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??!?

The best single thing you can do to improve your footprint is to become veggie

Thank you youngbutnotdumb. You set out to immediately give the lie to your nickname, didn't you?

New technologies take 40 years to make it into general use - we don't have 40 years. We didn't have 40 years 40 years ago. In any event, experience shows that when new technology allows for more efficient use of a resource, we start using more of it. Anyone here leave their energy-saving lightbulbs on in every room?

There's a lite green tendency which people use to assuage their consciences - "we recycle, we use second-hand, we're doing all right". But ask them if they are willing to give up cheap flights or their car? Not a chance. In fact, these are going to be the least of our choices soon. I can see a future where the government confiscates private cars to send them to China as raw material, in return for credits for Sudanese oil which is used to try and keep the lights on and the hospitals working. Or one in which fascism returns as resources become tighter and society fragments.

(1dilemma, the most depressing graph I ever saw was one showing that the gini coefficient has actually INCREASED in ten years of a Labour government, but that's a side issue).

My wife is talking to me about living in the Soviet Union - 4 people in a 2 room flat, nothing on the shelves, nowhere to go out, money but no products, boring, grey, pervasive poverty, even for the educated middle class. How many people here could live like that, after enjoying our 21st century life? And yet this may be the lifestyle that awaits us, if not worse.

As tribal carnivores (absolutely take your point, monkeytrousers) we're really bad at dealing with the big, long-term issues. Nature and the weather have always been too big and long-term for us to affect or for us to think we were affecting. That's changed, but we haven't.

Some humans - breeding pairs - will survive. Some countries and areas may become paradise - Costa de Greenland, anyone? But most of the rest of us are going to find things very difficult indeed.