Monday, December 10, 2007

Now a baby tax?

This is what the modern environmentalist movement has come to. Associate Professor Barry Walters has written an article for Australia's top medical journal dealing with the issue of climate change. The professor believes that a woman giving birth to a child is engaging in "greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour" and should therefore be hit with a "baby levy". He wants families to pay a $5000 baby levy at birth and an annual carbon tax of $800 per child. People who get themselves sterilised would be rewarded with a carbon credit. In the professor's own words:

Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and thereby rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour, a baby levy in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the polluter pays principle.


The professor is making this suggestion despite the fact that Australia has a fertility rate of 1.8, which is well below replacement level.

Nor is he alone in expressing such views. Dr Egger, the director of the Centre for Health Promotion and Research in Sydney has declared his support for Professor Walters. There is a list here of others who have advocated radical measures against human populations, including a Melbourne neuroscientist, Dr John Reid, who said last year that:

[one] human way to reduce the population might be to put something in the water, a virus that would be specific to the human reproductive system and would make a substantial proportion of the population infertile. Perhaps a virus that would knock out the genes that produce certain hormones necessary for conception.


I should say that I'm someone who loves nature and has chosen to live close to the countryside. Ordinarily, therefore, I would support efforts to preserve the environment.

But not when the movement is aimed at a power grab and not when it becomes a vehicle for misanthropes.

15 comments:

  1. If they feel so strongly about this don't they have an obligation to remove themselves from the land of the living? I'd like to see what sort of lifestyle the proffessors live, I am sure that there would be no shortage of expensive cars, air conditioning and overseas trips.

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  2. I expect, sfw, that for these professors giving up the flitting to and from Europe would be considered a more radical measure than giving up having babies.

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  3. If these types really gave a flick about population control, they'd be adding a complete halt to immigration next to their no-baby bonus. In the US and Canada, immigration is 3/4 of annual population growth, and looking at the CIA factbook, immigration is getting ever closer to 50% of annual pop. growth for Australia.


    How do these super smarty pants manage to miss this simple way to decrease population growth almost immediately with no need to change any human behaviours. How do they miss it EVERY TIME?

    I'm so confused.

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  4. Anonymous,

    It's really very simple, no need to be confused:

    These people hate their own culture, and want to see us disappear into a meltingpot of multiculti stew. Hence (a) their advocating abortion and contraception (and now apparently sterilisation), and (b) their advocating open borders.

    It makes perfect sense really. Let us coin a new term:

    "autogenocide" : v, an act of self inflicted damage perpetrated by a particular cultural/ethnic group tantemount to voluntary extinction.

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  5. If they feel so strongly about this don't they have an obligation to remove themselves from the land of the living?

    You'd think they'd make the connection, wouldn't you?

    Why don't they just say they hate people and be done with it?

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  6. Actually they just hate white people. You don't really think this guy wants to tax blacks and browns for excessive childbearing, do you?

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  7. We need to have population control. No ifs or buts.

    If we do not reduce world population it will be reduced by mass famine due to energy shortage and global warming.

    Hopefully these blokes have begun a debate which is vital for our planet's future, is long overdue and will inform the ignorant masses as to just how far the plague we are has depleted this planet's resources.

    If these blokes had called for an end to immigration there would have been another set of fools spraying them for being racists.

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  8. Salient Green, the world's European populations need to increase their fertility rates, not decrease them.

    Nor is it helpful to refer to humanity as "a plague that we are".

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  9. I think the word overpopulation needs to be replaced with the word population imbalance.

    That helps to focus the problem on those countries which do have unsustainably high birthrates, and not on those which are struggling to reach replacement level.

    Whenever something becomes a 'global problem' no one will take responsibility for it.

    In western countries adopt limited immigration policies, then westeners will be forced to have more children and poor countries will have to have fewer children.

    Without limited immigration there is no way to make countries responsible for there own demographic imbalances.

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  10. Without limited immigration there is no way to make countries responsible for their own demographic imbalances.

    This is a point made by Anthony Browne, an environment editor for the Times.

    He gave Bangladesh as an example. In 2000 the then president of Bangladesh was asked how the rapidly increasingly population would be clothed and fed. The answer was: "We'll send them to America".

    See here for more.

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  11. We need to have population control. No ifs or buts.,

    Arrant nonsense!

    Hopefully these blokes have begun a debate which is vital for our planet's future, is long overdue and will inform the ignorant masses as to just how far the plague we are has depleted this planet's resources.

    Says it all. Why don't you just admit that you hate human beings?

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  12. This link is an interesting look at the population crisis-- the purported crisis of under-reproduction:

    http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/population/pc0044.htm

    To "wish for" some dramatic reduction in human populations in order to preserve the environment, quality of life, security of resources, etc., is understandable in a way. Such a decrease by some means beyond our control seems inevitable. But to advocate the means to render this service unto your own species is simply demonic. Surely it is the most grotesque carbuncle of modern liberalism to promote this totalitarian wet dream-- by "respected" members of society no less (see initial link).

    This advocacy is a radical insight into what a certain type of person-- most assuredly well-educated, socially secure and probably atheistic-- believes about their fellow man. It is not about sheer population numbers, it is about the billions of ordinary people whose existence simply does not matter to them except inasmuch as it poses a threat to their lifestyle notions. Even if we were not facing environmental destruction, even if the world population were only 500M, these souls would not be encompassed by their decrepit humanity. The world of humans as it is upsets them and they see the easiest solution in subtracting a good portion of its least deserving members. Perhaps they consider the least deserving to be those who have knowingly squandered their inheritance, rather than the ignorant who carry on without knowing what they are "doing to the planet".

    And just as such people enjoy blaming religion for society's historical ills they have also decided that overpopulation will result in inevitable wars and conflicts. What, as opposed to the chronicles of the last 2000+ years? What really causes these things is what they work so hard to deny to themselves-- human nature.

    Most of us have ideas about how people should conduct themselves-- the Golden Rule and other sensibilities-- but many liberals think they *really know* what is best for the rest of us, right down to the number of folks they feel deserve to be on the planet to maintain the right "balance". It is frightening to consider the state power that such idealogues have today in so many national governments and in academe.

    As someone once said, contempt is surely amongst the very worst of human attributes. Maybe *the* worst.

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  13. Revised link:

    http://www.catholiceducation.org/
    articles/population/pc0044.htm

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  14. Every generation some "sky is falling" predictions surround population. The belief that the world can only hold so many people, and that certain elites know exactly what that number is, pops up each generation, based on new 'science.' Often it pops up that a certain segment (i.e. dark skinned or poor) is over breeding and needs to be stopped. So this latest round is novel in its disregard for all human life in general.


    Well, human beings have been here for a while and will be until God wants it to be otherwise.

    How arrogant that these fools think they can play God.

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  15. Hi ,
    I live in the republic of Ireland my partner is from Melbourne Australia , we received in the post a New letter from Alive dated Feb: 2008 . we read an article concerning Cardinal Gorge Pell in relation to the Subject ,

    { Pell rejects `tax on babies to save planet } Writing in the medical Journal of Australia , Dr. Barry Walters , an associate professor of obstetrics , we are very surprised of him , he seem`s to be a neo-pagan , anti -human and we find it extraordinary , " that an obstetrician could hold such a view or that a leading medical journal could be published .

    We also feel that this is political Propaganda " something like in the Film the " Manchurian Candidate " a way of the ultimate mind control of Citizens , designed precisely to keep the area in the dark and labeled with the "knock " or "nutter " label This includes fake " victims " spouting nonsense , as well as some real victims and concerned citizens fed whatever , discrediting BS they will fall for . All this plays into a culture where this is considered an appropriate target for ridicule , even do it is document to be real and represents the torture of real human Beans .

    Dr. Walters is as good as saying pay up or your child wont live this is another form of ethnic cleansing and legalized child abuse please visit our Website on

    http://cps-victims.wetpaint.com

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