Is having fewer children the answer to reducing carbon emissions and saving the planet?

When I saw the writing prompt:

"Tell us how you're recycling, reducing, and reusing to help minimize your carbon emissions."

My immediate first thought was, "By being child-free."

And my second thought was, "What a great opportunity to showcase something positive about a choice that is so often looked down upon as negative and selfish."

A famous 2017 study published in Environmental Research Letters compared the effectiveness of different recommended actions to reduce an individual's greenhouse emissions. This included living car-free, avoiding plane travel, eating a plant-based diet, purchasing green energy, reducing food and water waste, reusing, recycling, reducing consumption, and many others.

These are all critical, extraordinary actions to take.

But not one of them came close to this action: Having one fewer child.

According to this study, having one fewer child reduces your CO2 emissions by 23 700–117 700 kg per year. The following highest impact action was to live car-free, which came in at 1000–5300 kg per year.

Why is this?

A small example would be that babies, on average, go through 4,000 disposable nappies by the time they're potty trained, not to mention the wipe and bags that go along with that. Then begin to think of the sheer amount of short-lived products associated with raising children. Bottles, dummies, high chairs, bibs, car seats, prams, clothing, plastic toys, the list is endless. And that's just while they are children.

When grown, they are another person who produces carbon, who pollutes and uses unsustainable resources. Who will go on themselves to drive cars, ride in airplanes, go through tons of plastic packaging in their lifetime, waste food, wastewater, etc. Everything on the list that we need to limit now will also apply to them in the future.

The debate can continue to one about overpopulation. We live in a world where the population is increased from just 1 billion in 1800 to 7.7 billion today. We are continually adding more and more people to the world who consume its resources like food, water, land, and energy. Whether this kind of growth is sustainable in the long term is not one that I am qualified to answer.

Why am I telling you this?

Is it to shame parents? Is it to say that people shouldn't have children?

No. I'm in no way against people having children, and this is not a personal attack on parents. I believe that every person should have the freedom to make their own choices about their bodies and lives. I've seen firsthand what joy children can bring into people's lives, I have six nieces and nephews, for a start. And the fact is this as important as it is for people to lead sustainable lifestyles; the onus should always be on the real culprits, fossil fuels, capitalism, those big corporations, and of course, governments around the world.

I'm telling you this for two reasons.

1. This shouldn't necessarily stop people from having children, but perhaps we should think about how having a child increases our consumption and waste. Then think about what we can do to minimise that. How can we as a society make this lifestyle more sustainable?

I don't have the exact answer to that question here. But I do know that there are numerous small solutions when you begin to delve into it. Especially as today's society is becoming more and more conscious of environmental issues and coming up with ingenious ideas. We also need to consider this: How we can educate the next generation so they are not doomed to repeat our mistakes and those before us?

2. As a child-free woman and I'm very often asked why. Why don't you want kids? It usually less of a question and more of an interrogation. I find it difficult to answer because there's a complicated myriad of reasons I want to opt-out.

This is only one of those reasons but I believe that it's an important one and something to be celebrated. Not in a way that makes me any better than anyone else; I don't think that for a second. But more of a smile and a nod to acknowledge that there are positives to this lifestyle choice. To say yes, you are doing one simple thing which reduces carbon emissions both now and in the future, and that maybe being child-free isn't as selfish as it first seems.

Georgina Nelson. Traveller. Writer. Photographer. Yoga teacher.

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