Further to Madeleine Bunting’s righteous agonising over ecological issues, perhaps this proposal will bring a fleeting smile to her sweet, sweet face.
Couples who have more than two children should be charged a lifelong tax to offset their extra offspring’s carbon dioxide emissions, a medical expert says. The report in an Australian medical journal called for parents to be charged $5000 a head for every child after their second, and an annual tax of up to $800. And couples who were sterilised would be eligible for carbon credits under the controversial proposal.
Perth specialist Professor Barry Walters was heavily critical of the $4000 baby bonus, saying that paying new parents extra for every baby fuelled more children, more emissions and “greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour.” Instead, it should be replaced with a “baby levy” in the form of a carbon tax in line with the “polluter pays” principle, he wrote in the latest Medical Journal of Australia… By the same reasoning, contraceptives like diaphragms and condoms, as well as sterilisation procedures, should attract carbon credits, the specialist said.
Related. And. Via Protein Wisdom, with thanks to The Thin Man.
Hey, I’m an expert too, and I think $5,000 plus $800 annually for child #3 and up is all wrong. It should be an initial levy of $350 and then $960 per year, starting with the second child. As you can see from the detailed exposition that takes up the remainder of this comment, my reasoning is far more compelling than that of Prof. Barry Walters. Why, I wonder if he just pulled his numbers out of a hat!
Of course, people who _don’t_ have children should be taxed to make up for all the wealth their nonexistent offspring will never generate. Fair’s fair.
As if we needed any more proof that environmentalists are fascists.
Personally it wouldbe far better if parents paid for thier children and didn’t get fined, or subsidised for doing what comes natually to most people.
They have to realize this is the most regressive tax imaginable. I hope they’re prepared to fight the Battle of Trafalgar all over again, only this time on the losing side.
There does seem to be a remarkable amount of nastiness lurking inside all that ecological concern. First Dr John Reid wanted to “put something in the water” to render the developed world infertile, which is nice.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2006/1807002.htm#transcript
Then Professor John Guillebaud of the Optimum Population Trust looked forward to “intervention by the state” in “the decision to have children.”
http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.sub.briefing.climate.population.May07.pdf
While the ‘conservationist’ Paul Watson described humanity as “a cancer”, before telling us that “curing the biosphere of the human virus will require a radical and invasive approach.” Cue creaking of moral forceps.
http://www.seashepherd.org/editorials/editorial_070504_1.html
In recent months I’ve highlighted examples ranging from everyday befuddlement (Monbiot, La Bunting) to outright sadism and a kind of whimsical tyranny. Of course, it’s the tyranny that cares™.
David; after reading the above links Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” seems a little more…..modest.
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
Quite. I have to say I struggle with the eerily common assumption that the world should be saved “from” human beings, who are, apparently, an extraneous infestation of an otherwise pristine and virtuous Earth. The language so often used, most notably by Paul Watson, suggests the acting out of some personal psychodrama.
I’ve always wondered why none of these men of science look down the road to the inevitable conclusion for a world with no humans, which is the thermal annihilation of all life on Earth and the traces that such life ever existed. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is irrefutable and inevitable in the macroscopic sphere. The sun is going to run down its fuel supply and expand into its red giant phase. Once it does, it will destroy the entirety of the ecosphere here on Earth. The oceans will boils, the rocks will melt, and not even fossil evidence of life’s existence will remain on the charred cinder that the Earth will become. Not only will there be no life, it will be as if it were never here at all. If life is to continue on past that date, it will need a tool-using species to construct vessels to carry it forth from this doomed sphere and into new environments where it may flourish. Such a species has only appeared once in billions of years of evolution, and none could give any odds that another would take its place should it vanish (nor should we assume that the replacement would be any better from a moral perspective).
Humanity is the wildcard in this game. We already have the requisite technology to escape death of our planet by constructing alternative environments in our own solar system (and one can only imagine at the technology we’ll have at our disposal by the time such a move becomes necessary). As long as we are around the final outcome of this great game is not a foregone conclusion. To me, that is a rational basis for hope, both for ourselves and for life itself. I have nothing but withering contempt for those who would value the transitory manifestation of our current ecology over its ultimate destiny so much that they would wish us out of the picture so that the merry little creatures can cavort along towards their ultimate doom.