Is being homosexual less polluting than being heterosexual?

A provocation for Pride Month. Human activity pollutes, and bringing children into the world makes things worse: will same-sex couples be the saviours of the Anthropocene?

Homosexuality as a synonym for sustainability?

Last year there were 8.2 billion people on Earth. According to the United Nations, by 2050 we will be 9.7 billion, and around 2084 we should hit the projected peak of 10.3 billion. Paper straws, electric cars, plant-based burgers and compostable shopping bags won’t be enough to save the planet—there will still be too many of us. For years, extreme theories have circulated claiming that the most effective way to curb the CO₂ emitted by humans and everything they need to live boils down to one thing: having fewer children.

Some places have even tried to legislate this view. Think of China’s one-child policy—later expanded to two and then three children before being abandoned altogether in 2021. Yet the idea that fewer people should be born keeps resurfacing, especially now that we have entered the spiral of the sixth mass extinction. Plants and animals are disappearing from the face of the Earth, biodiversity is being lost—everything because of human activity. In the debate on how to save the oceans, the mountains, and ourselves, a provocation emerges: if nature’s laws stop them from bearing children, could homosexual people be the only ones capable of saving the planet?

Saving the Anthropocene by not having children

A population that grows without limits means a world with more waste, more energy to produce, more resources devoured—water, food, land. Pollution. Deforestation, intensive farming, livestock breeding. Infrastructure and urbanisation. We will need homes for all these people. And the Covid-19 experience shows that even darker, dystopian scenarios are anything but remote: the more of us there are, the faster new viruses multiply, leaving us less space and time to study and contain them. In this light, the homosexual becomes the purest form of environmentalist—perhaps not by choice or vocation but simply by the logic of things. Gays and lesbians as unwitting heroes of the Anthropocene, embodiments of the ecological transition we need yet have not achieved.

One child fewer? CO₂ emissions fall by 58 tonnes a year

It is a brutal equation, yet apparently irrefutable: no children, less pollution. Scientific studies back it up with precise figures. A few years ago an analysis in Environmental Research Letters calculated that each parent who has one child fewer reduces their CO₂ emissions by 58 tonnes per year—the sum of the child’s emissions and those of all their potential descendants, divided by the parent’s lifetime. Some may object that same-sex couples can also be parents. Where governments allow it, they can adopt. Even so, adoption is in a sense more sustainable than traditional families: to use another provocation, a child adopted by a same-sex couple is like a second-hand garment—already in existence, now given a new life.

Demographic decline and the dilemma—environmental sustainability or social sustainability?

The perfect equation between sustainability and childlessness is flawless only on paper, and its weaknesses are easy to spot. Reasoning in extremes—and excluding surrogacy—if all humans were homosexual, the species would vanish as a single generation aged. In a country like Italy, where demographic decline is steep, there is a desperate need for children. People do pollute, yes, but without generational turnover the very foundations of society would crumble. The pension system would collapse, pensions would become harder to pay, and taxes would rise as they were borne by a shrinking, eventually disappearing, workforce.

For all these reasons, in states like Italy—where the birth curve is plunging—the call is usually for more children, not fewer. And here the earlier argument falls apart. Even heterosexuals have largely stopped reproducing because of inflation, a precarious labour market, the high cost of childcare, and the general absence of economic security. How can we reconcile environmental sustainability with the sustainability of society itself? Typically, calls for fewer children are directed at distant countries—from parts of Africa to India—where populations have grown steadily in recent decades. Yet even then the criticism is fierce. France’s President Emmanuel Macron learned this in 2017, soon after entering the Élysée, when he listed among Africa’s challenges the fact that many women have “seven or eight children,” sparking an uproar.

Straight men don’t recycle because they think it’s “gay”

Putting aside the question of children, an online study from Pennsylvania State University once claimed that heterosexual men are less inclined to adopt eco-friendly behaviours—recycling, for example, or shopping with a reusable bag—because they fear being perceived as gay. Both the women and men surveyed said they considered environmental concern a “feminine” trait. Granted, such studies rest on small samples, but the result is striking: homophobia is so deeply internalised that it harms the environment too. Through this lens, the idea that homosexuality aligns with a more sustainable lifestyle no longer seems so extreme.

Stereotypes with a grain of truth

On a lighter note, one could pick apart various stereotypes to test the homosexuality-sustainability link. Gay men are thought to have better taste than straight men, starting with how they dress. They might therefore choose higher-quality garments, paying attention to fabrics and longevity—hardly the type to order fast-fashion hauls from Shein, whose average customers are more likely heterosexual. Stereotypes, yes, but with a kernel of truth. The same could be said for interior design: Ikea versus antiques, in short.

Perhaps Grindr won’t save the planet

So who deserves the green medal, homosexuals or heterosexuals? Let’s not forget that some gay men hop on a plane once a month to dance three days straight in Berlin’s clubs—not exactly sustainable. Ultimately, it all comes down to lifestyle. Some gay people are vegan; some straight people travel only by train or have solar panels on their roofs. Perhaps, then, Grindr won’t save the planet—only a radical change in culture and habits will, no matter one’s sexual orientation.