Treehugger, well known for their ‘post first, read later’ articles, has an interesting one discussing your children’s carbon footprint. They suggest that fewer children are good for the environment. As an owner of a front lawn, I’m inclined to agree.

Seriously, though, their claim is that your children increase your carbon legacy by 5.7 times. That means that the carbon footprint from the energy you consume, products you use, and waste you leave is multiplied by your offspring several times over. To prove this, they cite a study done by Oregon State University, then link to OSU’s website rather than producing a link to the study. I looked around for a while but couldn’t find the study myself.

This idea strikes me as odd; why are our children using more energy than us? Products are being manufactured using cleaner, more efficient processes now, right? One would assume that each person would consume a similar amount food and clean water and produce similar levels of waste, so the only things left to consider are the unique consumer products that each person uses and in what ways they use them. For example my home theater toys may be someone else’s classic cars. Each have different environmental effects in both their manufacture and use.

Too much of this seems like speculation to me. Mike Judge disagrees in a rather poignant way about the effect of having less children. This is one of the sites the ‘go green’ folks read in large numbers. I’m not calling bullshit exactly, but I think there should be more to it than what’s there. Thoughts?