Both Todd Whitcombe (Citizen, Oct. 10) and Environment Minister Mary Polak (Oct. 13) were off the mark in their comments about the carbon tax.
Dr. Whitcombe said the idea behind a carbon tax is that by pricing carbon dioxide emissions, it it will signal a shift in the market and drive people away from using carbon intensive products.
But it won't.
For the most part there simply aren't alternatives. Those alternatives that do exist are considerably more expensive. For example, I heat my house with natural gas. The only alternative would be electricity, which costs more even with the carbon tax, not to mention the huge cost of retrofitting my house for electric heat.
Ms. Polak said that we can either choose to pay the tax or avoid it. For the most part, no we can't, and for those situations that we can, why would we? Alternatives cost way more.
Dr. Whitcombe suggested it will be touted as the beginning of real movement by the federal government on climate change.
It isn't.
While it's portrayed as incentive to get citizens and industry to cut emissions, in actual fact it's too small to have that effect. Its real purpose is to give the appearance of taking real action - they're just pretending. For it to really work, a carbon tax would have to hurt, really hurt. In order to meet our stated goals, we would have to cut the equivalent of shutting down all industry and transportation in the country. No government, not even the Liberals or NDP will do that, the people wouldn't stand for it.
While it won't hurt most people, the carbon tax will hurt low-income seniors. Tax credits for low income individuals won't help many of these people who already don't have enough income to pay taxes.
Carbon-intensive, export-sensitive industries such as agriculture and energy (a major part of Western Canada's economy) will certainly have incentive to reduce emissions but they can't do much better than they're already doing. The carbon tax makes them less competitive in a world economy where their competition doesn't have to contend with green agendas, carbon taxes or a multitude of unnecessary regulations.
We also need to wake up to the fact that we're being played for suckers. Only the successful capitalist democracies are expected to cut emissions. The rest of the world is given carte blanche to spew as much as they want. India plans to ramp up from mining 634 million tons of coal to 1.5 billion metric tons by 2020. China plans to triple its emissions over 15 years. Turkey is planning 80 new coal generators.
The rest of the world is never going to cut emissions. As University of Cambridge professor M. J. Kelly said, "Cutting carbon could result in a dramatic reduction in the world's quality of life that would usher in mass starvation, poverty and civil strife.
Massive de-carbonization is only possible if we wish to see large parts of the population die from starvation, destitution or violence in the absence of enough low-carbon energy to sustain society."
It's all political. Ottmar Edenhofer, former co-chair of the IPCC working group on Mitigation of Climate Change said, "We redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy."
Something to keep in mind when paying your carbon tax.
Art Betke
Prince George
