"I appreciate that you seem to care about having little impact on the earth. Thank you! : ) However, by bringing into the world another human being, who will likely be consuming and polluting to some degree for about 70 years, regardless of how you raise her, you just negated every good thing you and your wife did to help the earth. Sorry. It's just a mathematical fact.
If you REALLY want to lessen the impact on the earth, I suggest you confront the reality of overpopulation and encourage everyone you speak to to NOT bring another consumer/polluter into the world. If people do that it will result in a far greater positive impact on the planet than all of the other things combined that you recommend in regards to lifestyle changes.
Yes, I know your daughter will likely consume and pollute less than most North Americans, but even so, it's too much. I consume and pollute less than any North American I've ever known, and it would still take 2.3 planets like earth to sustain my "extravagant" lifestyle if everyone lived like I do. Plus you can't control what your daughter does the rest of her life. And if she brings yet another human being into this world she will just flush all the good she did in her life by living properly down the drain too.
For those TRULY interested in lessening their impact on earth, and who are willing to confront the reality of the impact of the choice to reproduce, please see this website:http://vhemt.org/"
Sonja here again: VHEMT stands for Voluntary Human Extinction Movement and their motto is: May we live long and die out! You should at least surf on over to their website, it's a combination of humor and seriousness that is rather refreshing. This probably isn't an ideal solution for most people out there, but it brings up some rather serious questions regarding the environmental movement and human population growth. So, if I decide to have 15 kids, can I really consider myself an environmentalist because I recycle and use cloth grocery bags? Probably not. Can someone be an environmentalist if they have any kids?
