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Reproduction and the Carbon Legacies of Individuals

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Reproduction and the Carbon Legacies of Individuals Global Environmental Change 19 (2009) 14–20 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Global Environmental Change journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/gloenvcha Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals Paul A. Murtaugh a,*, Michael G. Schlax b a Department of Statistics, Oregon State University, 44 Kidder Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA b College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history: Much attention has been paid to the ways that people’s home energy use, travel, food choices and other Received 23 April 2008 routine activities affect their emissions of carbon dioxide and, ultimately, their contributions to global Received in revised form 16 October 2008 warming. However, the reproductive choices of an individual are rarely incorporated into calculations of Accepted 30 October 2008 his personal impact on the environment. Here we estimate the extra emissions of fossil carbon dioxide that an average individual causes when he or she chooses to have children. The summed emissions of a Keywords: person’s descendants, weighted by their relatedness to him, may far exceed the lifetime emissions Carbon dioxide emissions produced by the original parent. Under current conditions in the United States, for example, each child Carbon footprint adds about 9441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average female, which is 5.7 Demography Fertility times her lifetime emissions. A person’s reproductive choices must be considered along with his day-to- Global climate change day activities when assessing his ultimate impact on the global environment. ß 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction particular stabilization concentrations of CO2, and they model the abatement costs incurred by the addition of a single individual Much attention has been paid to the ways that people’s home (and his or her descendants) to the population. energy use, travel, food choices and other routine activities affect We explore the effects of an individual’s reproductive behavior their personal emissions of carbon dioxide and, ultimately, their by tracing a single female’s genetic contribution to future potential contributions to global warming (O’Neill and Chen, 2002; generations and weighting her descendants’ impacts by their Bastianoni et al., 2004; Bin and Dowlatabadi, 2005; Vandenbergh relatedness to her. We apply this approach to emissions of fossil and Steinemann, 2007; Wei et al., 2007). For example, a variety of carbon dioxide with the goal of quantifying the carbon legacy of an ‘‘carbon calculators’’ allows individuals to estimate their lifetime individual and examining how it is affected by the individual’s emissions of greenhouse gases (U.S. Environmental Protection reproductive choices. Agency, 2007). While population growth is obviously a key component of 2. The carbon legacy of an individual projections of carbon emissions at a global level (Dyson, 2005; Harte, 2007; IPCC, 2007), there has been relatively little emphasis Our basic premise is that a person is responsible for the carbon on the environmental consequences of the reproductive choices of emissions of his descendants, weighted by their relatedness to him. an individual person. Obviously, the choice to reproduce con- For a descendant that is n generations removed from the focal tributes to future environmental impacts. There are the immediate individual, the weight is ð1=2Þn. So, for example, a mother and effects caused by each offspring over his or her lifetime (Hall et al., father are each responsible for one half of the emissions of their 1994), but, should the offspring reproduce, additional impacts offspring, and 1/4 of the emissions of their grandchildren. Fig. 1 could potentially accrue over many future generations. illustrates this simple idea. Some authors have discussed the ‘‘externalities’’ of childbearing We will refer to the weights that indicate the relatedness of a (i.e., the consequences of an individual’s reproduction that are descendant to the initial parent as ‘‘genetic units’’. The fractional borne by society, rather than the individual himself), focusing on genetic unit represented by a particular descendant can be thought the costs of abatement of the impacts caused by the individual’s of as the proportion of the ancestor’s genes (or alleles) that are descendants (Cline, 1992; O’Neill et al., 2001). For example, O’Neill shared with the descendant, or the ‘‘percentage of blood’’ that the and Wexler (2000) consider emission scenarios that lead to two have in common (Lush, 1994). At any calendar date, the persistence of a lineage can be quantified as the number of genetic units represented by members * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 541 207 8255; fax: +1 541 737 3489. of the lineage who are alive at that time. If we integrate the number E-mail address: [email protected] (P.A. Murtaugh). of genetic units over time, we obtain an estimate of the total 0959-3780/$ – see front matter ß 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2008.10.007 P.A. Murtaugh, M.G. Schlax / Global Environmental Change 19 (2009) 14–20 15 3. Approaches to estimating the carbon legacy We calculated trajectories of genetic units vs. time for genetic lineages of in each of the 11 most populous countries in the world, listed in Table 1. We used two approaches, one based on a simple analytical model and one involving numerical simulation. 3.1. Analytical model We first develop a simple model of the propagation of family trees that provides a conceptual basis for the simulations that we used to generate the numerical results presented here. The model is developed fully in Appendix A.1; an abbreviated explanation Fig. 1. Illustration of the propagation of genetic units in a family tree. Circles follows. indicate females, and squares indicate males. The original female has one daughter We start with a single female born at time t0 ¼ 0(generation and one son, each of whom also has one daughter and one son. The blackened areas 0), and assume that all reproduction occurs in pulses at times t1, indicate the number of genetic units (a total of 1 in each generation in this example). t2, t3,wheretk À tkÀ1 ¼ t1 is the generation time, i.e., the mean of theagesatwhichfemalesgivebirth.Ifweassumethatmalesand number of person years that are traceable to the original parent femalesarebornatthesamerate(seeAppendix A.1.1), then the (see Fig. 2). If we integrate the product of the number of genetic expected number of children produced per female at time tk is units and the per-capita rate of carbon emissions over time, we 2 Á RðtkÞ,whereRðtkÞ is the net reproductive rate, i.e., the average obtain an estimate of the total emissions attributable to the number of daughters a woman would be expected to have if she ancestor, or her carbon legacy. were subject to the fertility and mortality rates prevailing in the Our goal is to quantify the consequences of the childbearing population. We assume that all members of the family tree, male decisions of an individual. The appeal of our weighting scheme is and female, pair with members of the opposite sex from outside that it provides an accounting of the extent to which a parent’s the tree, so that the reproductive rate of 2 Á RðtkÞ is applied to genetic material propagates through subsequent generations, and males as well as females within the tree. As explained earlier, an k it allows the emissions of any individual to be unambiguously individual of generation k, born at time tk,representsð1=2Þ traced back and ‘‘assigned’’ to ancestors from any preceding genetic units, reflecting his relatedness to the ancestral female. generation. For example, the responsibility for the rightmost male We assume further that the survival of all individuals follows a in the bottom line of Fig. 1 lies, in 1/4 portions, with his maternal distribution characterized by the survivor function, SðtÞ, defined as and paternal grandparents (only one of which, the maternal the probability that an individual lives to at least age t. It can then grandmother, is shown in the figure). be shown (Appendix A.1) that the expected number of genetic Depending on one’s view of whether, and how, future units alive at time t is k 0 1 environmental impacts of an individual’s descendants should be Xk Yi @ A discounted, other weighting schemes are possible. O’Neill and E½GðtkÞ ¼ E½Bðt0Þ Á Sðtk À t0ÞþE½Bðt0Þ Á Sðtk À tiÞ Rðt jÞ ; Wexler (2000), for example, quantify the expected effect of one i¼1 j¼1 additional birth by following his or her descendants, but without (1) adjusting for relatedness (see their Equation A22). where E½Bðt0Þ is the expected number of births at time t0, equal to one (the ancestral female). Following the pulse of births at time tk, mortality erodes the number of individuals, and genetic units, until the next pulse of Table 1 Average person years associated with lineages in the world’s eleven most populous countries, using medium-variant fertility projections. The initial parent contributes the number of years constituting his life expectancy. The last column is an estimate of the person years added to the ancestor’s legacy for each child that he has, assuming his descendants survive and reproduce at the rates prevailing in the country. Fertility values are for 2005 (United Nations Population Division, 2007). The countries are listed in order of 2005 population; the abbreviations are as used in Fig. 7. Country Fertility Average person years (abbreviation) (children womanÀ1) Ancestor’s life Added per child China (C) 1.73 74.9 341 India (Ia) 2.81 63.8 161 United States (US) 2.05 80.2 470 Indonesia (Io) 2.18 68.6 244 Brazil (Br) 2.25 74.8 373 Pakistan (P) 3.52 63.4 268 Bangladesh (Ba) 2.83 62.8 201 Fig.
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