Australia’s Little Carbon Footprints

DR Barry N J Walters, an Australian,  has written to the Medical Journal of Australia saying:

Every family choosing to have more than a defined number of children (Sustainable Population Australia suggests a maximum of two) should be charged a carbon tax that would fund the planting of enough trees to offset the carbon cost generated by a new human being. The average annual CO2 emission by an Australian individual is about 17 metric tons,4 including energy usage. As the biomass of trees in a mature forest sequesters about 6 metric tons of CO2 per hectare (104 m2) per year,4,5 each child born should be offset by planting 4 hectares of trees, to allow for the time they take to reach maturity, and attrition through crop losses, bushfires, dieback and so on. This infers a levy per child of at least $5000 at birth (to purchase the land needed and plant trees) and an annual tax of $400–$800 thereafter for the life of the child (for maintenance of the afforestation project) (based on 1990 figures, and probably much more now).

Cursed shalll be the Australian infant who cannot afford the green levy. And Australia is the “expanding economy” offering “wonderful employment opportunities for skilled migrants” - including those carbon exhalers versed in “furniture making, automotive trades, health services, horticulture, hospitality, metal machining, toolmaking, urban and regional planning, welding and teaching”.

And “advanced sciences”…

More on Australia’s human virus here 

Anorak

Posted: 12th, December 2007 | In: Global Warming Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink