Last month, I did a blog entry looking at some of the more radical solutions to climate change including one from Canada's Financial Post calling for a global version of China's one child policy. This is a critical shift in the thinking around climate change: the problem is caused by humans so let's get rid of them.
Now a proposal published in the Medical Journal of Australia and reported here suggests governments should impose a carbon tax on babies. Barry Walters, an associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia, argues that parents having more than a defined number of kids should pay a carbon tax. Walters argues that there should be a levy per child of at least $5000 at birth (to purchase the land needed and plant trees) and an annual tax of $400-$800 thereafter for the life of the child (to pay for maintenance of the afforestation project). By the same token, contraceptives, intrauterine devices and sterilization procedures should come with carbon credits.
Andrew Revkin from the New York Times has raised the possibility of baby avoidance carbon credits and suggests that condoms might be the ultimate green technology. And indeed at last month's Copenhagen summit, Zhao Baige, vice minister of China's National Population and Family Planning Commission said 400 million births had been prevented as a result of China's policy since it was introduced in the 1970s, and the drop in the child-per-couple average from 5.8 to 1.8, had resulted in 1.8 billion fewer tons of carbon dioxide being emitted each year.
So population control is now back firmly on the agenda. But is it the answer? Farida Akhter, the Executive Director of UBINIG, a policy and action research organisation in Bangladesh argues that it's no solution, pointing out that birth rates are coming down and in areas of the world where they are high, as in sub-Saharan Africa, emissions are actually low.
Still, if nothing else the focus on population control is a reminder that poorer countries will suffer the most from climate change.
no comment untill now