Charging for children?

An Australian professor last week unveiled a controversial plan to solve the country’s climate crisis: Place a tax on those who have too many children.

According to The Associated Press, obstetrics professor Barry Walters has proposed that parents who have more than two children should be taxed about $4,400 per additional birth, plus $700 each year in perpetuity. The tax, he said, would go toward offsetting each child’s carbon emissions through the purchase and planting of trees.

Walters, who teaches at the University of Western Australia, unveiled his idea in a letter to the editor of the Medical Journal of Australia. Currently, the government gives parents about $3,500 per Australian-born child.