Berlin It is a far-reaching decision that more and more young people are making and making public: Because of the climate crisis, they do not want to have their own offspring. The movement calls itself “Birthstrike” or antinatalism and finds many, especially female, supporters. Their arguments: New people on the planet meant even more CO2 emissions. In addition, children can no longer be expected to grow up on a planet hit by climate change.
On average, people in Germany cause emissions of almost eleven tons of CO2 equivalent per year. The Federal Environment Agency calculated this. A study by the University of Lund in Sweden suggests an even stronger effect: Anyone who has one child less avoids an average of 58.6 tons of CO2 equivalent per year. The authors of the study also take children and grandchildren of the offspring into account, so that the number is particularly high.
But by no means everyone considers the comparison of simple numbers to be sufficient. The Handelsblatt spoke to three mothers about why children can also give hope in the fight against climate change, how environmental awareness changes through them and how an ecologically conscious family life can succeed.
The “Zeit” author Cora Wucherer writes in a recently published article about her childlessness: “You can take the cargo bike as often as you like or pack your leftovers in homemade oilcloths, sorry, my CO2 balance will always be better than them of you with children.”
Apparently many young people think like you. In a survey published in February by the online market research institute Appinio among 1,000 respondents in Germany, 26.4 percent of 16 to 24-year-olds stated that they had given up their desire to have children because of the climate crisis, and for a further 24.5 percent the desire to have children had weakened .
Childless for the climate: Birth strike or not?
But there is another argument that climate-conscious women with children counter with. Because in addition to the ecological footprint, there is another, much less noticed category to describe the influence of a person on the climate: the ecological handprint.
Corinna Fischer, deputy head of department for products and material flows at the Institute for Applied Ecology in Freiburg, explains the term as follows: “It describes how we humans can contribute to climate protection through our actions.” And starting a family apparently even has a positive effect on this handprint Influence.
Anke Schmidt also lives climate-consciously – the 37-year-old even gave up her job in a medium-sized company for this. Now she runs an online shop for sustainable products and gives courses on ecological action.
She knows the arguments of the antinatalists. But despite her concerns about the climate crisis, Schmidt made a conscious decision to start a family.
It wasn’t that long ago that she had very different priorities in life. “I wanted to make a career up to the board of directors, then found my own company,” she says in retrospect. But at some point she got the feeling that she wasn’t able to advance as much as she would have liked in her job as division manager. Schmidt started her own Instagram channel under the name “wastelesshero”, in which she dealt with sustainability issues.
Then, one day, her gynecologist revealed to her that pregnancy would probably be difficult. A moment when Schmidt and her partner decided to try anyway – with success.
Children make parents question their lives
With the birth of her first child, Schmidt questioned her previous life decisions even more and, after a year on parental leave, decided to become self-employed with ecologically sustainable products.
She is now the mother of two children aged three and five. “It is only through our children that we realize how worthy of protection our planet is,” says Schmidt.
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Now her family is very concerned with where food comes from, how it is shared and less wasted. She also focuses on sustainable investments and buys second-hand. “That saves money and can also be healthier for the children because the pollutants from production are no longer available,” she says.
Alexandra Achenbach, who had her first child in her mid-thirties, tells a similar story. “For me, the pregnancy was a kind of turning point,” she says in retrospect. Only then did she begin to change her life step by step. “My children were and are my connection to the future, because they will have to pay for the consequences of my actions,” says the doctor of biology.
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She therefore tries to be a role model for her two children in everyday life, to limit their consumption and, whenever possible, to shop fairly and ecologically. She also shares her tips and experiences online on a website called livelifegreen.
In it she writes about an Easter without plastic or shares recipes for wild garlic she has collected herself. Her hope for her children: “Perhaps one day they will give important impetus for change as activists or politicians.”
Reducing living space saves CO2
The sociologist Claudia Fischer, herself a mother of three children, points out that the changeover to a sustainable life can be ecologically particularly fruitful in some areas. This includes housing, mobility and nutrition.
“The living space per person is twice as large today as it was in the late 1960s,” Fischer points out. The effects of this on the emission of climate-damaging substances can be understood using the CO2 calculator from the Federal Environment Agency. Even in an energetically renovated house with green electricity, doubling the living space from 30 to 60 square meters makes a difference of 100 kilograms of CO2 per person and year.
“Against this background, as a parent, I can of course ask myself whether I want to build a new house on a green field or whether I would rather move into an existing one or even into a housing project in which common rooms are shared,” says Fischer.
She lives in an apartment in the big city and has never owned a car, despite or perhaps because of her children. “Of course it’s more difficult in the country,” she admits. In addition, she is a vegetarian. A factor that, according to the Federal Environment Agency’s calculator, makes a difference of around 900 kilograms of CO2 per year compared to a meat-based diet.
Of course, at some point her children would also have started to question the sustainable way of life, she reports – for example when her friends were picked up by car. “I then explained to them why we live like this, and they found it understandable,” says Fischer. In the end, as parents, you can only be a role model anyway – “at some point the children will be old enough to form their own opinions”.
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