A new movement: Opting for no children as climate fears grow

Not having kids due to climate change. Now I've heard anything. If you're stupid enough to think like this it might be better not to have your DNA passed on to future generations.

It would save some 58 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, researchers calculated, in a study that estimated the total impact of a child and their likely descendants.

That particular survey is very problematic since it brings emissions from the child, the grandchild, great children etc. forward into the present with no discounting and dumps them on the parent as a "carbon legacy". Current per capita emissions in the US are 16 tonnes/year. That's the whole economy and all adult activity included. A child in Japan is not going to emit 3.5 times the CO2 of a US adult. A child in the US even will not either. The 58 tons study also assumes that CO2 emissions will not go down, something which has to happen and to an extent is likely to happen, otherwise we are screwed anyway. Another 80 years of fossil fuels, agriculture as is, etc. and it's game over. Huge coastal cities will be lost.

People are free to choose whether to have kids or not, but they should not make this decision based on headline-grabbing studies parroting poor science about how much carbon your kid's kids' kids will emit.

Idiocracy was suppose to be a comedy not a documentary..

@NZ2011 :Made me an happy funny moment.

Indeed, human species need to reproduce to be sustainable. What a fact !

Makes me think of one of my brother who was saying human population was too high already. His girlfriend got pregnant, all is forgotten. Lol

My opinion is that it is easier to get an easy life where you can spend all your free time for your needs only, then have to care for others by raising up your kids.

There is a science experiment that goes like this. Take a pair of fruit flies, put them in a bell jar with some food, and then watch how long it takes until there are thousands of fruit flies inside the bell jar. Think of Earth as the bell jar, and humans as the fruit flies. Instead of taking a few weeks to destroy the environment, humans will take longer, but we are well on our way to destroying Earth's environment.

When I was born, there were fewer than 2.5 billion humans. Today there are more than 7.7 billion people. One couple deciding not to have children is not going to solve the population explosion. I don't know what the answer is, but it is easy to see what the problem is.

to have a families 

unprofessional grammar.

there are too many people, don't have children

quick! we need millions of refugees because there aren't enough children!!

message: don't have families because the government will populate your area for you

now PAY YOUR TAXES!

A schoolteacher! Poor school and parents.

Reckless.

the fruit fly population did not stabilize until there were so many of them that it was not feasible to see from one side of the bell jar to the other.

these movements can only be come up by westerners who have a lot of free time and spend it on soul finding. Others nation desperately need children and would never care about their ideals. Pretty sure this race would no longer exist after a 100years.

While over population of the planet is a real driver of the global environmental degradation, this sort of meaningless gesture politics isn’t going to solve anything. In the countries where it is currently fashionable the populations have already stabilised or are even declining. The over population problem lies elsewhere and as long as poor and ignorant people in other parts of the world continue to have large families these problems will only increase.

In Germany, a couple having one or two children is merely replacement if that.

1glenn, fruit flies are not humans, it’s a false comparison.

1glenn : stop basing your reflexion on false information.

The fly population will stabilize because not enough resources. Nothing is coming from thin air.

Ignorance is not a virtue as for science.

And yes, Tokyo has reached the packing limit in its subway. Do people live normally n Tokyo ?