Advocates of World Vasectomy Day hope that if you care about the earth, you won’t put more people on it. Do you agree? We want to hear from you

You buy local, organic produce, conserve energy and water. You purchase carbon offsets when you travel. Maybe you drive a Prius. Perhaps you don’t have a car at all, opting instead to live near public transit and ride your bike or walk whenever possible.

But all those attempts to reduce your carbon footprint might be for naught if you decide to have kids.

A 2009 University of Oregon study found that having children obliterates any emission reductions from altered behavior, like driving less and using energy-efficient light bulbs. The average American is responsible for 20 tons of carbon dioxide per year. MIT researchers discovered that even the lowest-consuming Americans (young children and homeless people, according to researchers) generated an average of 8.5 tons of CO2 per year, more than double the global average.

Population specialists agree that just a half-child-per-woman decrease in the global fertility rate could bring global population back to 6 billion by the end of the century (we’re at 7 billion, hurtling toward 9 billion at current fertility rates). And half a child in the other direction could take us to 16 billion in the same time frame, which would be catastrophic, according to many. As Alan Weisman puts it in his bestseller, Countdown, “We would never get there, because we would collapse over multiple thresholds first, possibly never to crawl back.”

Food-growing capacity is an example of one of those thresholds. University of Minnesota researcher Jon Foley, who studies global food and population trends, has said, “We’re already using all the cropland we’ll ever have. In the coming years, we have to feed 2 billion more people, using the same land.”

Resource shortage is a concern that has grown as our ability to both collect and analyze data about human impacts on the planet has improved. These days, the conversation is more nuanced, the proposed solutions more focused on ensuring that people – particularly women – have all the information they need to make the right choices for themselves – the hope being that those decisions will align with what’s best for the environment.

The emphasis on personal responsibility and choice, however, places the issue right at the feet of individuals. So what choices can we responsibly make?

Tell us

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