In July of 2018 I’ll turn 30 years old which, in and of itself, is a mildly terrifying prospect. However, this upcoming decade change has ushered in a collection of more probing questions from extended family members, society at large, and relative strangers, all of whom feel they have the right to question and hold sway over my personal choices. As any femme-identifying person can attest to, the most persistent of these questions is: when are you going to have children? As though my uterus is some sort of frequent flyer program of baby making. As though my only value to this world is to push out children. As though any woman who doesn’t want children is somehow beholden to the population at large to explain herself, justify herself, clarify her own wishes and desires to those oh-so entitled question askers.
Before we move on let’s take a moment to familiarize ourselves with the following:
1) ‘No’ is a complete sentence
And
2) “Because I don’t want to” is as much justification as you need to give for any decision in your life. Period.
Personally, I have never wanted, nor enjoyed, children of any particular variety. However, if you (man or woman) really really want kids, then bully for you. I’m certainly not here to tell you what to do. But maybe, to help you consider how your actions affect the planet at large. It’s important to remember that this one miraculous blue dot is all we have, and that we’re all in this together, truly.
2017 was great for showing us how our actions impact others, and that personal responsibility has to be the cornerstone of an effective human race. Furthermore, as someone who is looking for ways to make their environmental footprint smaller, I started to wonder: What is the environmental impact of having a child? As we’ll see, the answer is both conclusive, and nuanced.
In 2017 the Institute of Physics – a London Based charity that seeks to promote the understanding and application of physics – published a joint study from the University of British Columbia and Lund University in Sweden that directly tied having one fewer child to a massive decrease in tons of CO2 emissions (represented as tCO2e saved per year). If you live in a developed country, the impact of having a child is 58.6 tCO2e each year. This number is higher than combined impact of not owning a car (2.4 tCO2e), avoiding airline travel (1.6 tCO2e per round trip transatlantic flight), and eating an exclusively plant based diet (0.8 tCO2e).
In short, if you elect to have a child, you’d have to give up owning a car for 24.4 years to offset the impact of one year of your child’s carbon footprint. Alternately, you could go vegan for the next 73.25 years to accomplish the same thing. If those numbers seem daunting, worry not. A similar study from Oregon State University posited that each parent should only be responsible for half the impact of each offspring, so you can cleave those numbers above in two. However, the remainder of the OSU study doesn’t paint such a rosy picture for those parents to be.
The scientists at OSU employed the EPA’s Personal Emissions Calculator to extrapolate the yearly impact of having a child over an 80-year period — the current lifetime average for an American female. The OSU study claims that if all global factors remain the same, then having a child will sock an additional 9,441 metric tons of CO2 into our already clogged atmosphere during the life of that child.
However, because things in this world are rarely static, the OSU study also provides two additional numbers for the lifetime CO2 emissions for that child, one which they title a pessimistic outcome (12,730 metric tons of CO2) and an optimistic outcome (562 metric tons of CO2). While ‘pessimistic’ and ‘optimistic’ outcomes are hardly quantitative scientific measurements, and the study does not elaborate on how they came to those numbers, one thing is clear from table 3 below: even in the most optimistic scenario, adding an additional child to your household adds more CO2 to the environment that that could be saved by combining every other CO2 reducing action in the remainder of the table.
The OSU study, sums up the issue succinctly “clearly, the potential savings from reduced reproduction are huge compared to the savings that can be achieved by changes in lifestyle.” Bam, case closed. Or, maybe not?
As they say, the children are our future. So then the question becomes: is it worth having a child for the potential benefits that they may bring to the world? Unlike studies documenting CO2 emissions, the argument for having a child is a lot less concrete, but there is still a persuasive, though largely idealistic, argument to be made.
The first argument for having a child is that your progeny could be a genius. With an increase in population comes an increase in the number of geniuses. In the last 200-odd years the population has seen more than an eightfold increase in the global population. In that time we have also seen man walk on the moon, a massive increase in information accessibility via the internet, and a rise in renewable energy systems. The argument that some economists make is that a massive population is necessary for remarkable forward progress. Where geniuses come in, is that a genius, a true genius, on the scale of Albert Einstein, Hedy Lamarr, and Emmy Noether, are so vital to the progress of our species that they greatly outweigh the damage caused by the rest of the more pedestrian population.
The next argument is that the children being born today are coming into a world that has been thoroughly mucked up by adults, and they’re not willing to duff about doing nothing. Consider the landmark trail Juliana et al. vs The United States of America. This suit which was filed on behalf of 21 people aged 10 to 21 claims that an environment sustainable for human life is a basic human right. It goes to further claim that the U.S. government is infringing on the 5th Amendment by allowing global CO2 emissions to pass 410 parts per million.
Now, it should be noted that when the US passed the 410 ppm threshold in early 2017, nothing catastrophic actually happened. However, this number has long been touted by conservationists as a number worth being aware of, one that could possibly signal irreparable damage to Earth’s environment. It’s especially dire when compared to the 280 ppm level of the pre-industrial world. And, more worryingly, that it took us less than 60 years to rise the level of atmospheric CO2 from 316 ppm in 1958 (when consistent measurement began) to 410 ppm in early 2017.
Since it seems clear that nobody in our current administration is going to do anything about climate change, I certainly hope that we can raise a new generation that is committed to remedying the mess we’ve made of our home. And this, parents and future parents to be, is where you come in. If you elect to have a child, knowing the damage it will cause the world, then I fully expect you to raise a conscientious and environmentally aware human.
The OSU study, while providing overwhelming evidence that reproduction is environmentally damaging, also espouses the value of taking personal steps to reduce your emissions. The study states “this is not to say that lifestyle changes are unimportant; in fact, they are essential, since immediate reductions in emissions worldwide are needed to limit the damaging effects of climate change that are already being documented (Kerr, 2007; Moriarty and Honnery, 2008).” And goes on to illustrate the above point that your choices as a parent, as a person, as a human, on this collective merry-go-round that we’re all riding matter a great deal. “The amplifying effect of an individual’s reproduction … implies that such lifestyle changes must propagate through future generations in order to be fully effective, and that enormous future benefits can be gained by immediate changes in reproductive behavior.”
So take public transit, ride a bike or walk, stop eating meat, fly less, make your home more energy efficient by replacing your windows with high insulating ones and replacing incandescent bulbs with LEDs, stop buying new things, and recycle any and everything that you can, buy a higher MPG car, call your congressperson, call your senators, call your local reps every single day and tell them how important our environment is to you, exclusively support brands that have sustainable practices, buy local, and teach your children to do the same.
Ultimately, your daily choices matter a great deal, not just to those of us alive now, but those who are yet to be born. As a person, and as a parent, you are given the opportunity every single day to determine what you want your legacy to be, and I hope that it won’t be one of greed and consumerism, but instead one of conservation and awareness.
Good article. Hopefully it remains a personal choice.