Climate Funnies: Tax Fitness Fanatics for Needless Burning of Calories

Here's a novel idea: in order to save the world from global warming, people who regularly exercise should have to pay a carbon tax for their selfish and egotistical burning of extra calories.

Sound crazy?

Well, as "Freakonomics" co-author Steven D. Levitt satirically laid out in a New York Times piece Tuesday, this actually makes about as much sense as any of the other absurd solutions being proposed by the likes of Nobel Laureate Al Gore (emphasis added):

A recent Lancet article argued that obesity is contributing to global warming because the obese consume more calories. Since making food releases carbon, that means an obese person, on average, is worse for global warming than a skinny person. [...]

[I]f we want to blame the obese for global warming, those who engage in recreational exercise like jogging or biking for pleasure should surely be discouraged from doing so because of global warming.

Someone who jogs an hour per day burns an extra 1,000 calories daily … far more than an obese person. Such wasteful burning of calories must be discouraged if we are to save the planet.

I hereby call for the next president of the United States to pass legislation imposing a carbon tax of 10 cents per hour on all recreational burning of calories. To save the planet, we must encourage people to sit at home and burn as few calories as possible.

Sounds reasonable to me -- maybe even more reasonable than a carbon cap-and-trade scheme.

Hehehehehe.