No, Having Children Does Not Kill The Planet…
Anti-natalism and ideals of population control has roots in racism, sexism, eco-fascism, and eugenics. So let’s make sure that when talking about a topic like “having fewer kids helps the environment” we truely understand what we are talking about.
No, children do not emit 60 tons of CO2 annually…
This doesn’t even make sense. What part of having a child increases carbon emissions? Is it the resources that a child needs to survive? Like clothing? Food? Christmas and birthday gifts?
Nope. Heredity.
What?
The 2017 Study
Yeah, so let me explain. This idea of 60 tons of CO2 per year, per child, got everyone’s attention due to a study published in 2017 titled The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions. This study states:
“For the action ‘have one fewer child,’ we relied on a study which quantified future emissions of descendants based on historical rates, based on heredity (Murtaugh and Schlax 2009). In this approach, half of a child’s emissions are assigned to each parent, as well as one quarter of that child’s offspring (the grandchildren) and so forth.”
In a supplemental report, they claimed:
“Only the study by Murtaugh and Schlax (11) was used for this research as it was the only peer-reviewed study we found and also provided the broadest coverage of the climate impact of having a child (i.e. it accounted for the offspring that a child is likely to have).”
With this, they determined that the annual impact of having a child is “58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emissions.” Where did they get this information from? Especially when they admit in the report that “No textbook suggested having fewer children as a way to reduce emissions… no guide recommended having fewer children…” I wonder why the experts just never mentioned this?
The 2008 Study
Well, let’s look at where they got their information. In this case it is a single 2008 study titled “Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals.” Yes, the oft-quoted 2017 study (Or glorified blog post in this case) just repeated their information from this one single study.
Now I am not a scientific researcher that published papers to journals, but even I can tell how awful this “study” is. The two authors of this are Paul A. Murtaugh, a statistician, and Michael G. Schlax, an oceanographer. Neither of them have any expertise in climate science. But I guess it does not matter when all your “study” consists of is basic division and the concept of a pyramid scheme.
The idea of this paper is that by going vegan, and eskewing cars and planes, I can reduce my lifetime carbon equivilent impact by about 486 tons. But by having two kids, I apparently increase my emissions by 18,882 tons. How is this possible?
Well, apparently greenhouse gas emissions works like a pyramid scheme. If I give birth to a child, I am now suddenly and magically responsible for 50% of that child’s emissions from the day they are born until the day they die. I am also responsible for 25% of the emissions of their grandchildren, assuming they have 2 each. And then 12.5% of the great grandchildren for their whole life, so on and so forth.
This makes no sense from any practical standpoint, as you then have to try to keep track of all this. If my mom is responsible for 50% of my emissions, and my dad the other 50%, am I responsible for any of it? My mom is only responsible until my ancestral blood runs dry, apparently:
“We will refer to the weights that indicate the relatedness of adescendant to the initial parent as ‘‘genetic units’’. The fractional genetic unit represented by a particular descendant can be thoughtof as the proportion of the ancestor’s genes (or alleles) that areshared with the descendant, or the ‘‘percentage of blood’’ that the two have in common… even under the medium-fertility variant, with fertility decreasing to 1.85 children per woman by 2025, the averagelineage still has nearly one genetic unit alive four centuries after the birth of the ancestral individual”
Not only has fertility already decreased below 1.85 in 2018 (it was 1.73 and dropping), but what is stopping us from continuing on? Blood ties? Let’s keep going! Make it that I am responsible for a million tons of CO2 due to ancestors 8000 years after my death! The sky’s the limit!
But not me, I am cleansed from the original sin of carbon emissions, as my parents are responsible for that, not me, apparently.
The Deadly Repurcussions
This mindset is also the exact same mindset that fueled the brutal massacres from eco fascists the world over. For instance, the El Paso shooter wrote in his manifesto that he was working to stop a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.”. He also claimed:
“The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heading the destruction of our environment by shamelessly overharvesting resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can be more sustainable.”
The Christchurch shooter claimed “I am an Ethno-nationalist Eco-fascist. Ethnic autonomy for all peoples with a focus on the preservation of nature, and the natural order.”. He also mentioned in his manifesto that:
“Why focus on immigration and birth rates when climate change is such a huge issue?
Because they are the same issue, the environment is being destroyed by over population, we Europeans are one of the groups that are not over populating the world. The invaders are the ones over populating the world. Kill the invaders, kill the overpopulation and by doing so save the environment.”
And this is a view that is logical if the unscientific ideas of anti-natalism are to be accepted. If having a child is so extremely harmful for the environment, then don’t have kids. And to “save the world” in their mind, why not forcefully sterilize people, or even kill people you think are contributing the most to climate change?
If having a child, according to their logic, puts you on the hook for the carbon emissions of their children, and their children’s children, etc, then why can’t the opposite be true? What stops the same logic from stating that killing someone grants you the repreive of that generation carbon tax, as you prevented the possible emissions of their potential children, and their children’s children, etc? Abortion doctors must be the most eco-friendly people on the planet!
It’s just a ludacris mindset with a dangerous set of “logic” to it.
Also, to assume that there is an issue with childbirth is to believe there is an issue with overpopulation. Is the population spiking? Let’s see.
The population is not rising out of control
In fact, the fertility rate is going down quite dramatically, all over the world. The total fertility rate is how many children are born per woman in any given country. Here in the United States, that number is 1.73 births per female as of 2018, according to the World Bank.
The replacement rate of a population, otherwise known as the rate of total fertility per female in order to maintain a stable population, is 2.1. So the US, and most other countries, have been far below this replacement number since 1971 and has been falling since.
Most rich countries have a birth rate below replacement rates. This includes Russia, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Finland, Sweden, the UK, France, Spain, China, Japan, and Iceland. The reason the population is still increasing is because a lot of older people were either never born due to wars, etc, or else died from war, disease, or starvation.
The countries that still seem to have a high fertility rate also are the countries that still have a high infant mortality rate.
It is believed thatg the population will stagnate at 11 billion, with some experts claiming that number to be even lower, at 9 billion. Then we might see a decline. Fewer people are having kids because hundreds of factors, but a declining population rate due to these factors shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing.
Anti-natalism and Eugenics
Anti-natalism is an ideology that positions that new children should be born into the world, or at least the number of people in the world should be reduced by reducing the act of breeding. This is for a variety of reasons, but the main reason I have seen has to due with environmentalism. Humans use resources, more humans mean more resources used, ergo fewer humans means fewer used resources.
It is an ideology that blames overconsumption and exploitation on the consumer and not on the corperations and governments that push and condone this behavior.
Anti-natalism has also has a rather prominate role when it comes to blantant acts of racism, and the forced sterilization of minorities here in the US and abroad. From 1909 to 1964, 20,000 women (Mostly women of color, and disproportionately Mexican women) were forceably sterilized by the Californian government alone due to the stereotype of Mexicans “breeding like rabbits”. This number could be as high as 70,000 across the nation. Up to 50% of all Native American women may have also been forcefully sterilized during this time.
You might be going “this was 80 years ago, why bring up history?” Well, because it wasn’t just 80 years ago. In the late 1960’s to early 1970’s, another 140 Mexican-American women were sterilized. They came forward in 1975 to sue the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center for coercing and forcing them to undergo sterilization under duress and false pretenses.
And to have it even closer to modern times, in 2020, at least 18 women were forced to undergo hysterectomies. Where? Why ICE detention centers, of course, and on Latina women. But what does this have to do with environmentalism and fears of overpopulation?
Everything.
In a statement by The Sierra Club, they mention the history of eugenics and its relation to the environmental movement even back in those days.
“early Sierra Club members and leaders — like Joseph LeConte and David Starr Jordan — were vocal advocates for white supremacy and its pseudo-scientific arm, eugenics. Jordan, for example, served on the board of directors during Muir’s presidency. A “kingpin” of the eugenics movement, he pushed for forced-sterilization laws and programs that deprived tens of thousands of women of their right to bear children — mostly Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and poor women, and those living with disabilities and mental illness. He cofounded the Human Betterment Foundation, whose research and model laws were used to create Nazi Germany’s eugenics legislation.”
Anti-natalism and ideals of reducing the population to preserve the environment were powerful arms of the eugenics movement. And that cannot be disconnected from who we as a society tend to believe don’t deserve the right to reproduce. That of women of color and disabled women.
In the end
The actual experts on climate science are not talking about population at all, let alone having fewer children for the environment. The 4th National Climate Assessment does not mention this as an issue at all. So if the experts don’t believe this is a legitimate issue, than why should I care?
Focusing on the impact of certain actions should be less focused on individual actions and more focused on systemic change. While individual choices are nice and all, the ones who are destroying our environment and blasting carbon equivilents into the air at the massively higher rate are corperations and governments back by strong money-funded lobby groups.
Choosing to not have kids is a valid thing to do. If you don’t think having kids is right for you, then don’t have any! Our society, especially older people in it, tend to feel as if having grandchildren is a rite of passage, so many people are pressured into having kids they do not want, or cannot properly care for.
This is why I think family planning, contraception, abortion, foster care, and adoption should all be less stigmatized as options. They should all be cheap and accessable if people need them, or want a kid but don’t want to, or can’t, become pregnant. We also need to stop the ridicule and mockery of people who are Asexual or simply do not have a high sex drive. Some people just are not interested in the idea of childbirth, and that is valid.
But the idea that not having a kid is somehow better for the environment than making your business eco friendly, or not taking airplanes, or driving less, or eating plant-based, is just pseudoscientific crap.
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Now this was a long post, probably the longest I have ever written!
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Etsy: My shop for upcycled crafts and craft supplies, such as fabric, notions, tote bags, hanging baskets, and more!
Mercari: For reselling cheaper clothing that I find when dumpster diving
Poshmark: For the more higher quality and expensive stuff
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