“We are what is wrong,” said the Goracle in his Nobel speech today, perfectly summarizing the environmentalist ethos. It’s nice for once to hear him using “we” in that context without meaning the United States, although that’s the practical effect: He’s already on record as saying China shouldn’t have to go green until America does, and since it’s unlikely that developing nations will risk retarding their growing economies with draconian anti-industrial measures, the only “we” who can be counted on — or properly expected by the conscientious multiculturalist — to do anything about the problem is the west. As Gore put it in another line of notably cringing pap, “It is time to make peace with the planet.” Where do we go to sign the treaty?

We go … to the root of the problem!

A WEST Australian medical expert wants families to pay a $5000-plus “baby levy” at birth and an annual carbon tax of up to $800 a child.

Writing in today’s Medical Journal of Australia, Associate Professor Barry Walters said every couple with more than two children should be taxed to pay for enough trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over each child’s lifetime.

Professor Walters, clinical associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia and the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth, called for condoms and “greenhouse-friendly” services such as sterilisation procedures to earn carbon credits.

Not the first time recently we’ve seen the Steynian nightmare of green consciousness, big government, and low western birthrates converge. Nice to see them adding financial incentives towards abortion and sterilization into the mix, though, instead of relying on the individual’s own sense of solidarity with “Gaia” to lead them. Exit question one: How long before this sort of proposal becomes mainstream in the west? Ten years maybe? Exit question two: To the extent that this policy would indirectly benefit people who are less likely to reproduce, is this advantage: beta males?