Thank you for sharing this, really love the Main Conclusions here. As usual with comments, most of what you’re saying makes sense to me, but I’d like to focus on one quibble about the presentation of your conclusions.
I think Figure 2 in the report could be easily be misinterpreted as strong evidence for a conclusion you later disavow: that by far the most important lifestyle choice for reducing your CO2 emissions is whether you have another child. The Key Takeaways section begins with this striking chart where the first bar is taller than all the rest added up, but the body paragraphs give context and caveats before finishing on a more sober conclusion. The conclusion makes perfect sense to me, but it’s the opposite of what I would’ve guessed looking at the first chart in the section. If you’re most confident in the estimates that account for government policy, you could make them alone your first chart, and only discuss the other (potentially misleading) estimates later.
I probably only noticed this because you’re discussing such a hot button issue. Footnotes work for dry academic questions, but when the question is having fewer kids to reduce carbon emissions, I start thinking about how Twitter and CNN would read this.
Anyways, hope that’s helpful, feel free to disagree, and thanks for the great research!
Thank you for sharing this, really love the Main Conclusions here. As usual with comments, most of what you’re saying makes sense to me, but I’d like to focus on one quibble about the presentation of your conclusions.
I think Figure 2 in the report could be easily be misinterpreted as strong evidence for a conclusion you later disavow: that by far the most important lifestyle choice for reducing your CO2 emissions is whether you have another child. The Key Takeaways section begins with this striking chart where the first bar is taller than all the rest added up, but the body paragraphs give context and caveats before finishing on a more sober conclusion. The conclusion makes perfect sense to me, but it’s the opposite of what I would’ve guessed looking at the first chart in the section. If you’re most confident in the estimates that account for government policy, you could make them alone your first chart, and only discuss the other (potentially misleading) estimates later.
I probably only noticed this because you’re discussing such a hot button issue. Footnotes work for dry academic questions, but when the question is having fewer kids to reduce carbon emissions, I start thinking about how Twitter and CNN would read this.
Anyways, hope that’s helpful, feel free to disagree, and thanks for the great research!