this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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That's almost certainly the biggest dietary change you can make.
But for overall impact, there's one winner and it's bigger than everything else put together.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children
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Capitalism hates this one weird trick.
The methodology here is kinda bs IMO.
They're adding up the emissions of the descendants and dividing that by a parents life expectancy.
However, if a society achieves net 0, then surely the emissions of every person there in are 0, so it's disingenuous to count them at today's rates.
Its an attempt to illustrate the environmental cost of over-population, but it needs to be considered within the context of that methodology.
OK, if society achieves net zero, you can have as many children as you like.
But given that it's been going up since the industrial revolution, and it's still going up, it seems rather fanciful to suggest that it's within our grasp.
A number of countries have reduced emissions massively, but realistically that mostly means "we've moved all our emissions to China". I could buy green energy from my supplier, but for me that was still coming from a big coal power station a few miles up the road until last year when they finally closed it.
And frankly, if corporations can count the carbon a tree will capture over 30 years and somehow "offset" that against a dirty great factory when they hurl a few pennies at a third world farmer, then we can count the carbon our descendents will emit over that time as well.
How much carbon will a child born today emit in their lifetime?
Thats unknowable.
Your reference to emissions increasing since the industrial revolution is not a forecast.
incorrect, humans produce co2 by breathing
Live Carfree (from petrol) - 2.4
Petrol to hybrid - 0.52
Electric Car to Carfree - 1.15
Seems they left out a pretty large item in "switch from petrol to electric - 1.25"
Yeah, that's one that doesn't take a lot of lifestyle change either.
Although it'll vary based on how much you drive. My wife drives a tiny car and did under 3000 miles last year, so wouldn't actually make a lot of difference for us. Might as well run it until it keels over, by which time electrics will be even better than they are now. Or enshittified beyond belief. One of the two.
Not for the carbon reduction, but for the reduced ~~slave labor~~ work force
Hey, as it stands I'm just indentured. If I were cursed with a child, then I would probably do crime to provide for it and Then be used for slave labor once I was inevitably incarcerated.
It's the circle of life.
Starve the beast.
So I just have to upgrade my lightbulbs 8 time and I'm effectively vegan!
I had a buddy that ate 8 lightbulbs this one time. He just got a hospital visit and totally flunked his vegan exams.
I've got an LED bulb so efficient it glows slightly even when it's not plugged in.
The big assumption is that the child you have will likely consume carbon-emitting goods and services at the same rate as whatever average they're assuming.
Breaking down by country shows that people's emissions vary widely by year and by country:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita
So if the UK spent most of the 20th century, and into the beginning of this century, emitting about 10 tonnes per person per year. Now it's down to less than 5. Since your linked article was written in 2017 to the latest stats for 2023, the UK has dropped per capita emissions from 5.8 to 4.4, nearly a 25% reduction.
During that same 125 years, the US skyrocketed from about 7 tonnes to above 20, then back down to 14.
The European Union peaked in around 2001 at 10, and have since come down to 5.6.
Meanwhile, China's population has peaked but their CO2 emissions show no signs of slowing down: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-metrics
So it takes quite a few leaps and assumptions to say that your own children will statically consume the global or national average at the moment of their birth. And another set of assumptions that a shrinking population will actually reduce consumption (I personally don't buy it, I think that childless people in the West tend to consume more with their increased disposable income). And a shrinking population might end up emitting more per capita with some sources of fixed emissions amounts and a smaller population to spread that around for.
If the US and Canada dropped their emissions to EU levels we'd basically be on target for major reductions in global emissions. If we can cap China's and India's future emissions to current EU per capita levels that would go a long way towards averting future disaster, too.
It can be done, and it is being done, despite everything around us, and population size/growth is not directly relevant to the much more important issue of reducing overall emissions.
The consumption data is quite interesting. Takes into account the fact that we put most of our emissions in China, and shows what we actually consume per person. And indeed the UK and US have gone down, and India and especially China, have gone up. But that World figure seems pretty flat overall. And we all live on the same ball of slowly heating rock, and none of us are anywhere close to being net zero.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL%7EGBR%7EIND%7ECHN%7EUSA&mapSelect=%7EUSA
That's a good chart, and probably a better metric to use.
Still, you can see the same overall trends: the western world peaking around 2000, with India and China catching up. The question, then, becomes whether and how much the rest of the world can follow the West's playbook:
This is where the difference is made. Not in changing birth rates.
I fear that the likes of Trump in charge will only reverse any progress we've made in the West.
The developing world is going to use more and fossil fuels unless we basically pay them to use something else. And foreign aid seems to be a thing of the past too. I can't really blame the rest of the world. The west has grown fat and rich off the last 150 years of using it, and now we've got the gall to turn to them and tell them not to.
So I wanted to have 9 kids but ended up finishing out at 3. So technically a savings of 6 kids! I'm helping the environment!
Being pedantic a nebulous "having one fewer kid" means nothing unless there's a benchmark. I think they mean "having one fewer kid as a country average" so if the average Canadian has 1.26 children per women we want to see it .26 per women.
On an individual level I can't unalive a child.
Well, with latest in Israeli technology...