Condoms to combat climate change

A campaign is gathering pace to convince climate change negotiators at the December summit in Copenhagen that contraceptives should be seen as one of the primary methods of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Every £4 ($7) spent on basic family planning over the next four decades could reduce global CO2 emissions by more than one tonne, according to new research. The cost of achieving the same result with low-carbon technologies would be a minimum of £19 ($32).

The average UK adult emits around 11 tonnes of CO2 per year. The average American emits more than 19 tonnes per year, and US scientists have calculated that for each child a woman bears and rears in America, she is increasing her own lifetime ‘carbon legacy’ 5.7 fold.This puts reproductive choices up there with loft insulation and energy and transport when calculating personal impacts on the global environment.

The study, commissioned by the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) from the London School of Economics, bases its calculations on the known ‘unmet need’ of 200 million married women who wish to delay or end childbearing but have no access to contraception. It estimates that meeting this need would lead to a 72% reduction in unintended births, avoiding at least 34 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions between 2010 and 2050.

Include all unmarried women with unwanted pregnancies (about 40% of the total) and even greater climate change gains would be made.

The report uses cost-benefit analysis to conclude that it makes no sense – environmentally or economically – to leave (non-coercive) family planning out of the suite of low-carbon technologies under consideration for financial support from government. Factor in the social gains and avoided costs from every child being a wanted child and it sounds like joined-up policy heaven to me.

Moreover, understanding the positive environmental impact of fewer people is part of a critical mind-shift that has to take place amongst all of us. We’re so focussed on the emissions of CO2, waste and other pollution, we forget that the most effective way to reduce them all is to use fewer resources and less energy in the first place.

So join this campaign and get onto your MP, into your local paper, and under the skin of Messrs Miliband (David and Ed), Brown and Prescott.One for the 10:10 initiative perhaps?

Image: Alexander Shevhenko