Is having a baby not so carbon friendly?

Studies say offspring have environmental consequences

By jennifer anderson

Pamplin Media Group, Sep 10, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (18 Reader comments)

COURTESY OF JUPITER IMAGES

Oregon State University professor Paul Murtaugh has done research on reproduction and its impact on the environment.

Stan Jones-Umberger and his wife, Cindy Umberger-Jones, started boycotting fast-food hamburgers more than 20 years ago, before it was in vogue to do so.

They don’t buy bottled water. They drive a ’97 Toyota Corolla, participate in protests and raise funds for conservation groups.

They’re your typical Portland lefties.

But they’ve taken their eco-consciousness one step further than many in Portland: They don’t have children, out of concern for the impact of global overpopulation.

“I just want people to be conscious of the cruelty and environmental consequences of all their choices, whether it’s food, clothing or family size,” says Jones-Umberger, 54, a software engineer in Southwest Portland. “I believe humans are unique in their ability to understand this and change their behavior accordingly.”

While Jones-Umberger isn’t afraid to talk about the issue, he’s found that many like-minded enviros — including local politicians — avoid the subject as it relates to problems like traffic and urban sprawl.

“It’s the elephant in the room,” he says. “It’s political suicide to talk about overpopulation and human species environmental degradation caused by overconsumption.”

Paul Murtaugh, a statistics professor at Oregon State University, knows how touchy the subject is.

While he normally studies mundane topics like the growth rates of endangered species of fish, his interest in the effects of family size was piqued one day when he took an online “carbon calculator” quiz to determine his footprint on the environment.

It asked questions about his heating bill, the kind of car he drives and what kind of produce he buys. But he was stunned that none of them ever mention having children. So he decided to statistically quantify that factor himself.

In late July, Murtaugh released what he says is the first study of its kind on the individual impact of reproductive choice.

It shows, among other things, that a person in the U.S. increases his or her carbon footprint sixfold by having a child, considering the impact of the child’s future offspring and subsequent generations. “You amplify your lifetime emissions” by having a child, he says.

The study concluded:

• Under current conditions in the U.S., each child (and his or her descendants) adds about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the parents’ carbon legacy during their lifetime. That’s about 5.7 times more than the average childless person in the U.S.

• Factoring in average life spans and energy consumption levels, the long-term impact of a child born in China is less than a fifth of the impact of a child born in the U.S.

• The carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of having a child is almost 20 times more important than other ecologically minded lifestyle choices like driving a fuel-efficient car, recycling or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.

The same conclusions about the impact of a child on the world’s carbon emissions could be applied to the world’s freshwater supply, Murtaugh says.

While there’s been some literature published about the impacts of human reproduction on the environment, Murtaugh’s study produced a mini media frenzy, catching the attention of national outlets including CNN and the Discovery Channel —as well as outspoken radio hosts.

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