No matter what I do, not matter how I live my life, so long as I don’t have children I’m better for the ecology than a breeder.
It works like this. Say I drive to work in a poorly maintained, fuel inefficient vehicle. Let’s put my weekly driving at 212 miles per week (all numbers adjusted to “American”). The car gets a lousy 30mpg which means I use 3.5 Gallons a week or 183.7 Gallons per year. That works out to a combined CO2 emission rate of 3,594 lbs per year. Presuming I average this for my entire driving history and that works out to a luxurious 69 years of driving my total CO2 impact from driving is 247,986 lbs in the environment. That’s a lot, right? But I’m also married, so presuming my wife does the same our total impact is 495,972 lbs of CO2 in the atmosphere over the course of our adult lives.
Now, let’s look at a Breeder couple that is very environmentally aware. They cycle a lot, drive a very well maintained car, or use public transit. The best they can hope for is a very admirable 1,797 lbs of CO2 each per year. Assuming they both die at 70 years of age and have been commuting on their own since the age of 16, then their combined CO2 impact is a scant 194,076 for both of them. That’s less than half of what my wife and I have done.
But they have children, so at best they’re using twice that, or roughly the same as us.
And that’s only if they’re conserving and using public transit and bicycles all the time. Chances are they’re not, nor are they driving a gas guzzling car like I am. If they’re typical they’re driving an SUV or Minivan and producing 13,313 lbs of CO2 every year for each of them. And that’s not including all the extra driving they’ll be doing as they transport their little darlings to all the events and groups and classes and games they need to attend in order grow up normal.
Even assuming that all that adds only an extra half the CO2 each year to the family output, for only 20 years, the total environmental damage from just transporting this family has caused is a whopping 1,038,414 lbs of CO2 alone.
But those children will contribute their own CO2 to the atmosphere once they leave home. And they’ll probably breed as well, producing more CO2 as they raise their little hellions, who will no doubt continue to breed, and so on, and so on, and so on, until the ecology collapses and this planet can no longer support life on the scale we’re used to.
And this formula applies to everything else in life. Total food consumption, total waste output, total disposables and acquisitions. My wife and I live in a modest 890 square foot apartment. You couldn’t put a family in that! At the very least you’d need two floors, 1200 square feet and a backyard with the related chemicals, water and energy output required to properly maintain a lawn. Or more effort and waste by the city on more manicured parks.
My wife and I prefer the non-landscaped natural spaces along the north banks of the river near us to the heavily manicured play spaces that cost millions of dollars to ready for breeders and their off-spring. Which is better for the environment? Quiet wetlands for wildlife or noisy play spaces for hell-spawn?
So even if the breeders do without all the necessities of modern living each generation will produce at least as much as my wife and I will, but with them it’s perpetual.
And no matter how bad I am, no matter how irresponsible I act, my carbon footprint ends with my death. The polar bears have nothing to fear from me.
