Editor’s Viewpoint: We have nothing to fear but everything
What’s the best way to reduce our carbon footprint? By reducing the number of feet on the ground, according to British researchers. Certainly a shoo-in for this year’s We’ve Met the Enemy and He is Us Award, a report prepared by the London School of Economics noted that every child born in the United States will produce 1,644 tons of carbon dioxide over his or her lifetime.
Further, to confirm that the U.S. holds the lead in the potential damage we can do to the planet, the study said that one child born here will be responsible for emitting the same amount of CO2 as 91 children born in Bangladesh. We can’t rest on that laurel, though, because the Chinese are catching up with us. It currently only takes five of its babies’ emissions to match one of ours.
To be clear, the London School of Economics conducted the study on behalf of the British charity Optimum Population Trust. This a perfect marriage whose offspring didn’t emit any CO2 but produced loads of stats. For example, did you know that every $6.63 spent on contraceptives over the next four decades will reduce the same amount of CO2 as $31.48 spent on low carbon technology over the same time? Or if every woman who wanted contraception was given access to it, we would eliminate the release of 34 billion tons of CO2 in the next 40 years at an estimated cost of $220 billion?
It should be noted that 95 percent of the approximately 30 percent worldwide population growth expected by 2050 will come from developing countries, according to a recent University of Melbourne study. However, even if we invest in population control in those countries, the higher carbon footprint for babies in developed countries means their lower birth rates are still important.
Adding children to the list of things that could negatively affect our planet will only further polarize discussions on the environment. The intent of the authors may have been to help people make good decisions about the children they bring into this world and encourage support for the means by which they do it, but by reducing us to carbon-producing animals to project potential environmental damage, they also have dehumanized us in the process and added something else to fear in a world that fears almost everything.
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