Blog Post # 5 -“Woman decided not to have children for environmental reasons”

The article I read was about a woman who is choosing not to have children for environmental reasons. She talked about how she thought this would be the biggest impact she made on the environment, and how she wants to be a “GINK”, meaning Green Values, No Kids. She gave statistics about pollution, saying that 99 percent of the resources we use are released as pollution. She also compared her carbon footprint to other people around the world, saying it was over 200 times larger than an average Ethiopian’s. She also believes that by not having kids for environmental reasons will ease the stigma of not having kids for other reasons.

Personally I thought this was all somewhat strange. It seemed like she was putting the value of a relatively small effect on the environment in a position of higher importance of having children. I know people have very legitimate reasons for not having children and I respect that. To me though, this one is a kind of outrageous. The world isn’t here to simply protect, you have to live too, at least the way I see it. I think the priorities here are a little off. I think life itself is drastically more important than the effect a single person has on pollution and their carbon footprint. I can’t really see it. If she doesn’t want a child regardless of the environment, she shouldn’t have any. But I don’t think the environment is going to suffer that much if she has a few children. I think she could ease up on herself. I totally believe we should try to be protective of the environment and try to use eco friendly products within our means, but it is certainly not the reason I’m here. It is not what I’m solely living for. I respect her decision, but I don’t think I could ever feel the same way unless the environment was much different than it is now or unsustainable for life.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/27/not-have-children-environmental-reasons