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TechnoratiSave the planet; tax babies
A carbon tax on newborns to reduce human pollution? Now there's an idea for your Christmas stocking.
Monty Python could not have dreamed up a sharper caricature of Australian intellectuals. Writing in the Medical Journal of Australia, two medical academics made world headlines this week by endorsing a Chinese model of population control to reduce the human carbon footprint. Barry Walters, a professor of obstetrics at the University of Western Australia, has called for a carbon tax on newborns. She who pollutes must pay: "Every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by breathing, but by the profligate consumption of resources typical of our society," says Walters.
His solution? A "baby levy" of A$5,000 on third and subsequent children, plus an annual tax of A$400 to A$800 annually for the life of the child to purchase and maintain the four hectares of trees needed to sequester 17 metric tons of carbon dioxide. (The algorithm to calculate this was taken from a 15-year old book, so the cost may, in fact, be much greater.) As offsets, carbon credits would be granted for contraceptives, intrauterine devices, diaphragms, condoms and sterilisation procedures. The credits would go to the user and to "family planning clinics and hospitals that provide such greenhouse-friendly services". (Enabling the likes of Professor Walters to buy their Jags and McMansions, presumably.)
As offsets, carbon credits would be granted for contraceptives, intrauterine devices, diaphragms, condoms and sterilisation procedures.
Walters's proposal was warmly endorsed by one of Australia's best-known medical personalities, Garry Egger, the founder of the Gutbusters program to reduce male obesity, and a professor of health sciences at Southern Cross University. He lamented the fact that population control programs are ignored, even by environmental groups. Eheu fugaces! O for the glory days of yore, when Paul Ehrlich was lighting the fuse on the population squib. "One must wonder why population control, which was such a popular topic during the 1970s, is spoken of today only in whispers," he wrote.
Fair crack of the whip, cobbers! This sounds like yadda-yadda from the senior common room of Monty Python's University of Woolloomooloo, where the lecturers, all named Bruce, wear slouch hats and corks, and knock back tinnies of Fosters. Not enough zinc cream to shield those addled pates from global warming, perhaps.
Predictably, there was outrage from family lobbies. "What a bizarre suggestion -- so now we have to pay to have children!" said Australian Breastfeeding spokeswoman Karen Commisso. And Angela Conway, of the Australian Family Association, ridiculed it: "Self-important professors with silly ideas should have to pay carbon tax for all the hot air they create."
But many reactions were supportive. The world faces epidemics, famine, and war unless we stop filling our schools with trailer trash and our atmosphere with their carbon. "The only argument I have with the Professor is that taxation will just not work: the lower socioeconomic groups generally have the most children and would not be able to pay the taxes," commented one earnest reader on the ABC website (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
It's hard to know where to begin unpacking so much prejudice. The current flare-up of the population control virus, like a polio epidemic in a country which has been disease-free for 30 years, shows that the professorial noggins are still fevered with the totalitarian temptation. Why bother with reality, when you've got an ideology?
The first reality is that calculations of the size of carbon footprints depend not only on population size, but also on consumption preferences. These vary enormously. Who left the bigger carbon footprint: Scrooge, or Bob Crachitt's brood? Large families make do with more modest lifestyles. No holidays abroad, no expensive cars, no boozy nights out. China's little emperor syndrome provides a cautionary tale. With only one obese little toddler to lavish their affection on, parents ignore the high-impact negative externalities of triple-scoop ice creams.
Second, the University of Woollomooloo senior common room forgot to do a human rights impact study. Walters's proposal would work exactly like China's draconian one-child policy, with a green tinge to it. But China has an enormous gender imbalance, forced abortions, social unrest, and a demographic overhang which will probably cause the economy to collapse under the weight of caring for its retirees. Admittedly, the likelihood is small that Australian family planning police would throttle infants whose levy has not been paid. But there would be unpleasantness nonetheless: pressure on women to abort a third child, bureaucratic discrimination against large families, and so on.
Third, why pick on polyphiloprogenitive parents? Why not apply the Stalinist logic of mandating eco-friendly social conformity elsewhere? A recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that divorce creates more households with fewer people, which use more energy and water and take up more space. How about a ban on divorce, eh? On pets? On Formula One? On non-essential air travel? On restaurants? If we all dutifully dined on spinach and brussel sprouts and pedalled to work, we could keep our carbon footprint small enough to enable double-digit families for anyone who wants them.
The Aussie proposals may sound wacky, but in truth they are the logical conclusion to today’s trend for measuring humanity by its waste and "carbon footprint". After all, if human life is seen as fundamentally polluting, then why shouldn’t the creation of new human life be viewed as irresponsible and problematic?
At the heart of this disdain for new human life is a lack of faith in our capacity to solve our problems. First food, then oil, then scarce metals, now carbon footprints. In another 20 years, it will be collisions with asteroids. There is no end to this morbid adolescent hankering for Doomsday by the University of Woolloomooloo senior common room and its fellow travellers elsewhere. Why? Because it stems not from facts, but from a smouldering self-loathing. Walters, for instance, treats the words of the BBC's beetle hagiographer David Attenborough as sacred writ: "instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, we should control the population to ensure the survival of the environment". How about cheering for the home team, lads, not for the beetles!
In any case, the facts speak for themselves. Thirty years on, we still haven't run out of food, oil or copper. Julian Simon's optimism about harmonising the environment and population growth has again and again been proved right. "The ultimate resource is people -- especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty -- who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit and inevitably benefit the rest of us as well," said the renowned American economist.
What Walters and Eggers fail to take into account is that children create hope, not problems. Without the next generation -- as Alfonso Cuarón's stunning film Children of Men showed so vividly -- there is no point in working for the future. Buildings decay, garbage piles up, injustice spreads like a cancer, and no one cares. But the birth of a child brings optimism and determination to make her world better than our own. This daft proposal for a baby levy would kill the very hope which sustains and drives our society.
Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.
I believe darcee (12/19/2007) makes an excellant point. Many who live in luxury(financial, political etc.) de-humanize the “great unwashed” to maintain thier position and then only from thier egotistical view.
There’s little difference between this situation and Hitlers’ attempted genocide of the Jews or Marxs’ branding the Slavics as a retrograde race.
The “Carbon Footprint"is the New World Order’s way of making every “world citizen” a “Cost Centre.” If a cost centre is uneconomic, ie not “economically viable,” then that cost centre must be eliminated, or in this case, terminated / put to sleep / required to patriotically commit suicide for the good of the planet, etc.
Only the wealthy and privileged elite can afford this in the long term. The process of depopulation can be hastened by planned wars and nuclear accidents, so-called acts of terrorism, etc.
The most depressing thing is that this “Elite” is very small, and could be destroyed very easily if the media which protect them were free, or alternatively, destroyed.
Planned dumbing down of the educated population, and suppression of free thought by ingestion of processed and modified foods, both help the Elite to maintain their position and move forwards.
The best thing we can do is pass on information, most easily by e-mail to multiple addresses, in the hope that enough people will eventually wake up. Still, every e-mail is monitored and recorded, so there may be a link to depopulation there too. Car accidents do happen, and people do seem to die by seemingly random acts of violence…
As Pope John Paul II once said, a country that kills its own children has no future, these professors’ ideas may not be killing, but their final intent is similar whether they realize it or not.
Why not levy taxes against cars with 6.0 L engines? Ferrari’s, Lamborghini’s and Mustang’s don’t exactly help the environment either.
These “academics” are wrong on both counts!
The amount of human-generated CO2 is negligible relative to total CO2, see Robinson AB, Robinson NE, Soon W. Environmental effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. J Am Phys Surg 2007;12:79-90.
Further, the costs of NOT having babies is much higher than the proposed $5,000 tax - to the individual tax payer and to a government that imposed the tax.
Higher parity in women means less risk of developing breast cancer, which is costly to all concerned - individual women, health systems, governments etc..
Also, if such a tax were imposed more women would seek induced abortions. The costs of induced abortion attributable preterm birth and the devastating complications of preterm birth such as cerebral palsy are also much higher! See Calhoun BC, Shadigian E, Rooney B. Cost consequences of induced abortion as an attributable risk for preterm birth and impact on informed consent. J. Reprod. Med. 2007;52(10):929-37.
hmmmm
Apart from “change” in this world, ...death and TAXES are inevitable. New born babies are never exempted. Not now-probably, but eventually, they will be paying for all the blunders of their forefathers. That is, if they live life through old age. Sad, ...but a fact of life. It has been written, ...much like original sin.
ck :-)
This whole idea about taxing babies is stupid. That’s the only thing i can say. Thanks for bringing the topic up.
It is not just one whacko gynaecologist pushing this line; it is the phase 2 of global warming brainwashing. I actually wrote an article a couple of months ago which was in the Saturday Inquirer section of The Australian about this very issue.
Did you not notice that all the questions from the audience after the ABC showed the great Global warming swindle were about population control? The old ZPGers are reinventing themselves under the auspices of the climate movement.even some thinktanks, notably the Australia Institute are pushing this.
They are not even right factually. The large family livng on a suburban block is the most efficient consumer of energy there is. The more people in a houshold - the less per head they consume and the research has been done by the school of building at University of NSW. Anyone interested can send me an email and i’ll pass on the references. angela Shanahan
How really terrifying when you get right down to it. People who live in luxury taxing those who might well live more simply simply for living.
Nice one!
I particularly like your ‘the BBC’s beetle hagiographer David Attenborough’.
Ever since Malthus and indeed well before him, we have always found ways of fueling our pessimism about the future. From worrying about food production right up until the more recent gobal warming hysteria, we seem to have an uncanny ability to re-invent new forms of pessimism.
We badly need an academy that is capable of helping people to discover the ideological underpinnings of ways of thinking that are becoming dangerously scientistic.
Good on you for you for your contributions towards this effort.
In fact, this seems to prepare the ground for rationalizing a UN global euthanasia policy.
However, more people --> more trees that we can plant!
If you have a larger family, you are more efficient with resources: energy, food, and consumer goods. I think we should tax families that by choice refuse to have more than one or two children. In many cases these families are small in part so that parents can consume more. That’s what is bad for the environment: a twisted consumer antilife mentality.
If they are that horrified by their carbon footprint, then they can solve the problem forth with by jumping off a cliff. But they aren’t concerned with their carbon footprint at all. They want to horde the world to themselves and their twisted perception of how it should be used for their personal benefit.
The problems of the world are not about over-population, which does even exist. It’s about an entire world of people that don’t want to share with their neighbor. Not their time, not their parcel of land, not their hearts, not the air they breathe. People, such as these ignorant science and history professors, who don’t want to even share life.
I could hardly believe reading this article. I was half expecting an “April Fools!” note half way through! So lets see… we’ll liberate sex but we’ll force parents not to have more than three children? Yeah I see the freedom, the repect of human rights etc.
-Bob Newman
This article and the position is not really surprising: we have seen similar ideas before. These ideas are a consequence of a world view that does not value the human person. Nor is this idea based on real science.
I couldn’t think of a better comment than the following paragraph from the article in question:
“It’s hard to know where to begin unpacking so much prejudice. The current flare-up of the population control virus, like a polio epidemic in a country which has been disease-free for 30 years, shows that the professorial noggins are still fevered with the totalitarian temptation. Why bother with reality, when you’ve got an ideology?”
Incidentally, the last sentence is applicable to the entire content of the so-called “culture wars”.
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