Developed countries aren't having enough children. We need to provide families with children more assistance, not less. Raising children deserves to be seen as a job because it provides value to society. I say that as a person without children who hopes to never have any.

But not having children reduces fossil fuel consumption the most, and that is the goal of the tax, is it not?

Reducing capitas will cause a much quicker and effective change than reducing per capita consumption.

The goal of the tax is to force people the internalize the externalities caused by their consumption.

I would think the carbon tax part would be based on carbon usage which is a factor of consumption. The entire family’s consumption. So if the rebate is $1000 per person a family if 4 gets $4000. However the net gain/loss is only calculated after knowing what your family consumes. A family of 4 bicyclists may come out ahead while a family of 4 SUV drivers may have a net loss.

> This would lead to more social care towards people with children. How would you recommend solving that?

I'm sorry, what's the issue? If we need children and need to incentivize it, it's what we'll do. And by definition, you're talking about advantages only to counterbalance new disadvantages. So we need to solve what?

What’s the reason to having more people and children? It’s to “grow the economy”. Is constant growth sustainable?

If we don't need them we won't subsidize them. The OP seems to think we'll need to subsidize children more for some reason.

Look at Japan and you'll see the reason. Aging population.

Which is not good for economy. I understand. So more children are needed to support the aging population in the future. My question still stands: is this sustainable indefinitely?

> My question still stands: is this sustainable indefinitely?

I mean, if on one side we have exponential growth, and on the other we have no children leading to no one to support seniors, surely there is a middle ground where the right number of children are born each year.

China tried with the one child policy and debalanced its population's structure, ending up with too many men.

On the other hand in Japan and elsewhere in developed countries women postpone having kids until in their in their 30s, because they're involved in the workforce.

So, one either ends up with exponential population growth or with the elderly working until they die and younger people postponing having chindren until mid age (with all the associated health issues, both for the mother and th child) or not having children at all.

It's rather hard if not impossible to keep a middle ground. As a woman one probably has to make a choice between bearing children after you finish college or getting a degree and joining the workforce. Guess what most women's choice is?