Contact: Larry Jacobs or Don Feder, 815-964-5819, 513-515-3685 cell, media@worldcongress.org

ROCKFORD, Ill., Dec. 19 /Christian Newswire/ -- World Congress of Families International Secretary Allan C. Carlson called a proposal for an Australian baby tax "suicidal."

Barry Walters is a clinical professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia. In a recent issue of Medical Journal of Australia, Walters called for a $5,000 "baby levy" and an annual "carbon tax" of up to $800-per-child for families with more than two children.

This is intended to offset projected energy use during the child's lifetime, to counter global warming.

"If adopted, the professor's proposal would have the effect of throwing gasoline on a fire," Carlson commented.

"Australia's birthrate is currently 1.75 – less than half of what it was in 1960 and well below the number of births-per-woman needed just to replace current population (2.11)," Carlson noted.

"Who does Walters think will pay his pension, if not children from large families when they become workers?"

Carlson continued: "Any human contribution to global warming is a function of poor stewardship of the earth, not total population size."

Carlson noted that, contrary to Walters' assertion, a recent Michigan State University study actually showed that married households contribute less to global warming than single person households.  The former (with or without children) are more environmentally efficient and use significantly less energy and resources than single households according to Jianguo Liu, an ecologist whose analysis appears in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0707267104v1)."

"Unlike the effect an additional child will have on global warming, demographic decline is a verifiable reality. Worldwide, fertility rates have dropped by half in the last 50 years.  There are now 6 million fewer children in the world (ages 0-4) than there were in 1990."

If nothing else, Walters' proposal unmasks the real agenda of environmental extremists, which is anti-child, anti-family and ultimately anti-life.

World Congress of Families is an international pro-family movement. World Congress of Families IV - held in Warsaw, May 11-13, 2007 – was attended by 3,900 delegates from 64 countries. World Congress of Families V is now in the planning stages and accepting host proposals for 2009 or 2010 (www.worldcongress.org).

To schedule an interview with Allan Carlson, contact WCF Global coordinator Larry Jacobs at 1-800-461-3113. For more information on the World Congress of Families, go to www.worldcongress.org.

The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60  countries that seeks to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the 'seedbed' of civil society.  The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org).  To date, there have been four World Congresses of Families – Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004) and Warsaw, Poland (2007).