In my previous post, I discussed why 'not having children' isn't the most important thing people can do to reduce emissions, contrary to what some people believe. I think this idea particularly comes from some American modelling a few years ago, which I will try to analyse in a subsequent post. However in this post I want to expand on my simple calculation in the previous post.
In that post I suggested that if everyone in Australia stopped having children, the theoretical reduction in total emissions by 2030 would be 12%, which is well below the necessary reduction of about 50%. However of course it's totally unrealistic to think everyone would do that, so I suggested we could probably think about a 10-20% decline in births at most, which would equal a 1.2-2.4% decline in emissions - not nothing, but very small.
That's a highly simplified and theoretical calculation of course, and is more like 'emissions forgone' than an actual reduction. If we were currently reducing our total and per capita emissions, it might be more meaningful, but we are not. A slightly more realistic way of looking at this might be to calculate the actual population decline involved (leaving aside immigration).
The current number of deaths per annum in Australia is around 160,000 (ABS). (It puzzled me a bit at first that they are so much fewer than births, which are around 310,000, but the discussion below* explains this.) I won't show the detailed calculation, but if you think of the impact of not having children in terms of population decline and associated decline in emissions, the annual decline in emissions would be about 0.6%, or cumulatively 6.6% by 2030. This is a more 'real' way of calculating it (potentially an actual decline rather than emissions forgone), but again the likely decline in births is much less. Taking the 10-20% estimate again, the likely real decline would be 0.66-1.3%. A tiny amount of the needed 50% in other words.
Over the long term, a declining population would reduce emissions of course. And over the long term, because our fertility rate (births per women) is below replacement rate, we could have a declining population (depending on immigration levels). A declining population also causes some social and economic problems, which I won't go into here, but the big issue is we don't have a long time. We have to reduce emissions fast, and the thing we as Australians can do is work out why our emissions are so high and how we can reduce them. (Suggestions based on the IPCC report are in the previous post, I'll try to expand on them later.)
Finally, it's an ethical question. Even if we could reduce our total emissions in Australia by reducing births and restricting immigration, why should we continue to have such high per capita emissions rates? What is there that justifies us emitting so much CO2e per person, one of the highest rates in the world, if not the highest? We need to think as global citizens rather than just Australians, and calculate how we can get down to a sustainable level of emissions, as fast as possible. We could do this in ways that have multiple social and health benefits - to be continued ...
*The reason deaths are so much fewer than births is that the number of older people is still much fewer than younger people (see figure here). The Australian population grew rapidly until about the 1970s, when the birth rate began to drop. So although the fertility rate is now below replacement rate (which is about 2.1 children per woman, while the current fertility rate is about 1.7), births still outnumber deaths at present as there are many more in the reproductive years than in older age groups.
(Edited slightly for clarity today)
In that post I suggested that if everyone in Australia stopped having children, the theoretical reduction in total emissions by 2030 would be 12%, which is well below the necessary reduction of about 50%. However of course it's totally unrealistic to think everyone would do that, so I suggested we could probably think about a 10-20% decline in births at most, which would equal a 1.2-2.4% decline in emissions - not nothing, but very small.
That's a highly simplified and theoretical calculation of course, and is more like 'emissions forgone' than an actual reduction. If we were currently reducing our total and per capita emissions, it might be more meaningful, but we are not. A slightly more realistic way of looking at this might be to calculate the actual population decline involved (leaving aside immigration).
The current number of deaths per annum in Australia is around 160,000 (ABS). (It puzzled me a bit at first that they are so much fewer than births, which are around 310,000, but the discussion below* explains this.) I won't show the detailed calculation, but if you think of the impact of not having children in terms of population decline and associated decline in emissions, the annual decline in emissions would be about 0.6%, or cumulatively 6.6% by 2030. This is a more 'real' way of calculating it (potentially an actual decline rather than emissions forgone), but again the likely decline in births is much less. Taking the 10-20% estimate again, the likely real decline would be 0.66-1.3%. A tiny amount of the needed 50% in other words.
Over the long term, a declining population would reduce emissions of course. And over the long term, because our fertility rate (births per women) is below replacement rate, we could have a declining population (depending on immigration levels). A declining population also causes some social and economic problems, which I won't go into here, but the big issue is we don't have a long time. We have to reduce emissions fast, and the thing we as Australians can do is work out why our emissions are so high and how we can reduce them. (Suggestions based on the IPCC report are in the previous post, I'll try to expand on them later.)
Finally, it's an ethical question. Even if we could reduce our total emissions in Australia by reducing births and restricting immigration, why should we continue to have such high per capita emissions rates? What is there that justifies us emitting so much CO2e per person, one of the highest rates in the world, if not the highest? We need to think as global citizens rather than just Australians, and calculate how we can get down to a sustainable level of emissions, as fast as possible. We could do this in ways that have multiple social and health benefits - to be continued ...
*The reason deaths are so much fewer than births is that the number of older people is still much fewer than younger people (see figure here). The Australian population grew rapidly until about the 1970s, when the birth rate began to drop. So although the fertility rate is now below replacement rate (which is about 2.1 children per woman, while the current fertility rate is about 1.7), births still outnumber deaths at present as there are many more in the reproductive years than in older age groups.
(Edited slightly for clarity today)
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