Environmentalist Considering Third Child and Population Growth
Sun Nov 18, 2007 at 04:23:49 AM PDT
Thank you for the thoughtful diary, Treena. This is something I grapple with, too. -Elisa
I consider myself pretty environmental aware. We're definitely not hard core about it, but try to be aware of our family's impact on the environment and make pretty major decisions to minimize it. A few things we've done to try to be more environmentally friendly:
-Chose to live in a place where we could live with one car. The kids and I often get around on public transportation or by foot and my husband bikes to work in warm weather. (Our one car is a gas guzzling minivan, though.)
-Use reusable items instead of disposable when possible, like cloth napkins and canvas shopping bags.
-We used cloth diapers exclusively for several months when we had two kids in diapers, but then switched back to disposables eventually.
-The kids and I are vegetarian, mostly for environmental reasons.
-Give money regularly to environmental organizations, including becoming carbon neutral.
So we're far from perfect, and it's hard to consider yourself an environmentalist without being a hypocrite in some ways, but we try hard to be conscious of the environmental footprint of our family.
The issue I'm facing now is that I really, really want a third (and maybe a fourth) child. I know every person we add to the earth is just going to use up more resources, and I'm having a hard time justifying adding another person to the earth. I like to think that if we raise the kid "right" he or she will have less of an impact than most, but I think that's a pretty weak argument. (Although I do also see the kinds of people in the US who usually have enormous families, and worry about how that will play out in the long run.)
Adoption seems to be the obvious answer, and I'm totally open to that, but I can't get my husband on board. We had a big conversation about it over the weekend, and agreed to revisit it again in a month, but he was pretty seriously against it for many reasons (some good reasons, some not so good). I feel like I need to respect his opinion and not push the adoption thing, since it's such a big decision that he should have absolute veto power.
So I'm looking for advice or thoughts on how I can justify my desire for a third child with my concern for the environment. We could certainly give more money to environmental organizations to counteract our larger family's impact on the earth, but that feels like trying to buy off guilt. I could try to be even more environmentally conscious with the next kid, like possibly doing elimination communication, but that's still making a person who is going to live the rest of his/her life using the earth's resources. I think raising them environmentally aware is great, but obviously no guarantee that they'll follow your values. I've jokingly said that if we have a third, we need to commit that kid to a lifetime of environmental activism, so he/she could be someone like Al Gore whose existence has probably had a negative environmental impact. But obviously that's only going to set the kid up for some major therapy bills.
Please share your thoughts and opinions.
