What’s your baby’s carbon footprint?

Published 2:34 pm Monday, May 12, 2008

Here’s a fascinating look at the ultimate microcosm of American consumption, the great American infant, courtesy of Mother Jones. I highly recommend you visit the site for the entire list, but here are a few highlights.

*72 percent of American adults have children;

*A typical baby goes through 3,800 disposable diapers in his or her first 2.5 years;

*Over his or her lifetime, each American born in the 1990s will eat 1,654 chickens, 74 turkeys, 25 pigs, 11 cows, 2 sheep and 18,675 eggs;

*One American child generates as much CO2 as 106 Haitian kids;

*Zahara Jolie-Pitt will produce 45,000 lbs of CO2 yearly, compared with 221 pounds if she still lived in Ethiopia;

*Only 45 percent of SUV owners in the United States have two or more kids;

*It would take up to 223 trees to offset the CO2 produced by a child watching three hours of TV every day for 18 years.

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