The following article caught my eye:
How to Stop Global Warming? Tax the Unborn
A UK economist has proposed an innovative solution to global warming that's sure to spark controversy: Tax the unborn to provide financial incentives for today's citizens to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick is calling for "Global Warming Bonds" to reward companies and people who reduce greenhouse gas emissions now.
The catch is that the bonds would be paid by taxes on future generations.
Well... If we cannot be any more moral, I suppose this might be a solution...
Earnestly, I am not outraged at Mr Oswald. Though his reasoning looks shocking:
What is required is an innovative way to allow unborn babies to vote with their wallets.
Future generations pass us down their money; in return we pass them up our low temperature. All generations gain. And this would be fair, because those future generations will be richer than we are, and they want us to alter our actions to help them.
We like old sports cars and oil-fired central heating. They want us to have small new cars and use solar panels. Global Warming Bonds would provide people with a reason to change how they act.
Future generations will already have to pay enough taxes for our war games. Is it obvious that future individual babies will wish to "vote with their wallets"? Why should they feel more responsibility for the society than us? There will be plenty reasons to look for tax loopholes... I don't see stable scenarios yet. And I am not sure that future generations will be richer without oil and nature.
This proposal assumes higher morality of future generations. But they might have even more difficulty to have higher social awareness and compassion than us. Most communities are likely to fail under greatly strained environment or economical conditions. We should better start from assuming higher morality from ourselves.
Today it is assumed widely that the free market can solve any society problems without much social supervision. We do not have to worry about those who are less lucky with making much money, we do not have to worry about poor nations, we do not have to worry about future generations, we do not have to worry about helpless environment. It's like the most ignorant religion - the Market God will take care of everything. But business and morality do not fare together that well. The market by itself can be just as amoral as the December tsunami. You know how the Smithsonian "invisible hand" works: some buisinesses fail, some succeed. Soon our civilization may have a chance to fail or succeed as a whole. Would we succeed by caring about nothing?
In a certain sense, we maybe won't avoid "baby taxing" solutions to global warming. But can we perhaps improve our priorities right about now?