Deciding Between Children and the Environment

The biggest changes in my life occurred after I found out I was pregnant with Punky.  I immediately started researching ways to bring my son up in a healthy environment.  I considered cloth diapering, making my own baby food, and was dead set on nursing for at least a year.  This was also when I began to buy organic food, and over time, I researched small ways that I can make our world a better place through recycling, using natural cleaners, driving less, and staying away from chemicals and processed foods.

Recently, I was very angered when my husband (who should have known better) sent me this article.

According to a British Study and separate study from Oregon State University…

In the United States, each baby results in 1,644 tons of carbon dioxide, five times more than a baby in China and 91 times more than an infant in Bangladesh, according to the Oregon State study. That is because Americans live relatively long, and live in a country whose long car commutes, coal-burning power plants and cathedral ceilings give it some of the highest per-capita emissions in the world.

Seen from that angle, the Oregon State researchers concluded that child-bearing was one of the most fateful environmental decisions in anyone’s life.

The article also discusses the financial aspect of childbearing and surmises that preventing the lives of billions of children would save our planet.  But what about our souls?

The British study found that $220 billion, spent over the next 40 years, might prevent half a billion births and prevent 34 billion tons of carbon dioxide. The cost, measured in 2020, would be about $7 for each ton reduced, the report said — far cheaper than solar power at $51, or wind power at $24.

This is saying that a child’s life is less important than the money that would be saved through the government offering contraceptives and abortions.  There is a climate activist who is quoted at the end of the article, who decided not to have any more children because he was worried more about climate change.

How can climate change be more important that a child’s life?  The environment will never be more important to me than my children or anyone’s children.  However, that does not mean that I won’t do what I can to make this world a cleaner, healthier place to live.  But it does mean that when given the choice, I will always choose life.  As Christ said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).  I firmly believe that living life abundantly means investing in the lives of children, for they are our future.  Without children, the human race does not have a future and either does the planet.

How could reducing 4,932 tons of carbon dioxide
be more valuable then these three lives?

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