families going to behave? Since we can't know, we have to take some statical mean, and that's what the paper tries to do to some extent. Then the assumption can be roughly made that more children = worse environment.

I for one don't see how this topic can be avoided. My take on it is that we shouldn't be setting up totalitarian limits or requirements (unless we need to). But we can't turn a blind eye to it either. An effective middle would be promoting women's education and family planning education around the globe, while doing all we can to pull those nations out of an agriculturally dominant society where large families mean survival.

For the already developed world, I don't think there's much that needs to be done - in many nations population is already declining. If there are special cases like china, I actually like the way it was done in "Enders Game". You can have as many kids as you want, but for each over the replacement rate you'll have to pay for what would otherwise be public services like education. Sure, it favors the wealthy, but I'd bet that only a small percentage of the people that have the money would a) want to have a large family and b) want to spend so much money on this.

Simple solution:

ADOPT

Once all the children who need a good home are spoken for, then we can talk about making more. Until then, anyone who chooses to create a child rather than adopt one is a selfish, inconsiderate, ignorant fool. Guess what, your genetics are not special, so get over it and adopt. If you are too much a slave to your base monkey instincts, then maybe you should not only not pass on your genes, but also are probably unfit to be a parent to begin with.

Inflammatory? Yep.

True? YEP.

This is an extremely difficult, voluntary sacrifice that should be saluted among those who choose to make it. No global law would be just. We should all consider fewer children (or adopting); those who do have large families should be treated with love, not disgust.

If you think babies are disgusting, it's best to remember you once were one.

[And Jason, watch yourself; your comments could be construed as racist.]

Reports like these, while probably technically true, do far more damage to the Green cause than good in the US. Consider, for instance, how far from the mainstream much of the type of thinking TH promotes still remains. Then consider that policy interference in family planning is anathema to most Americans. Now, add in a Zero-Population Growth plank to the standard environmentalism platform and see how the public reacts.

Without denying the truth of the need to slow population growth, and perhaps even reverse it, in much of the world (BTW, there aren't many countries with increasing fertility rates), we can recognize that the time is far from ripe to be recommending such a thing to the broader public. Let's convince people first that their actions actually have an effect on the environment. Then, we can talk about drastically changing those actions.

I think a child credits would be brilliant and far more useful than carbon credits. You get credit to have one child, and if you want more than one you should have to buy that credit from someone who doesn't want a child. Win-win all round. Enough of these bloody incentives to have children when welfare parents are the last damn thing this planet needs.

we could look at it this way; we see the problem of human overpopulation in its given environment. There are 2 options;

1) we see the issue and act on it, no we dont have to use nazi tactics, but putting something in place to discourage families greater than 2 in size could work. 2.1 is the break even point.

2) Let nature take its course, how does nature usually deal with overpopulation of a species? there is usually a collapse of some form, the food chain, disease. Now it may take a bit to get there but all signs point in that direction if humans continue to populate in greater and greater numbers.

Sure this is a sticky issue because it deals with our own species, but like it or not the next 50 -100 years could be interesting. and thats our children and grand children's time. What was the population around 1900's? roughly 2billion, now 100 years later 6 billion estamated to be 9 billion in the next 50 years.

Cass ... that's your idea of a win-win?

Under that scenario, rich people will end up buying off poor people's right to reproduce.

Well, I guess then you wouldn't see any more of those pesky welfare parents.

Some people miss the point in that it's not the having kids that is the environmentally unfriendly thing, it's the effect that this has on an ever increasing population that is the problem. I have always been of the opinion that our ever increasing CO2 are in part to do with the increase in population over the years. In very basic terms, and taking out all the points raised about the western worlds decreasing childbirth rate, the population of the world is increasing exponentially, and if the population is increasing at (conservative)5% a year we ALL should be decreasing our CO2 emmisions by the same amount just to keep the status quo. This just isn't happening accross the board.

Unfortunately this is the political taboo as no world leader is ever going to suggest limiting offspring as this would have ramafications on future economies (pensions, workforce etc). So, it is left to the individual and hoepfully, as has been noted on other posts, the number of kids one chooses to have will become a concious decision for every couple.

I have chosen to only have 2 children for this very reason - 2 of us, 2 to replace us...

If we do not voluntarily put in population control measures, then three historical measures will happen by default.
War, Famine and Disease
Historically when animal populations are stressed famine and disease regulate the carrying capacity for the area.

Humans have added war as the tragic answer to population stress. I fear environmental wars over land, water and air resources.

All the conservatives are freaking out without having read the study - which does NOT advocate for governmental regulations demanding that people be sterilized after two children or penalized in any way for having large families. It's simply noting that adding to the size of your family is the same thing as adding to Earth's human population, and that has consequences!

Could we all please get informed before we make up stuff like this?

Most of the worlds resources are consumed by North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia; collectively, these countries and regions have some of the lowest population birth rates in the world. If population growth is such a problem - why is a minority of the world's population consuming a majority of its resources?

I'll tell you what the real taboo is - that we in the 'West' (for want of a better word) simply aren't prepared to change our wasteful, profligate lifestyle (except in the most negligible way), but we, of course, expect others to change their ways.

Even if we reduce the world's population, the earth cannot sustain the type of excessive consumer lifestyle we lead in the 'West'. We can support and feed a large world population that consumes far fewer resources, but we are simply not prepared to drastically change our consumption habits. (By the way, the amount of food thrown away in rich industrial nations is obscene).

Willy Bio-
I have long thought about adopting children for the reason that I would love a large family, but feel that having more than two of my own is definitely morally problematic.

But, then two things happened, I adopted two cats: one was a tiny kitten and the other fully grown. And then, my wife and I had our first child.

What I learned from my cats is that, while both are wonderful creatures, I "love" the one adopted as a kitten more because of the bond created when it was so dependent on us for care. Now, applying this to adoption is simple: adopt infants. The only difficulty with this is that doing so is far more expensive (on the order of 30,000 in the US), and the supply is insufficient to meet demand.

What I've learned in the weeks following my newborn's birth is that I would willingly give up my life to save that of my daughter's. Like it or not, that "base monkey instinct" has molded my brain into believing that the ultimate sacrifice would be warranted to save the life of this girl, largely because part of my would live on in some sense.

I may be wrong, but I just don't see that kind of devotion developing toward even an adopted infant. Love, yes. But would such complete devotion develop with adoption? What would be the effect on families, would they be weakened by this latent feeling of fostering another's child?

It’s fairly obvious that overpopulation is a serious issue. There are some countries with agrarian economies that require large families. However these can eventually be replaced with the machine labor that we use in this country (hopefully pollution free tractors by the time third world economies can afford machine capital). In developed countries there is no economic reason to have a large family. A friend of mine desperately wants 5 children and I am trying to convince him to have one or two of is own and adopt the others, there are certainly plenty of kids in the foster system in the US that need permanent parents.

Trish, while you are right about the environmental quality of parents, having both the environmentalist families and wasteful families voluntarily decrease their birth rate is much better than just hoping that large families will be able to compensate for greater numbers of children. After all, right now it is comparatively expensive to live a green lifestyle and the large families I know tend to have less money than small families.

Jason, while it sounds harsh, in order to maintain a sustainable population, countries need to both limit their birth rates and limit immigration. The US, Canada and most European countries have replacement birth rates, but their populations are increasing due to immigration. Immigrants tend to have higher birth rates for several generations because of their agricultural and perhaps religious backgrounds (my Irish ancestors were no different). Countries like Russia have birthrates below replacement, but they are now encouraging larger families because their economies depend on young workers to support older workers. I suppose the idea would be to have a birth rate below replacement and move more jobs into service areas while increasing the use of mechanized farming and industry. That way you would have enough people to take care of the aging population without affecting other sectors of the economy.

Mandatory restrictions on childbirth causes many problems, a foremost one being that the government can't be in everyone's bedrooms forcing them to use contraceptives. And mass abortion has many moral issues voluntary doesn't.

Now, on to the bigger issue as I see it. I'm sure I'll get called elitist, classist, communist, racist, or whatever, but I'll still bring it up.

What happens when well off upper and middle classes have mostly 1 or 2 children, and poorer communities that can't afford contraception, or are poorly educated have many more? The upper classes shrink, and the lower ones expand. This causes greater tensions between the two groups, as fewer people now have most of the money, and an even lower percentage of the whole has money. And thats just in industrial nations.

In places like Africa, Malthus is alive an well. Remember Rwanda? Look at Darfur. The population has outgrown its food source. This causes, as Jason said slightly crudely, emigration. I will not make claims as to their cultural or racial inferiority, but economically, they drive down where they seek refuge.

Anthony,

First off, in order to read my post you may have to suppress the "mama bear" defensive instincts which may rear up. Not saying they will, but plenty of supposedly sentient humans revert to mere baboons if they receive even a hint of negativity towards their spawn.

What you describe is no different than what a heroin user suffers from all their lives. Your brain made sure to bond you to the kid, rewired itself electrochemically, and did everything necessary to ensure that you will do anything to keep the kid alive. That's not basic monkey instinct, that's basic bio 101.

You should have known this would happen. If you did, and avoided it, you wouldn't have to now be a slave to it. Very similar to what former heroin addicts deal with all their lives. Once the brain experienced that high, there is nothing like it ever again. They will tell you that they would kill to attain it. They will tell you it is better than sex. That's because the brain almost instantly rewires itself for that high and craves it ever more.

Does this mean heroin addicts should take some weirdo high ground and say "you just don't know until you try it man".

Common, you must have some glimmer of sentience which sees the absurdity of your statement. Yes, I understand that if I have a kid, I will be bonded to it regardless of how much my intellect doth protest. Therefore I understand even more why I shouldn't, and simply adopt. Just like I understand that I don't want to try heroin.

Sad that you almost avoided it. Now you'll just be another pod parent telling their single or childless friends how "wonderful" and "marvelous" it is to have kids. BLECH!!!

Wow, heated topic! A few quick points:

1) I feel like this article was only posted to raise awareness of an issue, that's all! Nobody's telling anybody not to have kids.

2) Was the study actually referring to the amount of CO2 breathed by another kid? I feel like the takeaway is "people's *actions* produce CO2, so less people means less CO2".

3) Trish, right on! Props.

4) Willy Bio, you have a point, but be careful not to be judgemental. Like John M said, "salute" anybody who steps up to the admirable act of adoption. That said, I think we all have to respect our own and each other's choices; when we're all on the same side and making decisions for ourselves and for the right reasons, the world will be a better place. However, we're not doing any good whether we take that privilege to make choices for granted (i.e. have a bazillion kids without considering the environmental consequence) or begin to impose beliefs on others (i.e. no kids for you!)

Peace
Andy

Willy Bio-
I think here maybe that you were too quick to judge the tone of my posting. I don't deny the rewiring of my brain, I practically felt it at the moment of birth it was so overwhelming. What I intended to say was that this rewiring is a VERY powerful means of familial cohesion, and by extension, societal cohesion. If this is removed, as it may be with adoption (I don't know, I've never tried it), then I question whether families would be as strong when faced with adversity. This was the only point I intended to make.

I think that viewed objectively (even discounting my "mama bear" colored glasses), though, your posts are not only inflammatory, but needlessly so. You have good points that could be made far more effectively from a position of respectful engagement rather than hyperbolic rhetoric.

In response to Katy's comment about fear of wars over the environment:
take a closer look at Darfur and other regions in Africa being drastically effected by global warming. Technically, we all have a hand in the genocide.

You have good points that could be made far more effectively from a position of respectful engagement rather than hyperbolic rhetoric.

He's been told that 100s of times. Apparently he doesn't want to take it to heart. Some people prefer attention, regardless of whether it's positive or negative.

Anthony Kendall you are truly naive, unless by global warming you are referring to the villages being burned to the ground by the Janjaweed. Your ability to blame everyone through global warming for an appalling ethnic conflict in Africa is remarkable. Heed your own advice and don't reproduce, thanks.

Umm, getting back to the original topic: you don't need coercion. There's quite a strong correlation between female literacy and a sensible birthrate. And that's regardless of the prevailing culture, and sometimes even of the access to contraception. I give you Cathlic Italy (birthrate less than 2 last time I looked). And Iran. Iran's birthrate has fallen, over the past few decades, to just over 2 (recent issue of The New Internationalist). Another influential factor is infant death rate, thus bizarrely if we want fewer births we should get basic meds to women and children everywhere. Now if that's not win-win...

Martin and Anthony,

Yep, I've been told that 100's of times, and ignored it each and every time. I will not change my attitude and presentation simply to accommodate certain thin-skinned individuals. I'm glad my points are strong enough to get credit from you, though.

I'm not for legislated population control. That never works and only leads to abuse. I'm for education and severe financial penalties for those who wish to procreate. Those penalties should directly correlate to the full cost on the planet of foisting another consumer upon an already overburdened planet. FULL COST, that means all possible externalities. Just like we all seem to advocate for C02/fuel.

I count myself as very conservative in this approach. Since it is a fact that the planet cannot currently support the population as is, and most resources are finite, it is only pragmatic to reduce the population to manageable levels. As technology progresses such that the desired lifestyle by all people becomes more efficient, population levels can increase.

None of you can tell me that if given a Sim-style game where you have to run the planet such that the human species can survive as long as possible as well as have a technologically comfortable life, you wouldn't immediately cap the population at whatever level was currently sustainable.

Ultimate goal:

Live well on earth until technology allows colonization of the solar system. Then toss all the condoms as we got a whole new frontier to crowd up! :)

Common sense has finally arrived!

very good points Willy Bio, I share a similar view.

Yep, I've been told that 100's of times, and ignored it each and every time. I will not change my attitude and presentation

That much is obvious - hence my accurate observation.

I'm glad my points are strong enough to get credit from you, though.

If you have any worthwhile points, I don't notice them, since I'd have to plow through 8 tons of vitriol to unearth a grain of sand. Your attitude is one of a person who thinks he has all the answers, and anyone who doesn't live precisely as you do (which you apparently think is the ultimate green way of living), then you hyperventilate and insult people until they eventually leave you to make the last comment.

This isn't the behavior of someone who actually cares for something much greater than himself.

Martin, your skin is way too thin. Life's a lot tougher than I am, so is the environmental catastrophe about to befall us all. Spending all that energy attacking the presentation so you can claim ignorance of the message only spites yourself. Oh well, not my problem. (as long as you don't procreate) ;)

Abe Lincoln-
I don't think you meant to address your comment to me...

Willy Bio-
Your view of the situation is logically self-consistent, and that's a wonderfully comforting thing for you I'm sure. The problem is that nearly everyone in the world is not so logical, and emotional considerations are given much more weight than logic alone.

When I consider what a childless future would look like for myself, it appears bleak, and my end days even bleaker without the support of a loving offspring. Of course, I could adopt, but this gets at the issue I raised, which you haven't even appeared to even consider. Simply stated, I don't see how adoption can result in the same deep emotional bond formed between parents and their offspring.

Logically, I should simply comfort myself with the knowledge that what I am doing is best for the environment. But then, logically, what would truly be best for the environment is to end my own life immediately. That would take far fewer resources and prevent all procreation. Why is that not your position, Willy Bio? It's completely illogical for you to continue your existence, but you do so- for emotional reasons.

I, too, look forward to a future with unlimited resources and room for expansion. But as I live in the finite world of today, I insist on extracting an emotionally fulfilling life from this planet. I just strive to do it as responsibly as I can.

Willy, if you're not for legislated population control, who exactly will be collecting those "severe financial penalties"?

Somebody anonymous summed it up:

I'll tell you what the real taboo is - that we simply aren't prepared to change our wasteful lifestyle, but we, of course, expect others to change their ways.

Africa's not the problem. We are. Me, on this Dell, right now.

Anthony,

I do not address your theory about not bonding with an adopted child specifically because it is moot. Like I said, you are now a slave to the biochemical changes in your brain. That does not mean you are a better parent, that does not mean that you are qualified to be a parent, that does not mean your family is somehow more stable, it means nothing at all other than you can not help but claim your position superior. Of course, to even suggest that somehow adoption would result in the disintegration of the family unit, is beyond absurd and arguably INSANE.

Now why do you people always have to go to the extreme of bringing up the idea of killing living beings? I never once hinted at it, but I of course knew you people would leap to that insane conclusion sooner or later. Weather it be unto others, or unto yourself, you are now suddenly talking about the death of living beings. Shame on you. You need help.

How can someone take the simple premise:

Do not create more children until the ones which currently exist all have homes

and turn it into:

Why don't you just kill yourself

THIS IS INSANE.

See what those biochemical changes hath wrought? They have made you INSANE. Just like those poor heroin addicts.

Case closed.

Thanks for proving me right in every detail.

To claim that a position is "INSANE" without addressing the points makes any hope of discussion useless.

You cannot dismiss an argument by questioning the sanity of the arguer. It doesn't matter if I am slave to biochemical changes in my brain, the fact is that I made a quite sane point and you have dismissed it out of hand.

Your "discussion" resembles nothing other than someone loudly shouting their ideas while holding their fingers in their ears and insulting all who would address them.

Case closed.

People who are concerned about overpopulation shouldn't automatically be accused of being eugenecists. That's just terribly unfair, politically-charged kulturkampf.

If the world population continues to grow at its current rate, we will eat ourselves out of existence. That being said, world populations will be leveling off late in the century, because rising affluence always limits fertility, and beause, tragically, rising populations in less-affluent areas lead to more war, famine, and that ultimately cuts into population growth.

The question is, how soft will our population landing be? Will it be an Ehrlichian nightmare of drought, disease, starvation, and conflict, or will it be more humane? I vote for the latter.

If we put girls in school, fertility drops. With improved nutrition, fertility drops.

By coincidence, education and nutrition happen to ALSO be the things that medieval forces of darkness are fighting against. The terrorists in the Middle East have one uniting factor, keep women out of the workplace, and girls out of school.

John,

Are you really that deluded? Those African kids will adopt our wasteful lifestyle as soon as possible. You know it is true that if, 15 years ago, someone told you China would be as it is today, you'd think them nuts. All humans wish to live a technologically comfortable life. Even the most extreme Taliban wants to have AC and Dish Network in his cave. There is no reason why those alive should not be able to do so. There is good reason why no more should be added to that pool until a balance is achieved.

Implementing plans such that you simply have to pay for the damage which creating a child will do to the planet is fair and just. How is it that now you think it is your God given right to create a child without a care for the consequences? To do it free of charge? Where the heck did that wacky logic come from??? If someone said "I want to burn 50,000 gallons of gasoline in a huge pit, and I want to do it for free" you'd call them insane.

So, let's sum up for the child addled brains out there:

1) Don't create a child when there are perfectly good ones who already need a home (just like freecycle you dolts)

2) If you insist upon doing so, consider the full negative impact this child will have on the planet and pay the rest of us for having to deal with it. Don't have that kind of cash? TOUGH. Nothings free anymore, and I don't want YOUR problem.

3) Imagining a childless future is absurd, did you miss the part about ADOPTING???

4) Once you create a child it seems you become a babbling idiot, who thinks up stuff like "why don't you kill yourself", and admits that they would do anything to keep that child alive = would easily kill others to do so.