Ted Turner's Craziest Scheme Yet: Cap and Trade...With Children

Lachlan Markay
December 9th, 2010 12:38 PM
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Media mogul Ted Turner, who founded cable networks CNN and TBS, wants a global child-bearing "cap and trade" system to combat climate change. He has thought up a bizarre take on China's one-child policy: set a strict one-child limit, and let poor people sell credits for children they don't have!

At the ongoing climate change summit in Cancun, Mexico, Turner told attendees:

...environmental stress on the Earth requires radical solutions, suggesting countries should follow China’s lead in instituting a one-child policy to reduce global population over time. He added that fertility rights could be sold so that poor people could profit from their decision not to reproduce.

“If we’re going to be here [as a species] 5,000 years from now, we’re not going to do it with seven billion people,” Mr. Turner said.

So the question then becomes, as the Daily Caller's Jim Treacher put it, "which one of Ted Turner's five children he doesn't consider to be a mistake."

But Turner has already thought of that. Under his plan, people with sufficient economic means could purchase "credits" from low-income people, who could save the planet by not having children, and make some money in the process (by selling their unused credits).

So essentially Turner wants a bizarre "cap and trade" childbirth system, in which the number of children is strictly limited, but people can sell the rights to additional offspring.

The whole thing is quite disturbing.

Thankfully, other delegates shot down Turner's harebrained idea.

Former Irish president Mary Robinson warned that radical prescriptions for population control would backfire, ensuring that the subject will remain off the agenda of international climate talks.

This is not Turner's first bizarre claim regarding climate policy. Over the summer, he suggested that the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico was a sign from God that the nation needed to stop drilling offshore. To the surprise of no one, he was not mocked by the "reality-based community" for that statement.

His latest idea seems to be passing by without much media play as well.

*****UPDATE: For those who aren't familiar with Turner's past antics, here's a list of "greatest hits" (with the Gulf oil spill statement linked above):

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