A new study has collated climate recommendations from other studies. Top of the list is convincing parents to have smaller families, one less child, to reduce the human carbon footprint. In my opinion, this advice, if translated to public policy, could trigger a damaging demographic crisis.
The most effective individual steps to tackle climate change aren’t being discussed
July 11, 2017
Governments and schools are not communicating the most effective ways for individuals to reduce their carbon footprints, according to new research.
…
Lead author Seth Wynes said: “There are so many factors that affect the climate impact of personal choices, but bringing all these studies side-by-side gives us confidence we’ve identified actions that make a big difference. Those of us who want to step forward on climate need to know how our actions can have the greatest possible impact. This research is about helping people make more informed choices.
“We found there are four actions that could result in substantial decreases in an individual’s carbon footprint: eating a plant-based diet, avoiding air travel, living car free, and having smaller families. For example, living car-free saves about 2.4 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, while eating a plant-based diet saves 0.8 tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year.
“These actions, therefore, have much greater potential to reduce emissions than commonly promoted strategies like comprehensive recycling (which is 4 times less effective than a plant-based diet) or changing household lightbulbs (8 times less effective).”
…
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-effective-individual-tackle-climate-discussed.html
The abstract of the study;
The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions
Seth Wynes and Kimberly A Nicholas
Published 12 July 2017 • © 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd
Environmental Research Letters, Volume 12, Number 7
Abstract
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Current anthropogenic climate change is the result of greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere, which records the aggregation of billions of individual decisions. Here we consider a broad range of individual lifestyle choices and calculate their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries, based on 148 scenarios from 39 sources. We recommend four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight) and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year). These actions have much greater potential to reduce emissions than commonly promoted strategies like comprehensive recycling (four times less effective than a plant-based diet) or changing household lightbulbs (eight times less). Though adolescents poised to establish lifelong patterns are an important target group for promoting high-impact actions, we find that ten high school science textbooks from Canada largely fail to mention these actions (they account for 4% of their recommended actions), instead focusing on incremental changes with much smaller potential emissions reductions. Government resources on climate change from the EU, USA, Canada, and Australia also focus recommendations on lower-impact actions. We conclude that there are opportunities to improve existing educational and communication structures to promote the most effective emission-reduction strategies and close this mitigation gap.
Read more: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
The study contains a table which puts having fewer children at the top of their list of recommendations.
| Behaviour | Example | Approximate CO2e reduced per year (kg) | AUS | CAN | USA | EU |
| High Impact Actions | ||||||
| Have one fewer child | 23 700–117 700 | |||||
| Live car free | 1000–5300 | x | ||||
| Avoid one flight (depending on length) | 700–2800 | x | x | |||
| Purchase green energy | <100–2500 | x | x | x | x | |
| Reduce effects of driving | Buy more efficient car | 1190 | x | x | x | x |
| Eat a plant-based diet | 300–1600 | |||||
| Moderate Impact Actions | ||||||
| Home heating/cooling efficiency | Wall insulation | 180 (Chitnis et al 2013) | x | x | x | x |
| Install solar panels/renewables | Rooftop solar | x | x | x | ||
| Use public transportation, bike, walk | x | x | x | x | ||
| Buy energy efficient products | Energy Star | x | x | x | x | |
| Conserve energy | Hang dry clothes | 210 | x | x | x | x |
| Reduce food waste | No food waste | 370 (Hoolohan et al2013) | x | x | ||
| Eat less meat | 230 (Meier and Christen 2012) | x | ||||
| Reduce consumption | Pay bills online | x | x | x | ||
| Reuse | Reusable shopping bag | 5 (Dickinson et al2009) | x | x | x | x |
| Recycle | 210 | x | x | x | x | |
| Eat local | 0–360 (Coley et al2009, Weber and Matthews 2008) | x | ||||
| Low Impact Actions | ||||||
| Conserve water | Run full dishwasher | x | x | x | x | |
| Eliminate unnecessary travel | x | x | ||||
| Minimize waste | x | x | ||||
| Plant a tree | 6–60 (Freedman and Keith 1996) | x | x | |||
| Compost | x | x | x | |||
| Purchase carbon offsets | x | |||||
| Reduce lawn mowing | Let lawn grow longer | x | ||||
| Ecotourism | Use Ecolabelled accommodation | x | ||||
| Keep backyard chickens | x | |||||
| Buy Ecolabel products | x | |||||
| Calculate your home’s footprint | x | |||||
| Civic Actions | ||||||
| Spread awareness | x | |||||
| Influence employer’s actions | x | x | ||||
| Influence school’s actions | x | |||||
Source: Same link as above
In my opinion the recommendations of this study are potentially very damaging. Most Western countries and even a few Asian countries are facing a potential demographic crisis due to a low domestic birth rate.
A declining population means countries have fewer active working people as a proportion of the population. As a declining population ages, the effort of providing for older people is shared amongst fewer active working people. Fewer resources are available to take care of the old and the sick.
China in particular, which for years had a one child per family policy, potentially faces an economically debilitating demographic crisis, as large numbers of older people reach the end of their working lives, and attempts to reverse the one child policy encounter resistance from a people who have grown used to small families.
China is not the only country facing demographic issues. Japan is also very worried about their demographics, along with Russia, and many countries in Europe.
Falling birthrate is an issue in the USA. It would likely not take much of a push to precipitate demographic problems in the USA on the same scale as many other countries are facing. Studies which recommend a reduced birthrate for any reason, if translated into public policy, could easily supply that push.
Correction (EW): h/t gareth – Removed quote marks from “one less child” in the title, the correct direct quote is “one fewer child”.
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Make children: their CO2 balances are excellent for vegetation and crop yields.
Does this just apply to white parents?
David P Goldman (writes as Spengler in Asia Times) begs to differ. Within two/three generations, underpopulation in the technically advance west will be the problem, On the other side of the world Japan is a “greying” nation. Iran has gone from 4-5 children per woman in the 70s to a well below replacement 1.3 children per woman. The nation is no longer wealthy & Iranian women have to find ways to support themselves. Search on-line about temporary marriages, but here’s one article from 2014 that highlights the Iranian problem. http://www.vocativ.com/world/iran/tehran-can-choose-marriage-lasts-3-minutes/
We who support WUWT know the truth about the climate change scam & how the elites have lied to us. It’s a clear as daylight to us. It’s the same with demographics. DPG has written a number of books, but if there were only one, then this should one be required reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Civilizations_Die
Further to the above, there will be naysayers, of course. Those who can’t handle the truth. However, the numbers are writ large. Nations decline & fall when they stop breeding. Muslims now breed in Europe, because they have all but destroyed their countries of origin. Even Bill Gates now acknowledges that Europe will be overwhelmed by illegal immigrants from Africa. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=132810437
When a nation ceases to protect, support & defend its culture, it passes into the pages of history. Europe won’t be Europe if it become Islamic.
A very good example of the old adage: Rubbish in, rubbish out!
The report says:
a kid is 23 700–117 700 ~ 70700 on average
a tree is negative 6-60 ~ 33 on average
It means that it’s enough to plan 2142 and you’re CO2 neutral
2200 tree saplings cost around 1000 USD (in Poland)
So what’s the big deal?? It’s cheap and there so much unused land to plant them…
This AGW discussion is so silly.
Well, “emissions” is not a problem to begin with, so why are they trying to solve a non-problem?
Lacking a legitimate problem, liberals have to go and create one as a way to steal other people’s money.
“They” are not trying to solve any kind of a problem. They have THE solution and they are searching for an applicable problem.
They are democrats and/or progressives.
“Top of the list is convincing parents to have smaller families, one less child, to reduce the human carbon footprint.” And some of you In the U.S. want to have Row Vs. Wade overturn. If that would happen then our government could and would demand a one child policy.
If Roe V Wade is overturned it just kicks it back to the states. California might try what you suggested, but they’d never get away with it at the federal level.
Wouldn’t be effective. What we need is one less China.
So does this mean it’s OK to go and kill my sister? 😀
I always wondered why there were not teams of psychological researchers monitoring China’s population after they instituted their “one family,one child” rule. For some reason I’ve heard no one remark about a society in which everyone was an only child. I don’t think we need that much non-diversity. Scary.
I recall a classmate (Chinese mother of two) explaining to someone that she was, in effect, granted special permission to keep both of her twins.
I’ve heard it described as the Little Emperor Syndrome.
Just imagine it. One child, two parents, 4 grandparents.
Spoiled rotten from the get go.
PS: People have been saying that China’s having an out of whack male/female ratio means they are more likely to start a war. However, the Little Emperor Syndrome is going to make this difficult. Can you image a nation of spoiled children being forced into the military? Beyond that, what kind of social disruption will happen when there are millions of parents and grandparents who have lost their only heir? Especially if the war isn’t popular to begin with?
Time for the government to show some leadership. Postpone retirements of all government employees to the age of 70.
Noticeably absent from the list are useful things such as “Study engineering or a real science, not global warming.”
Genuinely useful human knowledge scales supra-linearly, which is one reason why we should celebrate a higher human population if we can direct their energies towards productive outcomes. The technological problems of the world will likely be solved by the millions of Chinese engineers, not by the handful of Western environmental activists frothing at the mouth while they make laws about carbon dioxide and fantasize about controlling other peoples’ sex lives. Green perverts.
Western engineers should get some credit.
400 years ago, it took the efforts of whole of society, including children and elderly to produce enough goods so that the population could survive the winter. (Even then a lot didn’t)
Today we can feed the population with only 5% of the population. There is a lot of surplus wealth which enables a lot of people to spend their time studying, instead of making stuff for others to use.
A few years back I read that 90% of the scientists who ever lived, were alive today.
We (the wife and I) only had 4 kids. We (when we were having kids) preferred small families. We were not Catholic.
two too many.
If he purchased 2 kid credits from a childless couple would he be OK?
Coming soon to a “green” society near you.
Eat a plant-based diet? What exactly do these writers think we eat now? If they are referring to a vegan diet, Willis Eschenbach recently wrote a good article about that. He concluded that a vegan diet does not reduce CO2 release because of the inefficiencies in essential protein production if animal products are eliminated. As to one-child, check China on that one.
The climate propaganda is relentless and, get this, funded by taxpayers. Unbelievable.
But practically no one’s reading it, except the hand-wringing “elites” in the Acela bubble and those of us here at WUWT who get their buttons pushed by it. It’s a big yawn for the entire rest of the world, who have real and immediate problems to solve and have long since “moved on.”
This only applies to developed Western nations no doubt.
The left moans continually over the world population, then wants to save people in third countries, going as far as lifting the DDT ban every 6 months to knock down the spread of malaria.
Don’t get me wrong, I think using DDT is a good call.
But, it’s like a leftists professor/lawyer in Lansing, MI once said, “The rich get richer and the poor have children.”
The left’s view of the world is like looking through a pile of broken glass … scattered and fragmented.
There is a big demographic problem that we already have.
Urbanization reduces the birth rate. link Lots of city dwellers can’t have one less child because the already have none.
“What is not forbidden will become compulsory.”
The bigger issue is immigration of people from low-carbon footprint countries to high-carbon. It does no good to lower the birth rate if immigration continues to increase the population and increase total carbon use.
But you can’t have this argument because you will be racist. When immigrants move to western countries they adopt western carbon footprints. Western countries are looking for immigrants to pay future bills. So don’t expect carbon use to decrease. This is why governments are now taxing carbon as well as income.
I remember watching a documentary some years ago call The Demographic Winter.
Right off the bat there is the mention of CO2, “Current anthropogenic climate change is the result of greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere.” It seems as I read the list of high, medium and low impact which I am doing in some cases (e.g. Limit flying which I have done once in the last 5 years) but not all. Perhaps this article needs to be sent to our former president who has been canvassing the globe. Imagine the amount of CO2 his travels have put into the atmosphere, compared to the average person just trying to get ahead in life and provide for their families. Articles like this make me sick. I hear this crap from the elites, but seldom read what their doing to minimize their carbon foot print. Seems like we ought to stop existing altogether and allow the planet to go on without all of us.
The biggest contribution to any civilized area being overpopulated is building upwards. If all residences were restricted to only one floor then the population would be self limiting based on living area available. Sure there may be a few homes that have an overabundance of rug rats running around but most would not. A way to implement that would be to change the formula for school property taxes from ad valorem to square footage of living space.
For the most part, value and square footage are pretty well correlated.
No that is not true especially in Florida.
I used to live in Florida, near Tampa. It was true then and there.
So a house on waterfront property is valued the same as a same sized one in an older non waterfront neighborhood? How about a 1973 built house with no upgrading being equal to the same size brand new home? C’mon Mark. You know it is location, location, location, age of home, interior design, quality, and much more that determines price.
But back to my original point. Why should a condo with two bedrooms pay more school taxes than a 4 bedroom house? The house has much more potential to use those taxes than the condo. Just because a small condo may be on the water or be in an exceptional complex where property values are higher doesn’t mean they should pay more school taxes than an older house with a bunch of kids who will be using the school system for many, many years.
Using that kind of logic why should a person who has no kids pay any school property tax?
Exactly!
In 2015 there were roughly 390,000 births in Canada and 280,000 new immigrants – for a total of almost 700,000 additional people. Over 40% growth was through immigration. The birth rate was 1.6.
Another issue affecting child-bearing in western countries is the age of the woman at first child, climbing from under 24 to over 28 from the 1970s to present. Many women are into their 30s by the time they have their second child.
It is difficult to see how a lower birth rate could offset immigration. But I do hear Richard Branson in the background preparing to comment on taking fewer flights…
The greenhouse emissions per capita in the USA is less than 20 tonnes CO2e. The reduced CO2 emissions of one less child of 23.7 to 117.7 tonnes must include the air they breath, or else is a gross overestimate.
The authors of the study should also acquire a bit of perspective. The global population is around 7500 million, of which only 4% live in the US. Convincing a few people to change behaviors will do nothing to change global emissions.