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.
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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).”
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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”.
That exposes “green’s” true goal – reject God and all He has done. Deny that God said all he made was “very good”. That is a sure path to cultural destruction. Europe is already shrinking because its birthrate is so low.
First, they came for God, because He is an absolute reference for a religious/moral (i.e. behavioral protocol) philosophy, and replaced Him with mortal gods that would guide/direct the people according to their vision. It’s not God or faith/trust that is the issue per se, for most people (and His philosophy) separate the logical domains: science, philosophy, fantasy, and faith; but the philosophy He propounded, which is full of inconvenient truths about the consequences of progressive (e.g. generational) liberalism or monotonic divergence, and flat-Earth consensus about phenomenon in the scientific logical domain (i.e. near space and time or observable and replicable).
Anyway, whether it is God or a mortal wannabe, judge a philosophy by the contents of its principles. The modern Church of Pro-Choice is based on principles that are internally, externally, and mutually inconsistent (i.e. irreconcilable) and thereby a first-order forcing of dysfunctional convergence, which has infected everything from popular culture to scientific enterprise.
In summary, boys and girls just want to have fun. And egoistic men and women just want to rule and reap secular rewards.
So, it is now not
“think of the children”
it is now
“think of not having the children”.
Better hope the progressives are working on a new catch phrase!
I’m half-way to saving the planet: no kids and never fly! I eat mostly vegetarian or wild game, so maybe three-quarters there. All the while not belonging to the progressive movement nor believing in global warming as a bad thing. Who knew?
Wonder if I could create a study that looked as cool as this one, said what the journals want to hear and get it published? Some days I’m highly tempted. It’s all gobbledegook anyway. I had plenty of education in BSing with philosophy and psychology. Just a thought.
Great news! Millions of immigrants will be happy to increase our population. Not to work to support those who are elderly, but that’s a minor detail.
It sounds like they are advising establishment of a suicide cult (e.g. evolutionary dysfunction). They should consider the problem is not absolute numbers, but rather population density. Insead of encouraging (e.g. democratic leverage, labor arbitrage) and forcing (e.g. elective wars) mass immigration, they should pursue emigration reform to address local causes and development.
Arguing that reproduction is necessary to avoid a “demographic time bomb” only means that when the explosion inevitably comes it will be bigger and more damaging.
Mankind needs to realise that consumption of all limited resources (water, food, metals, land etc etc) creates stresses and will likley be the principle driver of war, hunger, disease, illegal immigration etc.
There are 7bn of us on the planet. In the natural world we regard a few hundred or a few thousand as a threatened species. There are some very good arguments that a stable human community need be only 5-10% of current levels – 700m would be mare than enough to ensure the survival of the species, diversity in talents etc.
Issues of green vs carbon based energy would be irrelevant. Water, food, minerals etc would be sufficiently abundant long into the future.
The biggest threat to mankind is not climate change but uncontrolled population increases. Now is probably the best time to do something about it – people can work longer in better health, automation can eliminate jobs freeing up resources etc etc
The world could easily support 3 to 5 times our current population.
That’s not a reason to go there.
It’s a reason to avoid panicking in regards to the current population.
MarkW,
I presently ‘own’ one cat. I could easily afford to own 100 cats. However, I wouldn’t want to live in that house!
At a massively reduced standard of living perhaps. To achieve a decent standard of living in Africa and the Middle East it would be necessary for the first world to move in, shoot all the tyrants, the corrupt, the imams, expunge islam entirely and set up orderly governments. But that is not very PC and will not happen.
I’d rather live in a crowded free world than an uncrowded authoritarian world.
By a mile. No contest.
Eustace,
You have it backwards! It is more probable that a high population would require stringent controls on people’s behavior than a low population. Crime rates, particularly homicide, are typically higher in urban areas, with a positive correlation between population and rates. People, understandably, are unhappy with that, and pay more in taxes to support a larger, better armed, police force. Many people see a solution in gun control, taking away the choice of ownership of self-protection. Gangs are an urban problem. Do you have the ‘freedom’ to go for a walk at night when you know that there are violent gangs that might rape or kill you?
The larger and more complex a society becomes, the more control bureaucrats have over your life in telling you where you can go and what you can do. They use computers to monitor your every expenditure so that they don’t miss out on the taxes necessary to support the law enforcers.
You need to think about your evaluation of the relationship between population density and freedom.
Missed the point, by a light-year.
I don’t want to live in a world with authorities in charge of how many children you or I may have. Is that plain & simple enough for you?
Please don’t tell me what I “need” to think about, and I’ll do the same for you. Deal?
Population density and freedom are inversely related. As countries populations increase their freedoms decrease. Your crowded world would not be free. It would indeed be authoritarian. There is no need for authoritarianism in an uncrowded world. Your choice is non-sequiter, and daft as well!
Eustace,
No deal! If you want to offer an opinion in a public forum you can expect to be called out if you say something indefensible.
I don’t want to live in an authoritarian world where some bureaucrats tell me what to do either. However, the probability of you and I getting what we want is much better in a country with a modest population density.
Good one.
Terry Warner. The reproduction rates in developed countries is low and undeveloped countries it is high. The logical answer is to promote development.
Development occurs when people are freed from chores to pursue education, invention and prosperity.
Affordable, available energy bestows that freedom.
The last people that should be allowed anywhere near policy creation that ignores that logic are either low in comprehension and reason or just plain nasty people that would support those even nastier in their bid for power.
Just as history warns.
“The biggest threat to mankind is not climate change but uncontrolled population increases.”
The biggest threat to mankind is greed that drives men to covet that which belongs to others.
If we do not commit suicide right away, we are all going to die! I am feeling very scared right now..
Meanwhile people of the same ideology are
1. promoting third world immigration to a) counter the effects of low birth rates (wasn’t that the solution?) and b) to give the migrants access to more resources (wasn’t that the problem?)
2. calling everyone a racist who dares to criticize the high birth rates in Africa or ethnic groups
3. demanding economic expansion in third world countries, which will unavoidably multiply the consumption of resources and CO2 emissions.
Are you sure it is about climate change???
To get the replacement rate up first replace the drooling baby picture with a smiling one. Drooling babies are a turnoff….
The premise assumes CO 2 drives climate change, which I doubt. It seems to me we should increase CO 2 emissions in order to increase crop yields to feed that growing population.
I wish that Pauline and Albert Gore had only one child -Nancy, Al Jr’s older sister
Fake study! How can one child reduce 58.6 tCO2e per year when the annual ave. per capita in European Union is only 6.7 tCO2e? The child is equivalent to 8 people. She must be driving a monster truck to school! Baby girl, time to go to school
I want one of those.
Once you accept the premise that CO2 is “bad/evil/killing the planet”, then by logical extension you wind up with a death cult.
+1
Wrong premise, wrong conclusion. Overpopulation is indeed a problem, and it should be handled – but it is so politically incorrect, that no one is willing to touch it. But to limit the number of people in countries that produce food for starving countries is not the best approach.
Overpopulation is not a problem and most likely never will be.
Some cities are over crowded, but the solution is simple. Those who don’t like it can leave.
MarkW,
Such is your opinion. However, I think that you would be hard pressed to justify the opinion.
Is the space ship ready?
People of Africa are leaving. Educated people of India are leaving. Mark, how many uneducated Indians can you accommodate?
Can we make Justin Trudeau a case study of this philosophy? Or any of the other mouthpieces promoting this lifestyle? David Suzuki? Al Gore? Obama? ANY Hollywood starlet of your choosing? Mikey Moore?
Any people contemplating having children and adhering to this study would help the world more by taking their own “carbon footprint” out of the equation.
The bitter deadly fruit of Malthusian delusions.
Population management! How delightfully Totalitarian!! A concept only seriously considered by sociopathic megalomaniacs.
Exactly. Enviro extremism is totalitarian and rabidly misanthropic at heart….or heartlessness….
This is an excellent study. We need to send this to all or our friends who believe in CAGW and suggest they do their part by not having any children at all. Indeed, any and all progressive Malthusians should prove their adherence to the prevailing belief system by not reproducing in any way shape or form.
The day began to draw to a close. The Twelve came to [Yeshua] and said, “Send the crowd away, so that they can go and get lodging and food in the towns and farms around here, because where we are is a remote place.”
But he said to them, “Give them something to eat, yourselves!”
They said, “We have no more than five loaves of bread and two fish — unless we ourselves are supposed to go and buy food for all these people!” (For there were about five thousand men.)
He said to his talmidim, “Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each.”
They did what he told them and had them all sit down. Then he took the five loaves and the two fish and, looking up toward heaven, made a b’rakhah, broke the loaves and began giving them to the talmidim to distribute to the crowd. Everyone ate as much as he wanted; and they took up what was left over, twelve baskets full of broken pieces.
— Luke 9 (CJB)
C’mon now! This was not entirely unexpected, was it?
It is. it was and it will always be about control.
By nasty people.
Not sure if this has been brought up, but Alarmists are looking at this is the wrong way. They are desperate to lower their emissions so much so that they recommend people only have one kid. If they are truly that serious about reducing emissions there is a huge and obvious way to achieve exactly what they want and it really is within their power to do so. Emigrate to a low emissions country and live their lifestyle. Living poor with kids is far better than living rich without them.
If they wanted to reduce emissions in developed nations they would recommend stopping immigration and developing policies to support emigration, but of course that is absurd, to thy choose to tell people to have less kids.
Don’t demand of others what you refuse to do yourself. You want to lower emission? Move to Chad and work a farm with your hands.
I need someone to help me decide which child to get rid of.
The left wing answer would be, “someone else’s”.
It’s truly politically incorrect to even have a post on demographics these days. Even the article referred to re one fewer child, fails to define that Caucasians already can’t possibly have one fewer so they mean Africa the Middle East,… In Europe, political correctness would exclude non Caucasians from such an edict.
PC also prohibits discussion of the de facto case that male Caucasians are excluded from ‘diversity’ because they are predominantly implicated in the egregious and subverzive initiation of the age of enlightenment and we’re the thoughtless rogues who foisted the industrial revolution on an unsuspecting world.
Because of our confessed guilt to these charges, we are now sentencing ourselves to dismantling of what, in our hubris, we called civilization and, so it will never happen again, we are also charged with arranging our own marginalization if not extirpation. Well yes there are all those Nobel Prizes, but the committee has already arranged to have Cracker Jack™ distriubute the prizes in their fine caramel corn product to dilute the traces of the crimes over the coming centuries/sarc
Does anyone actually see that this guilt and self loathing by progressive Caucasians and their determination to whittle themselves down ‘to size’ is the most monstrous case of яасisм against non Caucasians ever promulgated??
Gary,
Guilt is indeed a very powerful motivator. That is why the Left often tries to use it.
Their top 4 recommendations have the same root:
1. Restrict peoples freedom
2. Restrict peoples freedom
3. Restrict peoples freedom
4. Restrict peoples freedom
For the left, all problems, either real or perceived, seem to have the same basic solution: restrict peoples freedom! Stated another way: control the masses so that they must do what we say.
No matter how noble the cause or how flowery the rhetoric, the ultimate goal of the left is power and control.
jclarke341,
Perhaps you need to re-read the abstract. They present recommendations for people to voluntarily adopt. While I don’t agree with what I think are generally shallow suggestions, they are not recommending that governments enforce any of them.
What a precious fantasy world in which you live. If given sufficient power, do you honestly believe that the Malthusians would not enforce this with smug superiority? Do you really think that these people signed on to this silliness because they actually love their fellow man?
Naïve.
Andrew,
It isn’t clear that you directed your comment to me. However, I’ll respond to it. As Roger Dewhurst remarked above, “Population density and freedom are inversely related. As countries populations increase their freedoms decrease. Your crowded world would not be free. It would indeed be authoritarian. There is no need for authoritarianism in an uncrowded world.” The probability of your feared Malthusians both having an excuse to exercise power, and the circumstances to garner that power, both increase with an increasing population.
It is you who are “Naïve.”
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN
I quickly counted over a hundred countries where the birth rate exceeds five children per woman.
Avoiding a few flights is bigger than living car free. Most everything else is a pittance. To think jet-setting Algore called the internal combustion engine the greatest threat to humankind.