A West Australian medical expert wants families to pay a $5000-plus "baby levy" at birth and an annual carbon tax of up to $800 a child.Writing in today's Medical Journal of Australia, Associate Professor Barry Walters said every couple with more than two children should be taxed to pay for enough trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over each child's lifetime.
Professor Walters, clinical associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia and the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth, called for condoms and "greenhouse-friendly" services such as sterilisation procedures to earn carbon credits.
And he implied the Federal Government should ditch the $4133 baby bonus and consider population controls like those in China and India...
The infamous "population bomb" that Paul Ehrlich and other environmentalists of the 1960s and 70s warned would soon destroy the planet turned out to be a big, dull dud. Indeed, in many parts of the world, the population problem is that there are too few people, not too many.
Nevertheless, irrational pseudo-scientists like Professor Walters refuse to let facts stand in the way of their perverse people paranoia. The rest of this Jen Kelly story for News.com in Australia is here.
