Having a baby is an environmental disaster. Discuss.

[Triathlete]

Well, it is, isn't it?

Six billion people on the planet, and growing. As humans increase in numbers, we're losing other species at unprecedented rate.

That's the big picture. It's worse at the family level.

It starts with fuel efficiency going out the window as you start driving all those short journeys because DW is as big as a whale and her feet are exploding.

Then all the renovations - bathroom and nursery at least. Even if you buy the most eco-friendly recycled ethically sound products, it's still more STUFF.

Then all the bottles, sterilisers, clothes, nappies, toys. All the new possessions...

Then the washing machine goes from two washes a week to two washes a day, if you are using real nappies. If you're using disposable, then you might as well personally set fire to the last bit of rainforest, you unfeeling brute.

Then that whole world of things to do for DW and DS to stop DW from losing her mind...children's centre, swimming, a fee here, a charge there, the safety equipment, the vast array of new medicines and lotions.

And it's going to be like that for the next twenty years.

Why would ANYONE have kids??!?

chickens more handy in an envirionmental crisis

True 'nuff, LP! I would like some chickens myself.

Triathlete is isn't pissing in the wind at all! It's the best way to do things.

Things aren't actually as bad as is made out too you know. Have a read of 'Cool It' not to to an about turn by aby means but just to get some perspective on things that is often absent from this debate.

"Brilliant! A devastating critique of the prevailing climate change hysteria. This book provides an overwhelming case for re-assessing where exactly our policy priorities should lie if we are genuinely concerned with world welfare rather than with making noble-if futile-gestures that, at best, make us feel good but actually do a lot of harm." --Wilfred Beckerman Professor emeritus of economics, Oxford University

Sounds like it's just up your street!

Lombjorg is one of a dwindling band of climate change deniers, who has managed to carve out a profitable little contrarian niche for himself. I've read some of his work, and while I agree that for instance we should invest more in curing communicable disease, it's hard to reconcile that with the huge population movements, loss of habitat and food-growing potential, and massive disruption that climate change will cause.

I prefer to rely on Lovelock, nearly all of whose projections on climate science have been proven correct. His predictions for the next twenty years are grim.

We have known about climate change for over thirty years, but we're only now perhaps starting to do something about it. This is what worries me more than the fact of climate change - that our short-term and risk-averse political is not able to deal with the big difficult decisions that we are faced with.

In terms of personal decisions to renovate bathroom and refloor and repaint the back bedroom - well, if you had seen them....

And in terms of demographics, well, we can import people or we can import their labour by investing in their countries. We don't NEED to have babies in order to provide for ourselves, we need different ways of investing.

He isn't a climate change denier at all.

He does question the hysteria and doomsaying though and is skeptical about the current plans for the distrubution of resourses.

He advocates helping people at a local level to defend themselves from flooding for isntance, which is inevitable regardless even if Kyoto protocols are met - which they won;t be - and in doing so will save many more lives - which is the real agurment against Kytoto, that it is a mistargeting of reosurces, not that global warming isn;t happeing and it's an argument that reallty shouldn;t be ignored if people really are genuine about wanting to save lifes.

I think I agree with him.

But I also agree with Lovelock that nuclear power is the only sensible way forward. We can cover the whole country with those windmills and they will spoil the countryside and provide very little power.

One good terrorist flown airplane aimed at a nuclear power station will ruin the countryside, too.

I've never understood why people think that wind turbines ruin the countryside. I think the turbines look beautiful. Nuclear power plants are hideously ugly as is their impossible to get rid of waste.

Agree with your OP a bit triathlete but
a) having dcs makes you care about the planet in an entirely new way
b) my single friends/parents are WAY more carbon producing than we are (comparing household with household not per head)
c) there will probably be another plague/pestilance to even out the population
d) lets talk about peak oil
e) making all the 'little' changes is absolutely essential and who knows where it may lead? (a la butterfly effect)
f) I've forgotten my next point!

Oh another one is the things you listed in your OP are quite different from what I did when my PFB was born and TBH vastly different from the reaction of most of the planets population to having a child.

Oh important point, credit crunch may yet be instrumental in saving the planet, some predictions are for a deep and prolonged downturn in the economy which will impact majorly on the way we live out lives, plus the running out of oil and there you go, of course this will be painful and difficult for some/most but it will happen.

If we run out of oil before we have found or adapted to use substirutes it will be worse than difficult - it will probably be ww3. I know it's fashionable to be cynical about the battles to control the oil supply, but I really don;t think those people realise how dependent we are for our basic quality of life on that.

Going into Iraq (for among other things) to try and secure oil supplies so we wouldn;t be held to randsom by the Russians was very much in our national interest, as difficlut as that sounds

agree if we want to save the planet we shouldn't have kids, AND do a lot more besides.

actually I often feel like the OP. the rather unpalatable truth is that having kids is a pretty selfish and irresponsible thing to do from an eco pov.

(I have 3, btw. I don't have a car, I am greener than pretty much anyone I know-and that is saying something-but the fact of it is my household has 5 people in it and we WILL have a bigger total impact than a normal family of 2 adults)

Save the planet by wiping out your evolutionary line - it so won't ever happen.

To feel gulity about having kids is just massivly wrongheaded. Totally illustrates the maddness that is extreme political correctness. That's my opinion anyway.

As far as the planet goes then we should perhaps wipe out the entire Human population of the Earth and then let the Animals get on with it.

However as that is a tad radical then I don't think having children has to be an environmental disaster. I certainly have stopped travelling as much I don't drive so all journeys during the week are on foot or by public transport. We have a car that is used occasionaly at the wekend but not every weekend. We didn't decorate a nursery for ds until he was 2 (we were in a one bed flat in London until a few weeks before dd was born). I am much more awre of the ennvironmental impact of my life now - I cook from scratch - use reusable nappies buy most clothes and toys second hand and recycle. None of these things did I do when I was a feckless 20 something with a wage in London!

At the moment any individual in the west is making more of an environmental impact than a large family in rural India (for eg.) - so the answer lies in changing lifestyles rather than introducing Chinese style baby quotas!

They are actually encouraging people to have more children now, as women wait til later life to have them it leaves a gap in the workforce, and in 20 years there will not be enough people to fil the workforce.

Don't worry though, the way things are going there will be some natural disaster, or apocolypse to cull the species, like in rabbits when the warren is too crowded

Where do you get evidence for that BM? That last sentence? I just dont; believe it (Victor Meldrew sylee)

Exactely BoM, many [people here seem to have it exactly the wrong way around. It isn;t kids, it's supermarkets, cheap clothes, etc - and making small changes in our personal shopping habits does make a difference. Getting all cynical and swamped by it (as Triatyhlete seems to bein his OP) creates inertia and that is the real killer.

Filly are you sure about that? Have you calculated your carbon footprint might be surprised, I have single friends in 4 bedroom detached houses who ly long-haul at least once a year and numerous short-haul. Drive (short) distances to work daily in large cars etc etc. I'm sure they generate more carbon by themselves than we do as a family (dcs still very little)

1dilemma is talking my (pessimistic) language.

Peak oil is here and is going to fundamentally change how we live our lives - or is going to change it back to how it used to be. It may be very positive - we may see lots of local employment, finely layered networks of local suppliers, growers, processers, producers, wholesalers, offering local economic growth. We may get cleaner air, less obesity, less congestion.

An epidemic is already happening. HIV is going to carve swathes out of India and China. It's set Africa's development back by 10-15 years. It may lead to a new wave of colonisation as is happening in Congo. New strains of TB are developing, and bird flu has yet to show its potential.

It raises the question - where can we go that's safe? Will DS get caught up in it? Will we all be sorry we were born?

By the way, I'm an active cynic. We do all we can to minimise our impact on the environment. My cynicism comes about from the political inertia, where no-one is able to take the difficult long-term decisions that are needed.

Political inertia I agree
a little protest about the price of petrol and suddenly they are talking about not increasing fuel duty without any attempt to consider how they are going to deal with pollution/peak oil/global warming or even the decrease in tax revenues.

We are predicted a 4 degree centigrade temp rise by 2025 I think and people seem totally unprepared to consider how that will impact on them.

I find the talk of a third runway verging on obscene as I do the very availability of a 99p flight to anywhere. Well imminantly obsolete if not obscene!

I'm not sure I share your faith in the outcome for the UK Triathlete, problem is what does the UK actually do? We have no manufacturing, we have relatively large numbers of unemployable people and is it not true to say we now have too many to be self-sufficient in food?

One of the most depressing graphs I ever saw was one showing the total failure of the UK to reduce its carbon emissions over the last few years (although I try and take some comfort in the lack of rise)

I don't like to think about some of the likely outcomes.

I don't think there is political inertia - only a percieved inertia whilst other technological alternatives are found.

I prefer skepticism to cynicism - a far more positve cousin.

Thing is it's right for groups to push ideals, but politics isn;t a game of ideals but pragmacies and compromise. Idealists don't like that, but that's the way is is and has to be. That's the nature of the beast.

Yes nappies and all the pointless 'stuff' we feel we have to buy contributes to the state of the planet, but children give us all hope, and make the world a happier place. You only have to walk down the street with a toddler to see the faces of otherwise pissed off people just light up at the sight of them.

selfish single people probably rival us families with their carbon output tbh...more likely to go on countless long haul holidays (because let's face it they can afford it), more likely to drive souped up cars, more likely not to give a toss about the environment ime...

By the way OP have you seen 'Children of Men?' Might be worth a watch

only a man could write a thread like this .

Having kids actually made me a bit more determined to be eco friendly! Although I dont use reusable nappies but I have my reasons at the moment I have to do a load of washing every 2 days if I used reusables I would have to do atleast one a day therefore my carbon footprint would probably be worse than now! I always use reusable bags, I don't have a car and hardly ever use public transport, I try to use small local shops and I recycle everything I can clothes etc as well as buying from charity shops or using seconds from family for my DS although I obv do buy stuff too.

If all this doesn't lower my footprint I don't know what will!

Sheherezade Goldsmith is a good person to talk to about this as she and Zac have the time and money to really do "green" properly. They have several kids.