For some millennials, climate change clock ticks louder than biological one

“There is this sense that if you don’t have kids soon, you could be putting them in a harder position,” Lundahl said. “But if you do have them, that will not be easy either, with the storms, the intense droughts, the precariousness of the times. It’s like you are playing with two ticking time bombs — yours and the planet’s.”…

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With each child, citizens of the developed world increase their carbon footprint sixfold, adding roughly 60 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, one oft-quoted study concluded. The calculation figures the probability that each offspring may also reproduce — potentially expanding an individual’s carbon footprint for decades after they die. Put another way, forgoing having a child has more than 25 times the carbon-reducing impact of giving up a gas-burning car…

“Procreating both contributes to climate change and creates a new victim of climate change,” said Rieder, a research professor and father of one. “I don’t know whether people should have kids, or whether they should have a big family, but I do believe that climate change should be part of their deliberation, because the consequences of bringing a new person into a changing world are really morally serious.”

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