I have to register some strong objections to Courtney Martin's column yesterday about the environmental impact of babies. Courtney argues that the population debate should "get personal"; that is, that women should consider the environmental impact of children when family planning.
I'm with Courtney -- population growth is a serious environmental problem. But her argument overlooks the role that men play in family creation and in maintaining systems where, simultaneously, overpopulation is encouraged and the onus of the overpopulation problem is on women. My issue is not that Courtney's "letting [her]self off the moral hook too easily." It's that she's not putting men on the moral hook at all.
Courtney focuses on the women of the First World because "as of 2005, women in 18 of the 24 wealthiest nations were having more babies than in previous years." Maybe so, but the the birth rate in the United States is close to its lowest level since birth rates were recorded. When women are given the choice, they choose to have fewer children, and they choose to have children later, because it makes financial sense. Nevertheless, there is endless hand-wringing about women delaying childbirth from America's male-dominated medical establishment. Men run the religious institutions that wield great influence over the political discourse about contraception and abortion. Men predominate in the governments of countries, including this one, where comprehensive sex education is given short shrift. Meanwhile, individual men play a huge role in family decisions such as whether to have a child.
Not only are male-dominated cultural, religious, and political power structures responsible for the reduced reproductive autonomy of women, the movement to make environmental justice all about personal choice is often sexist, since the burden of doing the extra work required to be "green," and monitor your family's environmental impact, falls disproportionately on women. Women are the ones who are supposed to wash the cloth diapers, make food from scratch instead of buying prepackaged, remember to use the reusable bags (because women do most of the grocery shopping), use menstrual cups instead of tampons, and apparently, avoid having babies.
So we shouldn't be concerned with -- much less suggesting hypocrisy on the part of -- the "Prius-driving, bottle-recycling, Sierra Club-donating woman" who "is rarely focused on the environmental consequences" when deciding to have a baby. Not only is that language tinged with anti-elitism scorn (which I don't think Courtney intended), it's also not at the heart of the problem.
We need to realize that attempting to save the environment by encouraging individuals to make more "green" choices isn't going to get us anywhere near solving our crisis. We need regulatory and political solutions -- even in America. For example, in my home city of D.C., a 5-cent tax on plastic bags was so effective at reducing bag usage that it's raising far less revenue than hoped. Economic incentives and regulation work. Shaming women by appealing to their sense of "green" virtue does not. Worse than that, it advances the narrative that women are primarily responsible for environmentally dangerous overpopulation in a world where men are still running the show.
--Silvana Naguib
