Baby decisions - adding to the world's woes?

Joanna Benn, BBC Green Room 2 Dec 08;

How responsible is it to have children in a world whose environmental health is already under stress? That's the question Joanna Benn poses this week in the Green Room. On the other hand, she wonders, will a couple more hungry mouths make much difference?

I came out of my house last week and got caught up in a fleet of mothers and prams.

They were wearing a middle class yummy mummy uniform combining comfort and fashion - skinny jeans, UGG boots, black tops and large sunglasses.

The prams were all state-of-the-art three wheeled, balanced, air-bagged mini cars that can fold to the size of a postage stamp and carry the week's shopping.

The urban mother tribe looked chic, proud and collectively cool.

It got me thinking. I love kids, I love babies.

I love the idea of the Brady Bunch, of close-knit large families and a stream of brothers and sisters of different heights with crazy hair.

However, perhaps it's my age; suddenly everyone I know has children and it is confusing me.

I don't even know when it all happened. I remember conversations about university, jobs, flats, boyfriends and partners, but I seem to have missed the pre-baby musings.

One minute people were childless - or child-free, depending on your viewpoint.

The next - magic wand, small bang, plume of smoke - it was insta-family, complete with new people-carrier in the drive and more often than not, a house extension.

Two weeks ago, a single childless friend confessed she'd been looking into freezing her eggs. That apparently is not a taboo subject.

Nor are conversations about contraception, fertility patterns, mastitis, post-partum depression and sex, child behaviour problems, sleepless nights, credit crunch worries or redundancy.

However, dare ask how green is it to have kids in a world of dwindling resources, vast global inequality, terrifying climate change scenarios and dying empty seas... then people get uncomfortable and usually defensive.

Ugly truths

I have couched the question a few times: "Why did you want children?"

The answers have usually been - "It seemed the next thing to do, we wanted to, it felt right, I couldn't imagine not..."

Push again - "Have you thought about what kind of world you are bringing them into to? Some climate change scenarios give us a 10 to 15 year window before things get very ugly and scary indeed."

Resounding silence.

Being an environmentalist is, quite frankly, an awkward thing.

When I see babies, not only do I see the beauty, joy and miracle of life, I also see nappies, landfill waste, vast amounts of food and money needed, and a very shaky, unpredictable future.

According to United Nations projections, the world population will nearly stabilise at just above 10 billion people after 2200.

That's a lot of people on one small planet.

When we talk about the environment and available natural resources, we bandy around statistics; yet none of it seems to be about me or you or that guy that everyone talked about during the US election campaign, Joe the Plumber.

Mood swings

Ask any environmental organisation what it thinks about birth control; it'll sidestep the issue, and say it's not their place to comment.

If a commentator says there are too many people on the planet, their words smack of authoritarian dictatorships and human rights violations, and echo traces of unpalatable eugenics.

However, the reality is that every time we eat, switch on a light, get in a car, drink a beer, go on holiday or buy something to wear or use, we are adding to our environmental footprint.

Toddlers - small beings that they are - require almost unlimited nappies, a fair amount of food, and apparently a loungeful of loud, battery-powered plastic toys.

I am not saying we shouldn't have kids. They may well be the leaders of tomorrow, steering humanity into a just, equitable, fair and healthy future.

The new generation may indeed succeed where all others have failed, and learn lessons of the past.

Perhaps it's just my mood.

Or perhaps it's the media's fault that some of us feel as if humanity is sliding from one patch of melting ice to another in a murky sea of financial, environmental and social woes.

I am curious to know if I am the only 30-something woman who has these dilemmas, worrying about the planet's future and what we could and should do to ease the strain.

Am I fretting needlessly? Because in the grand scheme of things, one or two more children in the world really make no difference, do they?

And as for the future - rising sea levels, bare former forests, desertification, empty seas and a few dollar bills floating in the wind - well that'll all take care of itself.

Won't it?

Joanna Benn is a journalist, writer and consultant specialising in environmental issues

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website