大部分研究使用俄勒冈州大学的保罗·莫尔塔（Paul A. Murtaugh）和迈克尔·施拉克斯（Michael G. Schlax）的一篇2009年的论文的方法，认为每个父母需要为他们的每个孩子的预期生命周期的二氧化碳排放量负一半责任。
But it doesn’t stop there: You are held responsible not just for half of your child’s emissions, but also for a quarter of your grandchildren’s emissions, an eighth of your great-grandchildren’s emissions, and so on. In their central scenario, Murtaugh and Schlax expect that in the US every child will account for more than 20 tons of CO2 every year.