I got a call from a guy in my class in (architecture) school. He's arranging the 20th anniversary party of our graduation, even though only about a quarter of those who started with us finished with us. (It 's a little weird. They're even inviting people who dropped out or failed along the way...)
We were talking about 'the big court case' and other stuff, and I found out he has three boys. (I have one girl.) It occurred to me that one of the 'elephants in the room' on the carbon/climate change issue is population growth. China realized some time ago that it had to get an iron grip on the population problem or collapse from shortages of resources, but now, under the banner of sustainability, almost nobody in the west mentions reproductive limits as a significant way to reduce the 'footprint' of the species.
My colleague referred to his third as a "mistake", but I started wondering, how many kids do we get to have if we are serious about limiting our effect on the environment. How many is enough, especially in the 'advanced world' where they are not an immediate economic support to the family, but just a drain on family resources? Further, our economy would seem to be based on perpetual growth, which is obviously not sustainable unless the light barrier is broken. When do *all* the repercussions of a zero growth economy get put on the climate change table?