Hannah Chin

It's called The Climate Mitigation Gap.

This is Kimberly Nicholas.

She was a co-author of this paper.

She's a professor of sustainability science at Lund University in Sweden.

And she told me that when she and her colleagues published this paper, the press coverage really focused on the fourth individual action.

Have one less child.

Specifically, an average of 58.6 metric tons of CO2 a year if you're in an industrialized country.

That's an equivalent of 7.9 homes energy use for one year.

And this kicked up a lot of debate because people already have very strong feelings about children and reproductive choice.

Right.

What is driving global climate change is fossil fuel use.

Human development overall is definitely part of that, but it has more to do with energy companies and governments and how we set up our infrastructure.

Yeah.

As someone who does want to co-parent a kid someday, that's the journey I'm interested in.

Like, I think reproductive autonomy is really important.

And I'm still worried about the climate impacts of my individual actions, including things like flying and driving and maybe having a kid.

I think it helps to hear that because I don't even know what my future is going to look like.

Right.

So how could I bring another new human being into that?

Absolutely.