More leftist lunacy: Let's put a carbon tax on babies

“Should We Be Having Kids In The Age of Climate Change?” That was the audacious question NPR’s website and All Things Considered radio show asked recently as it promoted a college professor’s “radical” proposal that people need to have fewer children because of the “prospect of climate catastrophe.”

The academic proposed a “carbon tax” on children to decentivize procreation in wealthy nations.

NPR correspondent Jennifer Ludden reported that Professor Travis Rieder presented these “moral” arguments to James Madison University students, claiming the best way to protect future generations from the threat of climate change is “by not having them.”

A philosopher, Rieder told students that having fewer children reduces carbon emissions more effectively than not eating meat, driving hybrid cars, and using eco-friendly appliances.

According to the NPR piece, Rieder and his Georgetown University colleagues, Colin Hickey and Jake Earl, have a plan to save the earth which was described as “carrots for the poor, sticks for the rich.” They are asking richer nations to “do away with tax breaks for having children and actually penalize new parents.”

Rieder described his strategy as a “carbon tax, on kids,” and said it should be “based on income” and raised for “each additional child.” He claimed that punishing people in wealthier nations for having large families is “not like China’s abusive one-child policy” because it targets the rich rather than the poor. Apparently he doesn't know that even China is abandoning its one-child policy because of the negative consequences it is discovering, like Russia and Japan are, that reduced populations pose on a country. But I digress.

Rieder claimed to have the moral high ground, saying, “It's not the childless who must justify their lifestyle. It's the rest of us.” In the radio program, he said his family is “one and done” even though his wife Sadiye formerly wanted a “big” family.

When a student asked, “What happens if that kid you decided not to have would have been the person who grew up and essentially cured this,” Rieder called it a good question. But then he added that “valuing children as a means to an end...” is “ethically problematic.” 

Such anti-life arguments are typical of the left, including the environmental left. What I want to know is, why is it that every time some pseudo-intellectual proposes fewer people are needed, they never volunteer to lead the way? They always want their spot at Earth's table, but want to deny it to others.

These people obviously hate humanity whom they consider pests to be eradicated in the name of phantom climate change. They purposely ignore earth's actual climatic history to promote their suicidal agendas of population control as a means of climate control. 

The bottom line is, there is, in general, no overpopulation problem (there are plenty of corruption-induced government problems that lead to things like poverty, however). In fact, I am willing to concede that the earth is overpopulated by misanthropes who think there is a population and climate change problem. Maybe we should put a carbon tax on these environmental extremists for the ludicrous anti-human ideas that they spew.