The Daily Telegraph - 01.08.2019

The Daily Telegraph Thursday 1 August 2019 *** 19

Shane Watson

All the things you

need in your life that

your dad doesn’t

Page 20

Taking the Mickey

We honeymooned in

Disney World... why

should we be banned?

Page 21

Play for Today

We have reached peak

boxset, so bring back

one-off dramas

FAMILY Page 23

FEATURES

GETTY IMAGES; REUTERS

T

ime was when people trying for

a family would weigh up

whether they were with the

right partner, if they had the financial

means to bring a child into the world,

and how ready they were to commit to

18 years of hard parenting. But another

consideration has just leaped to the

top of that list: what will be the

environmental impact of us having

children?

This week, the Duke of Sussex

announced that he and the Duchess

will have “two children, maximum”,

for the sake of the planet and its

ever-dwindling natural resources. In a

discussion with environmentalist Dr

Jane Goodall in the new “Forces of

Change” issue of Vogue – which his

wife guest-edited – the Duke

revealed that becoming a father for

the first time had brought home

the “terrifying” effects of climate

change, and that “what we

need to remind everybody

is, these are things that are

happening now”.

When Dr Goodall said

there will be future

conflicts over diminishing

supplies of fresh land and

water, he replied: “We are

the frog in the water and it’s

already being brought to the

boil.”

Environmental campaigners

• who have long maintained
  that having children is the
  single most destructive thing a
  person can do to the
  environment – were thrilled
  when the Duke brought the

‘Our daughter tells other

children to leave flowers

alone for the sake of the bees’

Gregory and Katherine Hamilton,

from North Somerset, with their

only child, daughter Breanne, four

Gregory Hamilton is proud of the

young royals for starting a discussion

about family size. He and his wife,

Katherine, 35, who live in north

Somerset, chose to only have one child

in order to limit their impact on the

environment.

“Prince Harry’s setting a good

example on an important issue,” says

Hamilton. “When Prince William said

he was having a third child, I thought,

that’s not good, because it says it’s OK

to have three children. If everybody

did that, we’d end up without a planet

quite quickly.”

If they hadn’t been so ecologically

minded a couple, Gregory and

Katherine would have loved to have

had two children – they each have a

sister and cherish having had someone

to grow up with. “When I see

Breanne’s friends playing with their

brothers and sisters, I think, have we

stolen something from our child?” says

As the Duke of Sussex says he only wants two children, for the sake of the planet,

Cara McGoogan asks eco-minded families about the environmental impact of being a parent

How many children can you

have and still be ‘green’?

environmentalists believe is

unsustainable. A recent report from the

Lancet Commission found it is

“increasingly unlikely” that food

systems will not cope once the

population rises above 10 billion. Last

year, the UK’s population saw its largest

annual increase in nearly 70 years.

“The best chance the world has is

for people to have [a maximum of ] two

children,” says Currie. Researchers at

Lund University in Sweden suggested

that having one fewer child per family

can save an average of 58.6 tons of

CO 2 -equivalent emissions per year,

making bringing a child into the world

far more environmentally destructive

than driving, eating meat and air

travel.

With growing awareness of

the climate crisis, more people

are opting to have fewer

children – or none at all.

BirthStrike, a pressure group

for those choosing to have

no children, has amassed

550 members since it

launched in May, while a

recent post on the

“Population Matters”

Faebook page about

millennials not having

children was liked by some

four million readers.

But when pitting the

ecological challenges facing

the planet against a human

desire to a family life, what wins

the day? Here, three parents with

impeccable eco credentials,

reveal how it’s not so easy being

green.

subject to the fore. Alistair Currie,

head of campaigns at Population

Matters, which counts Sir David

Attenborough and Chris Packham as

patrons, says: “It’s fantastic that people

with their profile are conveying the

message that the root to

environmental sustainability has to

include smaller families.”

The population is

expected to rise to

10.9 billion by the end of

the century, a figure

Continued on page 20

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The population is

expected to rise to

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Happy family: the

Duke of Sussex

revealed that he

and the Duchess

plan to have no

more than two

children, including

baby Archie, below

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