This is not a joke. There is now a "fringe" movement to issue so-called carbon credits as an incentive to curb childbirth, which is now a hazard to the environment.
Revkin volunteered that in allocating carbon credits as part of any cap-and-trade scheme, "if you can measurably somehow divert fertility rate, say toward accelerating decline in a place with a high fertility rate, shouldn't there be a carbon value to that?"He went on to say that "probably the single most concrete and substantive thing an American, young American, could do to lower our carbon footprint is not turning off the light or driving a Prius, it's having fewer kids, having fewer children."
"More children equal more carbon dioxide emissions," Rivkin has blogged, wondering "whether this means we'll soon see a market in baby-avoidance carbon credits similar to efforts to sell CO2 credits for avoiding deforestation." Save the trees, not the children.
If there can be this kind of incentive to reduce childbirth, could we take it one step further, and issue carbon credit bonuses for each aborted fetus? They could even offer one time, lump sum sterilization carbon credits. This would all certainly fit the abortion agenda for the same ideological crowd, and would be a way to supplement the child tax credit. Get your tubes tied = government handout; get pregnant and have baby = government handout; get pregnant and have abortion = government handout. What better way to line voters up to exercise their "reproductive freedom"? Sound crazy? It used to sound crazy that the government would try to influence our choice in light bulbs and automobiles. It used to sound crazy that the government would own General Motors, have a "Pay Czar", and provide tax "refunds" to those who had paid no taxes. Still sound crazy?
Here's an idea they may not like so much:
How about carbon credits for hunters? It makes sense, really. Think about a deer or an elk, for example. All a deer or elk does for it's entire lifetime is eat grass and foliage, which would have taken "dangerous" CO2 out of the atmosphere, and then "emit" methane flatulence, another dangerous greenhouse gas. Oh, they also create more deer/elk through uncontrolled reproduction, of course exacerbating this environmental hazard. Hunting deer and elk provides safe haven for grass and vegetation to soak up CO2 without risk of being eaten, and cuts dangerous emissions from these wild beasts. Think of the environmental benefit provided by these hunters, thinning the herds of these polluting, environmentally insensitive animals, and the hunters provide this service to the Mother Earth for FREE. The least we could do is issue them some carbon credits.
