Global Thinning is a Good Global Warming Policy

Global Thinning is a Good Global Warming Policy

Ganga Prasad G. Rao

In the good ol' days as an Economist at API, despite all the gassing in my office (apparently, something to do with 'spy key', 'gas key' or 'criminal key'?), I made a list of ideas to impress the twelfth floor into sponsoring my green card (I should have known better!). Any way, one of those ideas was that population control was likely a very effective global warming policy. Come to think of it, population growth is an exponential process. Add to it the human desire to live it up, and what you have it is a 'double exponential' growth of demand for various goods and services, each requiring extraction of raw materials, processing, packaging and transportation, not to mention collection and disposal of waste post-consumption. The GHG emissions from these activities can only add to the existing inventory. And, since we are not waiting for glaciers to show up at our doors (if you know what I mean), why not consider population control as an integral policy measure that ranks equal, pari passu, with other global warming abatement measures such as carbon credits, carbon sequestration and fuel switching (or grow corals, as I have suggested)? If it costs real dollars to sequester carbon in forests and in the earth's strata or switch to cleaner fuels, then why not equivalently and concomitantly, pay newly-weds an annual 'honorarium' until they have their first child, then half that amount until the birth of the second? Participating governments, depending on the degree of emissions reductions required, could entice their citizens with (present value) payments up to the discounted equivalent value of avoided carbon emissions over a lifetime of the (yet) unborn (limited by the marginal conditions imposed by alternative abatement policies and mechanisms). Structured properly, this policy could provide the right incentive, especially to the lower and middle classes who would not mind the compromise. It would both abate and delay population growth, thus reducing the pressure not just on emissions and global warming. The payment could vary from country to country and over time depending on the severity and reality of global warming. Besides, the various other benefits of a lower population density could add to the benefits, turning this in to a win-win policy.

Then again, we could participate in a population growth-bubble driven bull market (don't blame me if my proposal crashes the Sensex!), or, better yet, agree to meet to work out the revised modalities of a binding multilateral framework for CDM!!!