Now here's a novel idea which ought to have been posted on OLO, but instead winds up on the scrapheap of American mass media. Then again, maybe that's where the idea belongs, along with Mr P, Mr B and Chicken Noodle News - - -

From the December 14 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck:

"PAGLIARULO: Well, just when you thought Al Gore and his posse couldn't push the envelope on global warming any further, along comes Barry Walters, a professor in Australia who is proposing -- get this -- a baby tax to help save the planet.

"The professor wants to charge parents 5,000 Australian dollars -- that's a little over 4,000 U.S. -- for every child after their second and about $700 U.S. every year for life. Better yet, under his plan, couples who get sterilized would be eligible for carbon credits. Yay.

"Joining me now from Pittsburgh is the host of this very show and the author of An Inconvenient Book, Glenn Beck.

"Glenn, I have three kids. You have four. You know, we've got a little something extra now. If our kids are acting up, we can say, "We had you even though we knew we were killing the planet."

"BECK: Yes.

"PAGLIARULO: This guy is out of his mind, no?

BECK: Yeah. Oh, this is insane. You know, a lot of these environmentalists absolutely hate people."

http://mediamatters.org/items/200712200005?src=other

I don't know if anyone has read "Nature's End"- a scifi novel from the mid 80's set in a enviromenatlly degraded world with the population moving towards 12 Billion people around 2060. The writers' one of which was Whitley Schrieber catalogued various consequences of our actions on the planet and used press outakes from the 80's to illustrate what was happening. This is a brilliant novel but the premise of the novel was a death cult growing out of the mess the planet was in with a push to halve the population with mass suicide on a given day. I think this senario may not be too far from what may happen given estimates of world population at 10-11 billion in 2050 up from close to 7 billion now. In the book controlled immigration to the West had totally broken down due to envrionmental refugees- this is starting to happen now and will worsen over the next 10-20 years. It is difficult to see the countries of the world acting with the urgency needed to start to halt the damage to the environment that will end up in a situation very close to that painted in the novel.

It is certainly high time families were discouraged from having more than two children.
In the seventies there was an excellent film set in the near future -- "Soylent Green". Central Park N.Y. had been reduced to three scrawny shrubs in a glasshouse; bulldozers were used to shift people from the streets, and those who decided to die prematurely were euthanased beautifully and rewarded financially. Soylent Green were the most popular biscuits; made from human meat...
It made such a powerful impression on me I have never bred, nor wanted to. However, I seem to be the only person on the planet thus affected.

Interesting one, ybgirp. I'd forgotten about Soylent Green. I was not very clucky at the time, didn't have kids till the '80's, but stopping at two was more a matter of agreement with my partner than any consideration of the wider world. I'd already done that, crouching under schooldesks during atomic air raid drills in the '50's.

It’s not only living things that get reproduced. Thomas Edison did not just invent the light bulb; he also invented the electricity distribution system. Henry Ford did not invent the automobile, he invented the assembly line. Industrial systems and processes, like the assembly line, were reproduced in Russia and Germany after WWI. They then reproduced some of the vast machinery for WWII. The Nazis applied the assembly line concept in their extermination camps.

The story told in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" reveal how electricity generation and distribution systems have been reproduced in third world countries, parasitising their economies like strangle vine in mallee scrub, providing a means of reproducing and extending a foreign economic system.

Systems and objects get reproduced, by humans, with little restraint or thought for the resources they consume, and cause to be consumed at increasing rates. Traditional societies comprising "uncivilised" humans can bonk themselves silly, but if they remain in third world conditions, as opposed to the streets of New York, the consequences will most likely remain localised, rather than becoming globalised. They may well suffer a fate worse than death before they die, but they’re not going to wind up manufactured into Soylent Green.

I can only hope my kids and their kids live long and happy lives; but sooner or later, after I am gone, they will be gone and we will all be gone. Meanwhile, where do we come from?

I think this all comes down to choice. It seems a pity that some are turned off having offspring by the thought of too many people on the planet. Having children is one of the most rewarding activities you can aspire to. However, the problem arises where the society ecpects a population rise to perpetrate the existing economic system, wether that be a religious, cultural or money driven model.
Australia is in the very lucky position where we can exercise choice. Women are not forced to bear children by social or religious pressures as was the case 50 years ago. Luckily the negative stigma has largely gone, thank goodness. What we now have is a false population increase with immigration driven by the banks and building lobby which is driven by growth at any cost to prop up their share price. Instead of developing markets and occupations to keep people busy producing items, services and products which enhance our levels of choice and do not destroy the rest of the world, we are doing more of the same.
When do the pundits wake up, see the messages and change the direction of the juggernaut before it is too late.
If anyone out there who reads the posts in this excellent forum knows a politician or banker or economist please get them to see sense and work out a better economic model while there is still time.

Australia has the resources, the wealth, the knowlege and the vision to do this. Why are we following the rest of the world like sheep?

Why indeed, Guy V... the reason is one word I haven't read [I think] so far in this thread... PROFIT.
There's been loads of interesting stuff about credit and an economic system that requires constant growth. But Profit is the driving force, and yet profit in a closed ecosystem such as the one we inhabit, is suicidal. Unless every 'withdrawal' is compensated for by a commensurate 'deposit' the balance tips and chaos ensues.
e.g. We remove forests and replace with crops... some imbalance there. The crops are harvested and sold overseas... removing ancient nutrients causing further imbalance. Some fertilizer is added, but no humus and probably no organic mulch, therefore exposed soils erode tipping the scales further. The resulting dustbowl doesn't return a profit so it is discarded and we move on to rape the next place.
Replacing valleys and hills with houses and streets may make a profit for the developers, but it results in a gross imbalance ecologically.
Remove the idea that profit is acceptable, and the problem is half solved.