So choosing not to have children is really being UN-selfish and helping the environment. I'm going to add that to my bag of come-backs for people who insist on asking how anybody could not want to be a parent.

But think of it this way - if only those people who are unaware of this study or choose to ignore it had children, the chance that a concern for the environment will be instilled in furture generations will be lessened. (yes, childfree people could educate other people's children, but you can't deny people have a profound effect on the values of their own children.)

Instead of basing our reproductive decisions (whatever they might have otherwise been) on this study, why don't those of us who are priviledged enough to be aware of it and smart enough to care try to reduce our own kids' carbon footprint. I suggest people start by resisting the marketing message that you MUST move to suburbia and buy an SUV immediately upon conception. I saw a statistic on the subway the other day that New Yorkers have a dramatically lower footprint than other Americans because we don't use cars.

Whenever I read about carbon foot printing and the issue of babies, I feel that the environment isn't the issue---it's really talking about First World Values and Third World "Values."

It's saying that modern conviences are teh Evil and that living in slum is teh Awesome. It's reframing the problem---that it's not the baby making poor that's the problem, it's the rich nations that are the problem.

Whether that is a good thing or bad thing, I think that's up to debate...but what I do know is that this isn't an issue of whether to have babies or not. It's about how we live in First World Nations.

Here's a good blog post with some videos that go into the mathematics of why running out of resources may come sooner than we think. Don't worry you don't have to know calculus to get it. (Not that I doubt your abilities).

http://www.mnn.com/local-reports/nebraska/student-blog/population-growth-natural-resources-and-exponential-function

I work for an environmental nonprofit in Texas. Below is the link for an article that our Executive Director forwarded about "why personal change is not a substitute for political change". We focus so much on individual consumer choices (use more or use less) that we forget that vast corporate, industrial, and political entities are the ones who need to be stopped. Thinking of people as consumers first, rather than citizens, robs them of a meaningful sense of empowerment. All the spiral light bulbs in the world won't change the fact that our government still thinks "clean" coal exists and hasn't passed the bill to stop mountain top removal mining yet.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801

But most countries are desperately trying to develop. That doesn't mean they need to go the same route as US and Europe, but they certainly don't want 50%+ of their population living in slums and shacks going into the end of this century.

Unfortunately environmental degradation is the price humans pay for advancement. It's not new either. We surmise that many ancient and quite advanced civilizations met their end from environmental degradation and overuse of resources.

The scariest part isn't this fact. It's that now we are ruining things we don't know how to fix; whereas before, forests could re-grow over time, survivors of conflicts for resources could scatter and resettle, there was discovery of hardier flora and fauna form faraway lands, etc.

Now we have new exotic chemicals and compounds, carbon depletion, borders keeping people in place, sick oceans, etc.

I think the best thing would be to invest in technology to clean up our mess and technology to allow us to become more efficient and less wasteful.

In the meantime, Americans seem pretty resistant to even making some basic changes compared to other countries. It took a recession for people to change behavior and there are already signs of folks drifting back to their old ways.

But we will have our day of reckoning with our wasteful lifestyle and over-consumption because these things are unsustainable and therefore self-limiting. It's coming...I don't know when, but our day is coming.

It's kinda unfortunate either way. It seems clear to me it's a good ethical decision to have none or one child. On the other hand, I hate to see the most knowledgeable and considerate people having the fewest children.

My solution is that people who are aware enough to reduce their own number of children steal the children of people who aren't.

Of course a child in the US will use more resources than a child in Bangladesh. An adult in the US will use more resources than an adult in Bangladesh, too. My cat probably uses more resources than than the average Bangladeshi. This is because developed countries use more resources than undeveloped countries. The connection to having babies is a nonsequitor. I use more resources than a Bangladeshi whether I have babies or not.

Americans have really increased our consumption in the last 30 years. When I was a kid, kids' toys were pretty simple, were usually less complicated and less expensive versions of adult "toys." Not anymore. There were no cell phones when I was a kid. I love how parents all think they need a cell phone since they have kids. How did my parents raise 4 without one? Houses were smaller, there was one computer per household, one phone line per household, and nobody remodelled their dorm room. Of course, we can compare this to when my parents were growing up and there was one TV per household and one car per household, and furniture was built to last forever. I'm going off on a tangent here, but my point is that having children is probably not the major driver of Americans' increased carbon footprint. I think upsizing is the largest driver.

Ok, better idea. Let's ship American children to Bangladesh. It would be so much quieter and less drooly around here!

So a child born in the U.S. uses 160 times more carbon than a child born in Bangladesh. Therefore the conclusion is "Don't have children, Americans?"

This makes no sense. Every child that is not born in the United States will be made up for through immigration. In Canada, the government adjusts the number of legal immigrants and refugees admitted to the country based on the country's desired population growth rate. So they import those babies from Bangladesh.

And once that Bangladeshi baby moves to the States or Canada or wherever, she'll have the same carbon footprint as any domestically born child.

Moreover, she'll send remittances back to Bangladesh to pay for her grandmother's care, thus contributing to economic growth, and environmental degradation, in Bangladesh.