Tim Worstall

Population and Climate Change

So everyone’s supposed to have fewer children to combat climate change. Hhmm.

Based on a cost of £42.50 per tonne of CO2, the report estimates that
the price for the climate of each new person over their lifetime is
roughly £30,000.

Average lifetime earnings (or output if you prefer, a slightly different figure but of the same order) in the UK would be about £ 1 million (£25k x 40 years) so by putting it in these financial terms they’ve rather shot themselvesin the foot.

A deal where you get £ 1 million of benefit for £30 k of cost sounds like a pretty good one actually.

In

6 responses

  1. Bruce G Charlton Avatar
    Bruce G Charlton

    So, now children are bad for the planet… but then – for radical greens – _people_ are bad for the planet. The fewer people the better, they believe. For them, humans are the problem, not the solution.
    Behind this idea lies the yearning to cut the world population down by a few billion. This is one reason why greens recur to a covert, sometimes not so covert, yearning for massive eco-disaster.
    Eco-disaster with mass fatalities is not so much feared as desired – for the benefit of the planet, of course.
    Indeed, a negative political philosophy of minimizing harm will – I think – always tend in this direction. Greens don’t have a positive program – or rather, the only coherent positive program is a return to hunter gatherer lifeways (a return to agrarian peasant societies can only be wished-for by those who do not understand that the life of a peasant is the worst of human lives – except for the slaves who also invariably form a significant proportion of peasant societies).
    Radical greens are anti-human, that’s about the size of it.

    Reply
  2. DocBud Avatar
    DocBud

    It’s not about reality or doing good, Tim. It’s all about being miserable, doom mongering statists who want to control how others live their lives. David Milliband is of this ilk.

    Reply
  3. Mark Wadsworth Avatar
    Mark Wadsworth

    What Bruce and The Doc say.

    Reply
  4. embutler Avatar
    embutler

    ah but you see… a few million earned thru spilling co2 is less than 30 k worth of carbon credits
    and that is the aim of greenie math
    accept poverty and be green

    Reply
  5. Mark Wadsworth Avatar
    Mark Wadsworth

    The logical conclusion of this is that all eco-warriors should have their bollocks cut off (and whatever the equivalent is for women). Seems fair enough to me.

    Reply
  6. Elliott Joseph Avatar
    Elliott Joseph

    The chap behind the recommendation that we appease Gaia by containing our reproductive urges himself has three children. It is, as ever, we ordinary mortals who should mend our ways, not the enlightened leaders of the Movement.

    Reply

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