In a 2012 speech to the Protectors of Public Lands, Labor MP Kelvin Thomson argued bigger wasn’t necessarily better when it came to Australia’s population:
“[Population] growth is behind the world’s most intractable problems — global warming, hunger and poverty, species extinctions, food, water and energy shortages, even war, waste and terrorism.
“Every country has a role to play in tackling this problem. Every country should be moving to stabilise its population and get its house in order.”
He went on to call for a reduction in overseas migrant numbers; as Crikey reported last week, Australia would be well on its way to meeting or even exceeding carbon targets if it had a net migration rate of zero. But climate change is a global problem, not an Australian one. If Australia met its carbon targets but other countries did not, the earth would still warm. And the economic consequences of severely cutting migration could be devastating.
But there is another way for eco-minded Australians to stop using up the world’s resources: have fewer children.
A 2009 research paper by Oregon State University — Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals — found limiting reproduction was the single most important thing individuals could do to reduce their carbon footprint. OSU statistic professor Paul Murtaugh, one of the report’s authors, said:
“In discussions about climate change, we tend to focus on the carbon emissions of an individual over his or her lifetime. Those are important issues and it’s essential that they should be considered. But an added challenge facing us is continuing population growth and increasing global consumption of resources.”
How much impact would having fewer (or no) children have? For each child born in the United States, the report’s authors concluded:
” … the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environmentally sensitive practices people might employ their entire lives — things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.”
The study concluded that in 2009, an American child would add 9441 metric tons of CO2 to a parent’s carbon legacy, which would increase the parent’s direct lifetime emissions by about 570%. And if that child had children, the indirect increase in carbon emissions would be exponential. The average annual per capita carbon emissions in Australia is 1.08 times higher than that in the United States, so the impact of each Australian baby born is even more damaging to the environment.
“… the single most meaningful contribution I can make to a cleaner, greener world is to not have children”
Dr Jonathan Sobels, an adjunct research fellow the University of South Australia who co-authored a 2010 study commissioned by the Immigration Department on the impact of of different levels of net overseas migration on Australia’s physical, natural and built environments, says a declining birth rate would also reduce Australia’s carbon emissions and relieve pressure on infrastructure.
“It’d have the same effect whether we’re talking migrant or natural increase; it’s the same number of people, and it’s the number of people that makes the difference in terms of environmental impact,” he told Crikey.
Electronics entrepreneur Dick Smith, who has written a book on the dangers of a spiralling population, told Crikey Australian families must be “sensible” about the number of children they have as the world is rapidly running out of resources. “At the moment we’re artificially inflating the birth rate in order to sustain our economic growth,” he said. “It’s a finite world, and you can’t have perpetual growth in a finite world.”
Smith says the population has to decrease worldwide in order to live sustainably. “You have to live in harmony with nature. At the present time we use 1.5 times the world’s resources every year — you don’t have to be very bright to know that’s not sustainable,” he said.
An increasing number of sustainability minded people are taking the message to heart, deciding the best thing they can do for the planet is to not have any children. Of the self-described GINKS (green intentions, no kids), perhaps the most well-known is Lisa Hymas, senior editor at US online environmental publication Grist. In a 2010 article entitled “The GINK Manifesto: Say it loud — I’m childfree and I’m proud“, she outlined her green reasons for remaining child-free:
“For an average person like me — someone who doesn’t have the ability of an Al Gore to reach millions, or of a Nancy Pelosi to advance (if not actually enact) landmark environmental legislation, or of a Van Jones to inspire (and piss off) whole new audiences — the single most meaningful contribution I can make to a cleaner, greener world is to not have children.”
And Hymas is far from the only one. Author Laura S. Scott spoke with numerous child-free couples for her book Two Is Enough: A Couple’s Guide to Living Childless by Choice and said in a 2010 article environmental concerns were a major factor for many:
“I interviewed people who felt very strongly that if they were going to be responsible global citizens, they needed not to have children. I talked to a couple in Canada and [the woman] said to me, ‘As much as I love the potentiality of a newborn, I don’t think the planet needs another garbage-producing human’.”
“increasing global consumption of resources.” It’s time we change the language of our slogans. If the “resources” is minerals, the mining boom has shown that we have effectively limitless supplies of mineral resources. In particular, we have enough coal and gas already discovered to destroy the greenhouse several times over and turn the world into a baking wasteland where only insects and homo sapiens can survive.
What we have run out of is somewhere to put our waste gases. The atmosphere is full. It is time we said so.
It’s too late for me, I have bred already.
But I am all in favour of no one else having kids. Playgrounds are too crowded these days.
One of the ways we can achieve a stable population in our own country is by limiting the baby bonus and paid parental leave to a woman’s first two children.
We can also assist with foreign aid, focussing on female rights and education, and on opportunities for women and couples to access reproductive health and voluntary family planning services to help prevent unwanted pregnancies. Some 222 million women who would like to avoid or delay pregnancy lack access to effective family planning.
Which party has these progressive policies? The Stable Population Party http://www.populationparty.org.au
Malthusians don’t admit it, but what they really decry is the historic decrease in infant mortality, which is the most significant factor in the post-WWII population increase.
And let’s not forget the terrible Gates’ and their mass immunization program – how many adults will that lead to. And by the time they become adults, Africa will be in full economic recovery and the average carbon footprint of an African will be 10 times what it is now. What are we to. Where’s the plague when you need it.
How many times does it have to repeated. The population explosion is over. Peak Human is 30 years away give or take a decade. Population will peak somewhere between 8.5 billion and 10 billion and then plummet over the coming decades. Almost every child born today will live to see a world with less people in it. Not because of famine, water shortages, climate change or wars – but because wealth is spreading across the world faster than any time previously in history and fertilities rates are collapsing below 2.
As to the ultimate Malthusian act – going childless through choice – because the end times are coming – well isn’t that the very reason a Malthusian should start breeding – to make sure in the wastelands of the future there are still some surviving members of the white middle class left to carry the flag … and propagate garbage.