WHAT is the very greenest thing anyone can do?

Something that exceeds not using a car, not flying, going vegetarian, recycling, insulation (good though all those things are)?

Answer: having fewer children.

This has been found to be far and away the most effective way of reducing one’s carbon footprint.

A recent study, reported in The Guardian (July 12) compares the impact of different actions.

Having one fewer child leads to a reduction of 58 tonnes of CO2 a year: getting rid of a car saves 2.4 tonnes a year: becoming vegetarian only about 0.8 tonnes.

This study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, echoes an earlier study by two academics at Oregon State University, Profs Murtaugh and Schlax.

As reported in the New York Times: “Take, for example, a hypothetical American woman who switches to a more fuel-efficient car, drives less, recycles, installs more efficient light bulbs, and replaces her refrigerator and windows with energy saving models. If she has two children, the researchers found, her carbon legacy would eventually rise to nearly forty times what she had saved by these actions.

“A parent is responsible for one half of the emissions of their children, one quarter of the emissions of their grandchildren and so on”.

They also calculated that the hypothetical woman could cut about 486 tones of CO2 in her own life, but that savings for each birth forgone would be between 9,441 ton and 12,730 tons: so each birth forgone saves 20 times more than the efforts she made in her own life.”

Roger Plenty

Stroud