Families of Two: the childfree a decade later

Seeing the recent article in Time on debunking the myths of only children, I thought of Bill McKibben who told us all about this and more over ten years ago in his book Maybe One. He talks about how single kid families can work and are necessary to help ensure we not exceed “planet capacity,” or the population that the earth can support.

This idea takes me to the issue of overpopulation. Some experts believe it’s driving many environmental issues and global warming. But other experts don’t agree.  There’s a range of expert positions. Let’s start with a most interesting one. Check out this video of Ted Rosling, Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Definitely worth the watch–

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On the other side of  the Italian catholic church and government thinking their declining population is a crisis, are the members of a group that think a declining population is just what we need..in fact, they think the best thing for humans to do is to stop reproducing all together right now to allow the earth’s biosphere to return to good health.

The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) might have radical ideas,

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Lisa Hymas of grist.org recently did a post on how Sex and the City is the greenest movie of the year  because the lead character Carrie, even though she does not realize it, exemplifies a greenish lifestyle – she has no car, does not travel much, and most importantly she is childfree. The same goes for Samantha, so it makes two of the four in the group leading lives without motherhood (character Miranda and Charlotte are moms), which is more than what real stats would reflect.

While I don’t think it’s the greenest movie of the year (yo-the characters are quite the consumers),  it got me thinking about the real women.  How “green “are they in their real lives from a reproductive standpoint?  Let’s start with Sarah Jessica Parker… (more…)