We just had our fourth kid.

That was never the plan; I always figured two was fair (1 replacement per parent), and had talked my wife down from three. I had a problem with Al Gore in the '90's because he claimed to be some big enviro but he had three kids!

Anyway, first the twins came. We figured we were done. I'm not exactly sure what happened next (OK, I have some idea), but every three years since we've had another. Thanks to the miracles of urology we are certainly done now.

Seems like many readers would have me charged for crimes against the earth.

The thing is, I have a real problem with worldviews that are anti-people. It's not that I don't appreciate the problems of population growth, it's just that it's not the people that are the problem, it's the impacts of how they live (and of course we here in the USA aren't so hot on that measure).

Given that macro trends look like they are going to lead to a max world population in the range of 9 billion people, I'd rather work on the how we live part. Not to minimize the work of population control organizations (whose work is critical to keep the peak at 9B), but I don't see maxing out at 8B or less as very likely, unless China-style policies become widespread (which, quite frankly, I would oppose). So the population equation is fairly tightly constrained. No matter what we do, we need to figure out a way for many billions of people to live sustainably, while also improving the quality of life for the poorer 2/3rds.

So I'm focused on that. I realize that by any measure my family (even if there were only 2 of us) consumes an inordinate amount of resources, but here are some of the things we are doing about it: Have a share in a local CSA farm; buy meats and dairy from local farms (small pct now but increasing rapidly); planning a chicken coop for our own eggs. Relatively low meat diet. Ride my bike to work. Well below median household for electrical consumption. Don't irrigate, fertilize, or pesticide our lawn (yes, we have an evil lawn). Several insulation projects completed; more big ones on the way. Investigating grass-pellet space/water heating. The kids bathe/shower together (their choice, b/c it's more fun). I forage on kids' leftovers. I'm chair of my town's sustainable energy committee; starting to implement efficiency retrofits of town buildings and lobbying municipal utility to source more renewable energy (small hydro, medium wind, solid biomass [grass pellets- excellent EROI], solar).

Does my family live at a level that, if rolled out uniformly to 6-9B people, would be sustainable? Not hardly. Are we moving in the right direction? Yes.

Factoring all my activities in life, including my four kids, am I 'better' or 'worse' than the average American trying to live more sustainably? Hard to say, but despite the four kids I can make a plausible argument that we're net-net doing OK.

Do I regret for an instant having four kids? No.

PS: The founder of this group (Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, http://www.aidg.org/) was a fourth child. Would we have been better off without him?

But we liked the end product. Which I guess is why we have four of 'em scurrying around (I'm awake now b/c I just had to feed the youngest).

Thank you; I was feeling like a sucker for paying down my home equity line on schedule.

I ride my bike to work because it's more fun than driving (and with a full work and family life, it's my only guaranteed exercise!).

But I had kind of given up on cycling as a legit. form of mass transit until I lived in Germany for a couple months. People actually ride bikes to get places, and they actually have the infrastructure for it! Well designed bike paths, bike lanes, bike parking (ranging from basic racks to secure lockers), you name it. I've never seen so many bikes in one place as I saw at the Heidelberg train station (yes, even compared to a college campus). Dudes in three piece suits, smoking pipes, pedaling to work via a path on an RR bridge over the Rhine, you name it.

We're not going to match that soon, because we are missing both the culture and the infrastructure (especially the light rail part; bikes and light rail were made for each other). But it's a vision worth aspiring to.

I got my first 'real' bike in the mid '80's from Harris Cyclery (home of Sheldon Brown). It was at the time (and may still be) a pretty small shop; it's one of those places that would indeed be a small footnote to the cycling world were it not for the internet.

Near Lake Turkana, Kenya, 1992.

I passed on the kidneys- that's for the elders, anyway.