When we talk about sustainable lifestyles, often the actions that come to mind are the collection and use of more efficient bulbs.

But a new study published in Environmental Research Letters shows that the really effective, able to make a real difference, are rarely the focus of educational campaigns and environmental policies of governments.
Research conducted by Seth Wynes and Kimberly Nicholas says that a citizen who lived without cars would reduce its annual carbon footprint of 2.4 tons of CO2, while if it gave up a transatlantic air flight to / r decrease of 1.60 tons .
If you decide instead to switch to a vegetarian diet, the decrease would be of 0.82 tons (choice four times more efficient waste collection and eight times more efficient installation of energy-saving light bulbs).
But that is nothing compared to a decision that could reduce our ecological footprint of 58 tons of CO2 per year during the whole of our existence: to do one less child.
To obtain this data, Wynes and Nicholas were based on a 2009 study conducted by researchers Paul Murtaugh and Michael Schlax.
In that research was formulated for the first time the principle of carbon inheritance, whereby putting the heirs of the world, every parent is partly responsible for its emissions.
More precisely than half of the children's emissions, of those of their grandchildren, and so on.
On average, having a child quintuplicherebbe the ecological footprint of the parent.
Consider procreation a little ecological gesture will certainly infuriate many people, and the study's authors seem to know: "We understand that this is a deeply personal choice.
But we can not ignore that our lifestyle has consequences for the climate, "says Nicholas.
That goes also specifically: "No children, but it is a step that I am considering together with my partner.
Since we are both aware of environmental issues, this aspect will play a role in the final decision, although not the only one. "
But if the increase in world population is also an environmental issue, how to solve it?
Experience shows that in the southern hemisphere the two recipes for the reduction in the birth rate are women 's education and the promotion of contraception.
Where these policies are implemented, the results are obvious: in Kerala, one of the states most culturally developed Indian, the birth rate is similar to that of Canada or the United States, and is very much in contrast to the rest of the country.
At the same time, we must not forget that an American citizen has an ecological footprint forty times greater than that of a Bangladeshi citizen, and the over-exploitation of planetary resources makes us even in the West in part because, despite our low rates birth.
The solution of course is not in blaming those who have had children or those planning to have, but in releasing this decision by social pressure.
Even today there is a strong expectation in Italy that every woman harbors within it the deep desire to give birth to a little child, and many couples do this step out of habit, conformism or other people's expectations, which for real interest.
With disastrous results for their lives, since, as well explains Jessica Valenti in his book Why have children ?, the children themselves do not contribute to our happiness and motherhood is not the most satisfying experience for a woman.
The choice not to have children, or have a single one, should become just as valid and legitimate.
If still a couple who carries it can be accused of selfishness and lack of interest in the future, the study of Wynes and Nicholas reminds us that anyone who takes consciously this decision does in fact an extremely altruistic gesture, since it helps to make the ecological future of world a bit 'better.
Even for other people's children.
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From Wired