A recent study in Environmental Research letters is featured by Science Magazine with this image which presently is going quite viral. I really wonder why Science (News from Science) is featuring this.
- First of all, quite cynical comparing a child with a car.
- Second, this is the standard excuse not to do anything against climate change, before "this is fixed". I hear this time and again (sort of this style "as long as the Pope does not allow condoms, we don't have to bo...ther").
- Third, it is not the shere number of the population, it is the lifestyle that makes the difference, so it is also not fair to have a standard footprint value per child.
This all is not to say that the high population number wouldn't be one of our problems, but it certainly is not the only and predominant one (or is it an argument that we want to continue with business as usual, which is why we want less children? Even continuing with 7,5 Bill under BAU would just delay the eating up of resources, most of which are not renewable ones, but would not stop it (e.g. fossil fuels, phosphates, iron ores, rare earths etc), neither would it clean up oceans or fix geobiochemical cycles). And since child rate is strongly related to social security and education, we better improve both. By the way, this discussion was formerly used by left wing, in part anarchistic, if not violent groups, such as Antispeziesistische Aktion, The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement or the extreme Church of Euthanasia.
I am not amused, not at all!
Here is the Science Mag feature: https://www.sciencemag.org/…/best-way-reduce-your-carbon-fo…
Here is the original article: http://iopscience.iop.org/…/meta;jsessionid=760EC8482167234…
