There are a lot more things to consider, apart from carbon emissions, when deciding whether to have children. For a start, we are not on a trajectory to reduce our climate emissions in accord with various agreements. We have already reached 1.5° of heating - do you want to bring a child into a world of more frequent heatwaves, wildfires, floods and cyclones, in addition to food and housing shortages? Moreover every additional human being on the planet means there is less room for all the other species we are crowding out of existence. Our need of food and our insistence on animal husbandry destroy biodiversity and increase pollution: every extra mouth adds to this impact. And then there are all the resources dug out of the ground to provide Baby with its stroller and car seat, its disposable nappies and adorable little outfits, its plastic toys and baby bath. And the growing child will "need" an increasing number of resource-intensive objects from tablets to (more) toys. One Western child puts a huge load on our struggling planet - overpopulation is far less of a problem than overconsumption, but the damage from both is hard to exaggerate.
There are a lot more things to consider, apart from carbon emissions, when deciding whether to have children. For a start, we are not on a trajectory to reduce our climate emissions in accord with various agreements. We have already reached 1.5° of heating - do you want to bring a child into a world of more frequent heatwaves, wildfires, floods and cyclones, in addition to food and housing shortages? Moreover every additional human being on the planet means there is less room for all the other species we are crowding out of existence. Our need of food and our insistence on animal husbandry destroy biodiversity and increase pollution: every extra mouth adds to this impact. And then there are all the resources dug out of the ground to provide Baby with its stroller and car seat, its disposable nappies and adorable little outfits, its plastic toys and baby bath. And the growing child will "need" an increasing number of resource-intensive objects from tablets to (more) toys. One Western child puts a huge load on our struggling planet - overpopulation is far less of a problem than overconsumption, but the damage from both is hard to exaggerate.