----- Original Message -----
From: "James Annan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Newsgroups: gmane.science.general.global-change
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 7:33 AM
Subject: [Global Change: 1837] Re: breaking the population bomb taboo
>
> Zeke Hausfather wrote:
>> Coercive population control programs
>> are rarely very successful, with China's one child policy standing out
>> as the major exception (and, frankly, a similar program would be
>> impossible to implement in a democracy, as "the emergency" in India so
>> clearly showed.
>
> Coercive carbon taxes are rarely very successful, in fact there are no
> major exceptions I can think of (and, frankly, a similar program would
> be impossible to implement in a democracy, as the "fuel tax protests" in
> the UK so clearly showed).
>
> :-)
>
> James
Clever turn-about, James. Policies to reduce carbon emissions are deemed
acceptable while policies to reduce baby emissions are taboo. I believe the
taboo to be rooted in a value judgment as regards death by toxic shock
following forced insertion of intrauterine devices, versus nicking drivers a
few pence at the petrol pump.
Putting the issues on a more equal footing, some population control interest
groups in the US tried to introduce a tax policy regarding family size a few
years back. They wanted to repeal the incremental income tax exemptions for
additional children after the second. This prompted one demographer to
comment "The image of the paterfamilias in, say, Rwanda, filling out his tax
form and worrying about his deductions is too bizarre to contemplate." (Paul
Demeny "An Economist's Use for Sand" - a review of Garret Hardins' _The
Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia_ in _Nature_, 7 October 1999, p 528).
-dl
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