{"id":1419,"date":"2005-07-12T01:51:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-12T01:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sustainablog.greenoptions.com\/2005\/07\/12\/brc-27-dave-roberts-hold-the-misanthropy\/"},"modified":"2017-08-08T13:08:45","modified_gmt":"2017-08-08T17:08:45","slug":"brc-27-dave-roberts-hold-the-misanthropy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/brc-27-dave-roberts-hold-the-misanthropy\/","title":{"rendered":"BRC 27: Dave Roberts: Hold the Misanthropy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dave Roberts is an assistant editor at Grist magazine.<\/a><\/p>\n

I have a kid — a boy, just under 2 years old. And another boy on the way in August. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.<\/p>\n

No, seriously, there isn’t.<\/p>\n

It is taken as axiomatic among greens that procreating is a sin, possibly the Original Environmental Sin. I think that’s wrong, not to say short-sighted, pinched, crabby, and irritating.<\/p>\n

I’m not on a quest to justify my actions. I do plenty of stuff that’s environmentally irresponsible — drive, buy excessively packaged consumer goods, drink OJ straight from the carton with the fridge open, etc. — and make no excuses. I’m not trying to be a saint. Matter of fact, as I’m fond of arguing, individual environmental virtue is at best a curiosity, at worst a distraction.<\/p>\n

But this thing about kids sticks in my craw.<\/p>\n

Greens have gotten pretty concrete and precise about how they measure the eco-impact of a person: It’s called an ecological footprint, measured in the number of biologically productive acres required to produce the resources the human in question consumes. (You can find out your footprint here<\/a>.) At the world’s current population level, to live sustainably (and leave something for other species) each person should be allotted 4.5 acres. The average U.S. citizen has an ecological footprint of 24 acres. To sustain a world of North Americans, we’d need … 5.3 worlds.<\/p>\n

This is obviously a somewhat inexact science, but let’s grant that it’s approximately correct. My personal ecological footprint is 16 acres. Potentially, I could reduce that somewhat, and teach my kids to keep theirs low. But still, by cranking out kids, American kids no less, I’m doing something that is, almost by definition, unsustainable. Right?<\/p>\n

Well, maybe. But I object:<\/p>\n