I have tried and failed to find something approximating an answer to this. The various environment “calculators” i’ve found make no reference at all to it. Some even imply that it’s bad in one sense – because sharing the same household resources among two or more people is more efficient than a household of an individual.
I personally think (without any evidence to support it) that a person who remains childless has done more to benefit the environment long term than pretty much any other action, or even any combinations of other actions. I suppose the one exception would be committing suicide before having children – because you not only save consumption of future generations but also your own. Of course, I’m speaking in an amoral cost-benefit analysis while claiming this.
I am among these great benefactors of mankind, and I want to find out just how great I am! FYI, I had a vasectomy years ago to make sure this status never changes. I wanna start driving a Hummer and using a coal-fired toaster, and still be able to look Ed Begley and … some other famous greenistas in the eye and tell them I’ve already contributed more than my share.
The vasectomy is fairly meaningless I’d think, given that it take only a small minority of men to impregnate all the women who are interested in children. As for being childless, I suppose it would depend on if you’ve convinced any women you have been with to stay childless.
By this logic, recycling, installing solar heating and anything else one person can do is equally meaningless for the same reasons – others will use up whatever the one person didn’t.
This actually may be true, loathe as I am to consider it. Do you think that individual efforts to live in a more environmentally friendly manner are simply feel-good actions that make no real difference?
Nope. You are wrong. And Der Trihs makes a good point.
If a woman wants to have children, she will (generally, all else being equal) find a way for that to occur. So, one vasectomied male doesn’t really tilt the scales insofar as number of children born–you’ve just removed yourself from the pool of sperm donors.
Your “by this logic” examples don’t hold up. If I see my neighbor installing solar panels, I’m not going to use MORE electricity because of that observation. I’m just going to always use however much electricity I use before and after the observation.
And a final parting partisan shot (because why not, you idiots on the other side do it in every goddamned thread): you are really illustrating why the modern liberal movement is a death cult–it all comes down to just slowing everything down until we might as well have killed ourselves (and that will indeed be the long-term result of their policies).
Only if everyone stops having children, everywhere, permanently. Which no one but extremists like the “Voluntary Human Extinction Movement” is even pushing for, much likely to actually do. Having fewer children is a good thing, there are far too many people for our civilization to support without using up resources unsustainably, and having fewer children is a better way of reducing the world population than famine or war.
My death cult comment really has nothing to do with having children or not–it’s just about liberals’ penchant for slowing everything down: “reduce, reuse, recycle.”
But I won’t dwell on it–I’m sure some other more appropriate thread will come along for me to discuss this, and you and I are having a lovefest here that I don’t want to break up.
As for the OP’s question, it’s true that not having a child is probably the best environmental act one can take(or not take actually), in a vacuum. Problem is, our economic and social systems are dependent on population growth. Growth breeds technological improvements, which in turn should make for cleaner energies. Poor countries tend to be dirty countries.
Der Trihs, you also mentioned resources, but resources can always be used more efficiently. Population stagnation would lead to less resources being harvested as the population ages, thus pushing living standards down.
So economics may end up trumping environmentalism here. In order to reduce the population we first have to figure out how to make an economy work with a declining population. Every single economic system man has ever come up with needs an expanding population, or at least more workers than elderly folks.
Being a vegetarian is good too. If we were all vegetarians and gave up tobacco, we’d probably be able to support two or three times the population we have now. That’s just a wild-ass estimate, of course.
When the big class action lawsuit was being waged some years back, one of the arguments the tobacco industry made was that they weren’t being given enough credit for all the benefits of premature death caused by smoking. Look, what if all those people who died in their 40s, 50s and 60s lived instead into their 80s? There’d be a housing crisis. There’s be a different type of health care crisis related to geriatric care. Medicare would be bankrupted. Etcetera.
In the academic circles of geography (which include and/or overlap with political ecology, various environmental sciences, and environmental history), the emphasis nowadays is on the inseparability of nature and human culture. On a philosophical level, this is discussed using words like “socionature.” On a practical level, it permeates understandings of things like conservation area management plans and the role of indigenous residents in land use change.
Anyway, the point is that “more human bodies” are no longer seen as a problem per se the way they were, for example, in the 1970s heyday of Paul Erlich and other overpopulation alarmist environmentalists. (Partly, too, this is due to a better understanding of the demographics of modernizing societies, especially vis-a-vis the empowerment of women.)
So, to answer the OP, basically no value whatsoever.
This is a warning for you, do not call other people names in this forum. You should know the rules clearly by now.
Your posting privileges may be under review.
While I understand the importance in being able to quantify different actions (or inactions) in regards to how they impact the environment, to compare and focus efforts, improve efforts, target areas, etc, but to then turn that into a “More Environmentally Responsible Than Thou” status is IMO counter-productive and divisive.
Besides, (yes I’m pulling this statistic out of my nether regions) 9.999999999% of people reproduce or not due to personal desires and circumstances, not due to environmental conservation values.
I’m hoping your comment about driving a Hummer because you haven’t reproduced is just a humourous aside, not a true window into your evaluation of your situation
My instinct is that having kids, raising them to respect the environment, and possibly inspiring them to seek new ways of benefitting the earth would ultimately have more net positive effect than not having kids at all. But I don’t know whether my instinct is correct.
FYI, I had a vasectomy years ago to make sure this status never changes. I wanna start driving a Hummer and using a coal-fired toaster, and still be able to look Ed Begley and … some other famous greenistas in the eye and tell them I’ve already contributed more than my share.