This caught my attention today.

This, from Slate Magazine’s Human Nature column:

Australian doctors proposed a carbon tax on couples for procreating. Current policy: To promote population growth, Australia pays each couple about $3,500 per baby. Counterproposal: “Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and thereby rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behavior, a ‘Baby Levy’ in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the ‘polluter pays’ principle.” Details: You get two kids free; thereafter, you pay a $4,400 tax at birth, plus $350 to $700 per year “for the life of the child.” Rationales: 1) This is a conservative estimate of the cost of planting enough trees to offset your kid’s carbon effects. 2) “Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, we should control the population to ensure the survival of the environment.” 3) “We deserve no more population concessions than those in India and China.” The good news: You’d get a carbon tax credit for using birth control.

And from David Attenborough in a letter to a colleague:

I agree very much with your central concept that many of the world’s most grievous afflictions can be attributed to population growth: the unprecedented increase in numbers of one species – humans – whose environmental impact threatens the habitats and the very existence of nearly all others, in both the animal and vegetable kingdoms. This process certainly cannot continue indefinitely without bringing about global catastrophe. When the facts are incontrovertible and the conclusions inescapable; when success could bring a vast improvement in the welfare and happiness of millions; and when the penalty of failure is global disaster: surely humanity will want to collaborate and make sure that sanity prevails.

As I said at the end of my last TV series “The Life of Mammals”: maybe it is time that instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, we should control the population to ensure the survival of the environment.

We live in a world where growth is good - in fact, much of the time, it’s the only yardstick for success. How long can growth keep up? Is growth good? We’ve proved that we can’t manage it, and that we can override the natural mechanisms for controlling growth. Are government incentives - baby bonuses, etc. - the first thing to cut for a strong environmental policy? Another argument against state social welfare?

Discuss.

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