The Environmental Footprint of Children

I was reading Mother Jones the other day and they had a stat sheet with all the facts about how much waste goes along with having kids.
It goes something like this:

• Americans emit 1,525 tons of CO2 emissions
• 72% of American adults have children
• One American child produces as much CO2 as 106 Haitians
• A typical baby uses 3,800 disposable diapers, up to 5000 before they are potty trained
• Lower birth rates in China equals fewer CO2
• The average american home has gone from 983 sq feet in 1950 to over 2434 sq feet today.
• 96% of American babies wear disposable diapers, compared with 6% of Chinese and 2% of Indian babies
• 60% of American children are more afraid of global warming than of car crashes, terrorism or cancer
• in 1969 5% of households had 3 or more cars, in 2001 23% did.
• US school busses release 3700 TONS of soot and 11 million tons of greenhouse gasses per year
• It would take 223 new trees planted to offset the CO2 produced by a child watching 3 hours of TV a day for 18 years
• 19% of American kids under the age of 1 have a tv in their room (WTH!?!?!)
• Disposable diapers constitute 2.1% of all municipal waste
• the year 2500: that is the year in which a diaper thrown away today will finally finish biodegrading (although the plastics in it will never biodegrade, only break down into tiny pieces which will get eaten by animals or bugs and create toxic pollutants)
• American children, 4% of the total world population, consume 40% of world toy production
• The average student throws away 90 lbs of packaged lunch products per year.

A child born in america today will (over his/her lifetime):

• produce 3.1 million pounds of CO2
• 22,828,508 lbs of water waste
• 16,372 lbs of yard waste
• 7,249 lbs food waste
• eat 1654 chickens, 74 turkeys, 25 pigs, 11 cows, 2 sheep and nearly 19,000 eggs.
• Use 1,870 barrels of petroleum

Kind of depressing? The solutions to me, although we need whole-society, legislative, paradigm-shift solutions as well (in other words, it cannot and SHOULD not all be on the individual) are:

• Use cloth diapers, dry them outside when you can, wash them in cold water
• don't use bleach or other chemicals. It is healthy for your kids to eat dirt and germs. my kids have probably eaten 5 lbs of pet hair since they were born and they are fine!
• Compost food waste
• leave grass clippings on the lawn (seriously! dont bag them up, just leave them there. it turns out fine, i promise)
• eat local organic food, grow your own
• buy bulk foods
• don't drive a lot
• don't buy toys and other crap
• don't let your kids watch tv (or keep it super minimal)
• live close to work and school to minimze transport issues
• don't eat meat (or keep it super minimal)
• don't buy over-packaged food, like lunchables and stuff like that
• live in a smaller house
• don't use electricity, heat, etc when you don't need to (be as efficient as you can)
• for toys/clothes: trade, barter, hand-me-down, or buy used
• don't fly a lot