One of the problems with believing a lie is the unforeseen negative ramifications that proceed from it. Case in point is an idea promoted by Travis Rieder, assistant director of the Berman Institute of Bioethics at John Hopkins University. In a recent interview with NPR, Rieder said that having fewer children “could be the thing that saves us.” He continued, “Here’s a provocative thought: Maybe we should protect our kids by not having them.” His proposal to advance this idea amounts to a procreation tax, a kind of “carbon tax on kids,” as he called it. Great idea, let’s make the cost of having and raising children even more expensive.

Rieder is not alone in his views, the Conceivable Future, a New Hampshire climate activist group, has stated, “the climate crisis is a reproduction crisis.” If this sounds a lot like China’s infamous one-child policy, that’s because it is. The climate activists insist they don’t support of a government-mandated policy, but a tax on procreation amounts to exactly that. As Climate Depot’s Marc Morano put it, “The warmists have now graduated from regulating our light bulbs, coal plants and SUVs to regulating our family size.”