Andrew Sullivan (Taking Green To The Extreme - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan) has an interesting series going on at the moment showing that we need a dose of humanism (not to mention reality and compassion) in the green movement more than ever...
Lisa Hymas contends that "the single most meaningful contribution I can make to a cleaner, greener world is to not have children."
The average American generates about 66 times more CO2 each year than the average Bangladeshi—20 tons versus 0.3 tons. If you consider not just the carbon impact of your own kids but of your kids' kids and so on, the numbers get even starker. According to a 2009 study in Global Environmental Change [PDF] that took into account the long-term impact of Americans' descendants, each child adds an estimated 9,441 metric tons of CO2 to a parent's carbon legacy—that's about 5.7 times his or her direct lifetime emissions.
