Carbon Tax
Once upon a time there was an emerging consensus at the First Ministers level in Canada about the need for a carbon tax or a cap and trade system. Some premiers liked one, some like the other. But they knew something needed to be done.
That was long, long ago, when the year was 2016. Now it is 2018 and the provinces are flipping over like SUVs in another once-in-a-hundred-years storm.
So now the news is back talking about a carbon tax. I don’t want to talk about a carbon tax-Tax. I get stressed when I think about a carbon tax-Tax-TAX.
A new tax? My liberties! My freedoms! Adam Smith’s invisible hand is getting slapped by government. How am I going to manage financially? I need to put beef on the table! My trucks need brake shoes! My children need 270 new batteries to run their fleet of toys! Seventeen of the rooms in my house need new furniture to match the paint I just decided would look nice! Damn you government!
How did we get here? When I was a kid we didn’t have climate change. When I was a kid we all had big fast cars and leaded gasoline and everything was fine. It’s not my problem. Do you know what I think? I think talking about climate change is making climate change. The more we talk about it, the bigger the problem seems to become. So I’m going to stop talking about it. I’m going to just live my life and you live yours. Leave me alone with your stinking carbon tax. If you want to pay it, go ahead, make a donation, but don’t make me pay for someone else’s problems. Do people really need to live that close to the ocean? Wah, wah. Hot dry poor countries? They didn’t have it so good before anyway, so what’s the difference now? It’s just a bunch of hot air. Why do we have to be the do-gooders who take it on the chin to try and fix someone else’s problem?
All those people Marching in Montreal on Saturday – 50 000 people in the March against Climate Change. How much hot air did they put into the atmosphere? See?
The Other Carbon Tax
I’m going to go sit on the couch and drink a beer and try and de-stress.
Pardon? Beer prices might double with global warming? Lies!It doesn’t even make sense! Insurance prices too? And fish? Hey, this is starting to sound like a tax! Is this a trick?
Well, okay, I’m not saying there isn’t climate change happening. And I understand there are supposedly costs to climate change, but when food prices go up from draught at least it isn’t the government. I don’t trust the government. I trust a draught more than government. I’ll pay more for things sometime in the climatically and geo-politically unstable future, just don’t ask me to pay more tax now. The government says they will rebate the money, but who knows? How can we trust them? Here, I’ll tell you what, next time I buy a new truck, I’ll think about the fuel efficiency when I buy it.
What do you mean, the government doesn’t trust me to make decisions to lower emissions? How rude!
Oh, I see – just because I haven’t personally made any grand gestures in the past you don’t think it is enough to leave it to us individuals. Sure, I just bought a new big truck. And a big house. And air conditioning. And a bunch of other stuff. And I complained about the price even without a carbon tax. But I thought about environmental impacts sometimes. You know, like that time I said no to a straw at the restaurant.
Well, yes, I did still buy the big meaty truck, but that’s my style, okay? And my cousin has one and you know how he would talk. And sometimes the highway between here and downtown has snow on it, so I need it.
Hey, stop it. I said I don’t want to talk about it. We just need energy, okay? A good economy is linked to using energy, and there are no good alternatives. You want me to take some made in Canada fuel-cell powered bus? Ha ha! It would take like an hour to get there. So it is what it is. Sorry environment, nothing much I can do. Come back when China and the US are doing something about it. It will be an economic disaster if we do something about it and they don’t.
Why would they do it if we don’t? I don’t know, but why should we go before them? No you go first. No you go first.
Okay, I’m plugging my ears and going la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.
Pardon? BC has had a carbon tax for 10 years when no jurisdiction around them had one and the world didn’t end for them? Are you sure it didn’t? I know lots of people who went to BC and didn’t come back. Something must be wrong there. And no one wants to move there because the real estate is too expensive.
No, I don’t think Yogi Berra said that.
Carbon Something Else
It is just the whole tax thing I don’t like.
How about ‘income redistribution’ or ‘right-sizing’? No, I’m not falling for that.
It’s a what? An opportunity? Hmmm.
I can buy my own little piece of history?!? Hmm, that sounds better – I like ‘buy’ and ‘own’ way more than ‘tax’.
So you’re telling me if I buy carbon, it will be released on my behalf into the air, like a flock of doves, eh? Oh, I see! And if it is hot out, that’s my carbon at work! A bad/weird storm? My carbon!
In the past the big bad industries poured carbon into the air like it was nothing. Now it is something – something I get to buy for the first time in Canada. The carbon buying opportunity is sort of like a bonus offer whenever you feel the need to buy fresh tropical fruit from half way around the world in the middle of winter.
Okay! A carbon opportunity I can support! So get the word out! Support the government’s new Carbon Opportunity Plan. We can call it COP for short. Let’s all support COP.
Links:
United Nations Climate Change website: https://unfccc.int/
Information on COP 24 (2-14 December 2018 in Katowice, Poland): http://cop24.gov.pl/
Quirks and Quarks episode on the effects on beer
CD Howe Report on Carbon Tax. Come on! If the CD Howe Institute supports a carbon tax, then everyone should. That would be like the NDP supporting back-to-work legislation.
Arguments against carbon tax (which are all hidden in the post above, like a Where’s Brad Walldo): https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/wind/carbon-tax-primer/
