![Friuch Consulting home page [logo]](wp-content/themes/friuch-branded/images/friuchconsulting.jpg)
« Trust Network Parties and How They Help Your Consulting Practice | Home | ProTip: Maintaining the Privacy of Your Research Subjects »
Proposed Carbon Tax for Families with More Than Two Children Reads like Dystopian Novel Plot
By crooky | December 10, 2007
One of my all-time favourite books – Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card – is set in a future where humanity is at war with a remote but deadly race of aliens. In this future, socio-economic factors after two crippling inter-planetary wars lead to the point where Earth’s government imposes population restriction laws. The protagonist in this story (you should read it, even if you don’t like SciFi – it’s required reading in many Western countries’ military officer training programs for a reason) is the third child in his family and was only allowed to be conceived by special government sanction. Today’s Medical Journal of Australia featured an article recommending a new policy for emissions control that is effectively the same kind of population restriction law found in Card’s dystopian world. Under this proposed policy, Australian families having more than two children would be “taxed” $5000 AUD the year the third child is born and $800 every subsequent year (I’m assuming until the child is 18).
As someone who has been debating having a third child themselves, there is something disturbing about this proposed policy. I don’t like the “one child” law in China and an effective “two child” law for a country that resembles Canada in many regards doesn’t sit well with me either. I can agree that kids generate waste and use up energy – just like the rest of us. What I don’t agree with is the idea that in sparsely populated countries like Canada and Australia the few families having more than the normal amount of kids are generating some kind of environmental crisis.
Taken in the context of labour shortages and population declines due to lower birth rates, many Western countries have focused on developing policies to encourage couples having more kids. Australia, for example, has an existing “baby bonus” for Australian families who give birth to a third child. I don’t agree with “baby bonus” policies either but I certainly think penalizing families for having more than two kids is absurd and the link to environmental impact is tenuous at best.
Let me put it to you, my few readers. Do you think Canada (and countries like it) should impose a carbon tax on families that have more than two kids?
Loading ...*********************
Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.
Topics: Policy, Technology |