A Carbon Tax on Babies?

A professor of obstetrics in Australia has proposed an instantly controversial idea to put a tax on children, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Instead of offering tax incentives to help families, as Australia, the United States and many other nations do, Barry Walters suggests taxing couples that have more children than a set amount, probably two since that represents a one-to-one replacement, as measured in human beings on the planet.

Human population growth is the dark horse issues that drives every other environmental issues. In the coming decades, the world's urban population will double, requiring us to build the equivalent of a new city of a million people every five days, according to the estimates of Joel Cohen, a biological mathematician at Rockefeller University. The staggering numbers of people will require vast consumption of resources, produce new pollution and strain already weakened ecosystems. He spoke at “Sustainable Cities,” a recent forum sponsored by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

So, while the idea of taxing babies may seem heartless, it at least confronts a fundamental issue that most politicians won't touch.

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