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PrintLet’s clear the air on carbon taxes
I admit: we aren’t 100 per cent sure that human activity is causing global warming. So let’s all go home in our SUVs and join an “axe the tax” campaign. Come to think of it, we aren’t sure that our houses will be robbed, flooded, or burned to the ground, so let’s cancel our home insurance while we’re at it.
After all, the vast majority of the world’s climate scientists will only admit to being 90 per cent certain that our carbon emissions are causing global warming on such a scale that we face global catastrophe if we fail to change our ways. If nine out of 10 doctors said your child needed an immediate operation, would you wait until all 10 agreed?
James Hansen, a leading climate expert who raised the alarm about global warming to the U.S. Congress 20 years ago, says he’s 99 percent sure, but that’s still not 100 percent, so why should we pay more by way of a carbon tax to address a problem that may not exist?
True, a report prepared by M.K. Jaccard and Associates for the David Suzuki Foundation titled Pricing Carbon: Saving Green argued persuasively that a carbon tax is an effective tool for bringing emissions down, and governments, scientists, and economists around the world agree, but what if they’re wrong?
Never mind that countries such as Sweden, which implemented a carbon tax in 1991, have proven such measures are effective and that they actually produce economic benefits; why should we change if we don’t have to? Rising gas prices due to global market forces are already hitting us hard enough; why should we add to the misery?
Consider this: If the industry shills and their followers are right and global warming is not the threat we think it is, and we act anyway, the oil will still be there for future use and we’ll also have cleaner air and greater innovation in green technologies – along with stronger economies.
If the majority of the world’s climate scientists are right and we fail to act, we face ecological, social, and economic catastrophe on a scale beyond anything we’ve experienced in modern times.
Consider also that carbon taxes such as B.C.’s and the one the federal Liberals have proposed are actually tax shifts. The money collected from individuals, businesses, and industry will be returned in the form of cuts to personal and business taxes.
The 2.4 cents a litre increase in gas prices that is one small part of the B.C. tax is minuscule compared to market increases, and the tax may help us move away from continued reliance on increasingly scarce and costly fossil fuels.
Whether it’s called a tax shift, a revenue-neutral tax, or a new tax, it will get people worked up. No one likes taxes, but we like roads and schools and hospitals and police services, so we pay them. We also pay about $90 a tonne to put garbage into landfills, so why are we so concerned about having to pay to put garbage into the air?
Politicians have two powerful instruments to influence behaviour: regulation and taxation. In the mindless mantra of anti-taxation groups, taxes are bad and we should always cut and never increase them. The ludicrous aspect is that these groups are silent about the enormous taxpayer subsidies to fossil-fuel and related industries that make windfall profits while resisting even a small tax hike.
Together with measures such as a cap-and-trade program, a carbon tax can use money from industries that are not energy-efficient to create economic benefits and incentives for those that that are wiser in their energy use. The income generated by a carbon tax can be used to cut income taxes, build more public transit, upgrade trains, develop renewable-energy sources, and retrofit homes and buildings with energy-efficient technology.
For 20 years, scientists have warned of the need for urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Leading economists have shown that the cost to bring emissions down will be about one per cent of GDP annually, while the costs incurred if we don’t reduce emissions could be economically catastrophic.
When politicians, business people, and citizens show leadership by proposing or implementing solutions to the very real problems facing the planet (yes, more than 90 per cent certain is as real as it gets in science), they deserve our support, not mockery and politically motivated misinformation. Axe the tax, my ass!
Comments
Now if you are really, really serious about halting global warming or whatever (remember when it was Global Cooling?), you can climb on your diesel guzzling bus and go preach carbon taxes and the virtues of living in caves munching granola to the real polluters in the world in India and China, I'm sure they will give you the attention you richly deserve.
Yes David, axe the tax, or at least call it what it really is. Not the "politically motivated misinformation" you, Uncles Gordo and Al and mon'Oncle Stephane preach. "My ass", David? Is that the best you can offer? Sorry but you can bite mine instead.
David raises many legitimate points, that even the 'lowly masses', as Peter so eloquently has put it, can see. I am young man myself, living barely above the poverty line, yet I can find ways to get around that do not involve a 'green house' emitting carbon vehicle. I walk, run, bike and skytrain wherever possible.
It is also ridiculous to play the blame and pointing fingers game. 'It isn't us, it is them (China and India), so leave me alone'. This is a very poorly evolved thesis. Global Warming is a GLOBAL problem, which means everyone on the globe is responsible for the cause, and it will take everyone to solve this issue. If we want to influence the major polluting countries into making environmentally friendly choices, we need to lead by example. Think globally, act locally is the motto to sum this very idea up. You cannot expect the rest of the world to change when you are doing nothing to enact this change yourself.
So, if you want to be upset about something, be upset that our government, the very supporting infrastructure that is supposed to have your back and protect you against every major threat to your safety and security, did nothing when they had the chance 20 years ago. Be upset that they do not have a well funded system of subsidies for the devlopment of implication of renewable and eco-friendly energy/fuel sources. Be upset that the government is more concerned with increasing their military spending and increasing the influential hand/pockets of Corporate big buisness interests, then creating a place where our children can grow up and breathe clean air, without the fear of a major ecological disaster.
Protesting the carbon tax, one of the very FEW things our government has done in order to establish the creation of a renewable energy source infrastructure, is misplaced aggression and anger. Yes, the gas/oil industry is gouging out are very eyes, and creating a organ collection facility as they remove us of our arms and legs. The sting of immediate monetary woes and problems is not to be underestimated, but is this not the first step towards the creation of a solution. Gas price hikes have been approved by the major corporations, yet where are the people standing on the side of the streets protesting this. Where are the people protesting the lack of our governments intiative to create sustainable energy grants and policies that work.
If you want to be upset, stop focusing on the most miniscule of events, open your eyes to the state of affairs around you and make a difference where ever you can. Stop, shut off your vehicle, climb a mountain and think, is this the world I want to hand to my children? Accept the fact that it will take a little from everyone to make this world a better place, and if the pump is really killing you, car pool, take transit or ride a bike.
Excuses do not change the problem, solutions do. So be part of the solution.
I am willing to admit that perhaps my words were a bit strong but no more so than David has used in the past and at the end of his piece. Secondly, I note you are by your own admission a young man. While this by no means devalues your opinion, your lack of experience in the world does leave you susceptible to the flim flam of those to hypocritical to practice what they preach.
I too would be only too glad to take the Sky Train to work. Unfortunately there isn't a line to northern Vancouver Island. We rural folks do not suffer fools lightly. And if you take a moment to walk a mile in my moccasins you'll see that when someone with the means to live on a shoestring and not care due to available infrastructure takes the time to lecture me on the merits of a carbon free lifestyle, I get irate. I also get irate when a millionaire like Dr. Suzuki does the same thing. I don't see him giving up one of his homes or taking the Sky Train anywhere. As for Mr. Campbell, well, perhaps he can explain to me how taxing me to death is going to save anything that concerns me. And ultimately when it all comes down to it, I can't worry about future generations when there's no work or I can't afford to live now, can I?
Rather than punish me and my kind, why not offer incentives? Make it easy to go solar! Offer subsidies to convert my truck to batteries? Something, anything! But no. Alas all we get is a lecture about future generations and how we must suffer for something that is based more on politics and money than on solid science. You are too young to remember that in the 70's and 80's it was Global Cooling, we were all going to freeze to death. In this case it was the Polar Bear that would be ok but the Toucan was in for it. Now it's the opposite.
So please Tenebrae, lecture someone else. Take the Sky Train, buy a bus pass, wrap your sandwich in 100 percent recycled paper. Go for it. But please, do not presume I am interested in something that does not pertain to my condition where I live. And take my word on two things, unless India and China do something, you can Sky Train to the moon and it won't make any difference. Second, there will always be someone that will create a calamity to make a buck.
So have at it, I'm sure you and yours will bring the heavy hand of government and special interests to bear and we will all suffer the consequences. Regardless, the sun will rise, the weather will do what it's done for eons and we'll all get by until the next calamity manufactured by "right thinking" people. At the turn of the last century we were all to die from Haley's Comet, then Global Cooling, Alien abductions, and now we're all going to fry, drown or worse.
See you at the next one!
Ask this question: why did Transport Canada keep changing the guidelines on companies that were trying to create electric cars to mass produce ? Every time they met the guidelines they would change the guidelines for these companies (more red tape). This is just one of many examples of why they want you to keep using gasoline and make you feel guilty for breathing, and therefore pay tax.
KEEP AN EYE ON WHERE THE TAX DOLLARS ARE ACTUALLY GOING, DAVID. Taxes is like Viagra for the government so they can keep screwing you, especially in this case. In principle it's a nice idea , but be realistic. And who are these 'scientists' that claim to be experts on global warming. I know it's not you David (Geneticist). And definetly not Al Gore (another lying politician).
We need to get our environmental priorities straight and ANY defender of the current AGW hype is harming the environment.
An idea would be Gas/ Hydro etc. rationing, an identical personal allowance for every individual after which you pay the going rate. If the allowed amounts were set at a minimum cost level.. the poor could make a living by selling their allowance at vastly inflated prices to the rich.
Of course the system would be totally unworkable but then nearly every government scheme is a minefield… I always thought I was clever but on second thoughts if I was really clever I would be rich and waving down from a position where taxes were merely a nuisance.
Global warming must be true… I myself get hotter and hotter (under the collar) as I hear more and more the half hearted attempts to control it made by those we are paying (because they are the cleverest?) with our hard earned money.
I would Gladly give up my private jet, fleet of SUVs, Massive house and estate if I thought it would make a difference…. Of course I haven’t actually got any of those things, so it’s an easy remark to make.
ELD
"JAPANESE COMPANY INVENTS CAR THAT RUNS ON WATER
TOKYO -- Tired of gasoline prices rising daily at the pump? A Japanese company has invented an electric-powered, and environmentally friendly, car that it says runs solely on water.
Genepax unveiled the car in the western city of Osaka on Thursday, saying that a liter (2.1 pints) of any kind of water -- rain, river or sea -- was all you needed to get the engine going for about an hour at a speed of 80 km (50 miles).
"The car will continue to run as long as you have a bottle of water to top up from time to time," Genepax CEO Kiyoshi Hirasawa told local broadcaster TV Tokyo.
"It does not require you to build up an infrastructure to recharge your batteries, which is usually the case for most electric cars," he added.
Once the water is poured into the tank at the back of the car, the a generator breaks it down and uses it to create electrical power, TV Tokyo said.
Whether the car makes it into showrooms remains to be seen. Genepax said it had just applied for a patent and is hoping to collaborate with Japanese auto manufacturers in the future.
Most big automakers, meanwhile, are working on fuel-cell cars that run on hydrogen and emit -- not consume -- water.
© Thomson Reuters 2008"
So I wonder if the tax dollars from carbon taxes will go toward funding this energy alternative (companies that develope it and market it to the masses). Probably not because that would be the end of their cash cow , Think about it people, doesn't it make you mad that they have found another way to take advantage of your guilty conscience and screw you for more money. There are many people and companies trying to come up with energy solutions that are cheaper and non polluting yet the government puts up the road blocks to keep these energy alternatives of the road. The big auto and oil companies have a hand in it too so you will always be their slave . Government and industry working hand in hand , smells a little bit like fascism . More like we are living more and more in a fuedalistic economic system.
http://www.latimes.com/classified/automotive/highway1/la-hy-wheels2-2008...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/03/abc_planet_slayer/print.html
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=65165
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=64734
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/152371-Hypocrisy-Alert-Tiny-tribe-thor...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcy3JbGjQwo&feature=related
watch and enjoy!
http://www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_jibbguy_080415_brown_s_gas__28_2...
http://easygrowhouseplants.blogspot.com/2006/12/inventor-of-water-powere...
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6yRn4IAsrU
enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1OWDcWoXHs&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLKExuHlQMQ&feature=related
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6923835633598627078&hl=en
So , the government love taxes , good luck owning one of these as it will be the end of their cash cow. CARBON TAXES ARE A SCAM , GET IT THROUGH YOU THICK HEADS PEOPLE!
http://www.cbc.ca/video/popup.html?http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/news/feat...
The government wants to tax us for carbon emmisions yet they don't allow companies like the ones presented here to sell there cars in Canada. It adds up when you consider that gasoline is a cash cow for the government as well. CARBON TAXES IS A SCAM. Hopefully someone is listening . Dion can take a hike , I don't want to give any more money to his shady friends.
It's easy to be 90 percent certain when you cherry pick the data and spend billions of dollars "proving" your point, setting up massive bereucracy and creating PR campaigns.
AGW is a political movement.
Dion is on the trailing edge of this....
In the UK the public are angry over carbon tax and power rationing.
In the US a majority will not accept a carbon tax. and Kevin Rudd in Australia is in deep political trouble over his plan.
Dion has no way to pay for his campaign promises. AGW provides convenient cover. I'm affraid S. Dion has become a watermelon. Green on the outside - red on the inside.
So David Suzuki and Mark Jaccard are promoting the Liberal Party, federally and provincially, because they are so very impressed by the carbon tax legislation of Premier Campbell, and the carbon tax promise of Stephane Dion. Fair enough. But why don't they come out and say that this is what they're doing? Why do they need to keep up the pretense that they are being totally non-partisan when that is the exact opposite of what's going on?
"Discussion
We have set out and then critically examined a detailed account of the IPCC’s method of evaluating climate sensitivity. We have made explicit the identities, interrelations, and values of the key variables, many of which the IPCC does not explicitly describe or quantify. The IPCC’s method does not provide a secure basis for policy-relevant conclusions. We now summarize some of its defects.
The IPCC’s methodology relies unduly – indeed, almost exclusively – upon numerical analysis, even where the outputs of the models upon which it so heavily relies are manifestly and significantly at variance with theory or observation or both. Modeled projections such as those upon which the IPCC’s entire case rests have long been proven impossible when applied to mathematically-chaotic objects, such as the climate, whose initial state can never be determined to a sufficient precision. For a similar reason, those of the IPCC’s conclusions that are founded on probability distributions in the chaotic climate object are unsafe.
Not one of the key variables necessary to any reliable evaluation of climate sensitivity can be measured empirically. The IPCC’s presentation of its principal conclusions as though they were near-certain is accordingly unjustifiable. We cannot even measure mean global surface temperature anomalies to within a factor of 2; and the IPCC’s reliance upon mean global temperatures, even if they could be correctly evaluated, itself introduces substantial errors in its evaluation of climate sensitivity.
The IPCC overstates the radiative forcing caused by increased CO2 concentration at least threefold because the models upon which it relies have been programmed fundamentally to misunderstand the difference between tropical and extra-tropical climates, and to apply global averages that lead to error.
The IPCC overstates the value of the base climate sensitivity parameter for a similar reason. Indeed, its methodology would in effect repeal the fundamental equation of radiative transfer (Eqn. 18), yielding the impossible result that at every level of the atmosphere ever-smaller forcings would induce ever-greater temperature increases, even in the absence of any temperature feedbacks.
The IPCC overstates temperature feedbacks to such an extent that the sum of the high-end values that it has now, for the first time, quantified would cross the instability threshold in the Bode feedback equation and induce a runaway greenhouse effect that has not occurred even in geological times despite CO2 concentrations almost 20 times today’s, and temperatures up to 7 ºC higher than today’s.
The Bode equation, furthermore, is of questionable utility because it was not designed to model feedbacks in non-linear objects such as the climate. The IPCC’s quantification of temperature feedbacks is, accordingly, inherently unreliable. It may even be that, as Lindzen (2001) and Spencer (2007) have argued, feedbacks are net-negative, though a more cautious assumption has been made in this paper.
It is of no little significance that the IPCC’s value for the coefficient in the CO2 forcing equation depends on only one paper in the literature; that its values for the feedbacks that it believes account for two-thirds of humankind’s effect on global temperatures are likewise taken from only one paper; and that its implicit value of the crucial parameter ? depends upon only two papers, one of which had been written by a lead author of the chapter in question, and neither of which provides any theoretical or empirical justification for a value as high as that which the IPCC adopted.
The IPCC has not drawn on thousands of published, peer-reviewed papers to support its central estimates for the variables from which climate sensitivity is calculated, but on a handful.
On this brief analysis, it seems that no great reliance can be placed upon the IPCC’s central estimates of climate sensitivity, still less on its high-end estimates. The IPCC’s assessments, in their current state, cannot be said to be “policy-relevant”. They provide no justification for taking the very costly and drastic actions advocated in some circles to mitigate “global warming”, which Eqn. (30) suggests will be small (<1 °C at CO2 doubling), harmless, and beneficial.
Conclusion
Even if temperature had risen above natural variability, the recent solar Grand Maximum may have been chiefly responsible. Even if the sun were not chiefly to blame for the past half-century’s warming, the IPCC has not demonstrated that, since CO2 occupies only one-ten-thousandth part more of the atmosphere that it did in 1750, it has contributed more than a small fraction of the warming. Even if carbon dioxide were chiefly responsible for the warming that ceased in 1998 and may not resume until 2015, the distinctive, projected fingerprint of anthropogenic “greenhouse-gas” warming is entirely absent from the observed record. Even if the fingerprint were present, computer models are long proven to be inherently incapable of providing projections of the future state of the climate that are sound enough for policymaking. Even if per impossibilethe models could ever become reliable, the present paper demonstrates that it is not at all likely that the world will warm as much as the IPCC imagines. Even if the world were to warm that much, the overwhelming majority of the scientific, peer-reviewed literature does not predict that catastrophe would ensue. Even if catastrophe might ensue, even the most drastic proposals to mitigate future climate change by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide would make very little difference to the climate. Even if mitigation were likely to be effective, it would do more harm than good: already millions face starvation as the dash for biofuels takes agricultural land out of essential food production: a warning that taking precautions, “just in case”, can do untold harm unless there is a sound, scientific basis for them. Finally, even if mitigation might do more good than harm, adaptation as (and if) necessary would be far more cost-effective and less likely to be harmful.
In short, we must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong. If the concluding equation in this analysis (Eqn. 30) is correct, the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity must have been very much exaggerated. There may, therefore, be a good reason why, contrary to the projections of the models on which the IPCC relies, temperatures have not risen for a decade and have been falling since the phase-transition in global temperature trends that occurred in late 2001. Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no “climate crisis” at all. At present, then, in policy terms there is no case for doing anything. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing."
And he doesn't use expletives to make his point...
http://members.shaw.ca/illas/pictures/Solar_Power_small.jpg
Judging by the preceding commments, carbon taxes are unlikely to endear environmental concerns to an average voter not hooked on granola munching. It could be argued that the taxes were needed nonetheless, if an imminent climate catastrophe was to be averted or mitigated.
David Suzuki's article had, in fact, already conceded that “no one likes taxes”. For someone long involved in alerting people to the latest reports that the warming trends look more dire than in earlier alerts, he evidently wants to be reasonable; conceding that we can't be 100% sure and citing 90% certainty as the consensus of the pertinent scientific experts, the maximum supposed to be expected in science.
He does not include himself among those experts, so Dionysius' comment making that point wasn't needed. Most of the negative comments seem to already have some answer in the article. On Antonio's (through Lord Moncton's) argument that since “perhaps” there is no crisis imminent, the correct attitude is “courage to do nothing”, Suzuki had suggested viewing it like insurance of a home; to refuse to get which is not necessarily an act of courage.
As to whether carbon taxes are the best way to proceed, he doesn't look all that persuasive. Apart from a confirmatory study commissioned by the foundation bearing his name, such taxes are reported to have done well in Sweden. They are supposed to provide economic benefits by helping green technologies. How? The first answer was “that the tax may help us move away from continued reliance on increasingly scarce and costly fossil fuels”; i.e. toward the clean “renewable” sources emphasized in his earlier article on nuclear revival. That could look attractive to both those who need, or want, to generate and use more clean energy as well as those lazy, or wise, enough to need less. But later there is a second answer with a whole paragraph appealing only to those who preach the virtues of maximizing energy thrift, sometimes act accordingly, and claim credit for cuts in energy waste that really were more a reaction to spiralling oil costs. There clearly is no solution hidden in that, in practice just more huge coal fired power plants every month in China and elsewhere; soon even bigger nuclear ones in the environmentally “advanced” countries; or provided by them in places like India (,North Korea?).
There are real solutions.
“As we rethink our energy future in light of the dangers of further increasing greenhouse gases, we have an enormous opportunity. I believe that rather than putting all of our faith in big technology (big dams, coal plants, nuclear), investing in a decentralized grid of diverse, small-scale renewable energy sources would be far more resilient and reliable.We should all get behind renewable energy...”.
I agree with that thoroughly and know there are no scientific or basic economic reasons preventing it. It is quoted from David Suzuki's June 3 article on A nuclear reaction . If he no longer believes in that in July, I am ready to defend it effectively; also using information that he may not have. Since he is more likely to still subscribe to his June position, he really should have a new ball game. It would call for action to utilize those decentralized clean technologies, without any need for more (endless) arguments about the likelihood (or percentage certainty) of anthropogenic (man made) climate change. Even if we played no role at all in global warming, society would benefit also economically by going ahead speedily with the transition toward such an inexhaustible clean energy system. Efficiency and conservation should improve naturally, if more end use energy has to be generated locally for any wasted.
So Dr. Suzuki ought to consider whether he indeed wants to encourage leadership for such action, in which the amount of clean energy used does not require permission from above; or whether he will be stuck with more argumentation and exhortation. Any evidence of our contribution to potentially catastrophic climate change just increases the urgency, not the benefits. Like him, I accepted the likelihood that we contributed, although probably below his 90% level, but my scientific work background also is not too pertinent to that. Conversely, I have had good reasons to be convinced that effective action could, and should, have been taken long ago, before pre-Olympic China constructed many of the pollution spewing monsters that could mar the Beijing games. The motto cited by Tenebrae about thinking globally but acting locally may be outdated.
If he does adhere clearly to his June position, he might even win the support of Peter, the most irate (hostile?) of his critics; but who is ready to make do with solar battery power for his truck. If he can get that, he might reciprocate by disregarding permission to Suzuki for a number of Latte cows for him and his fellow millionaire intellectuals, in spite of the really bad greenhouse gases they emit (the cows).
If the general BC reception to the taxes is as negative as here, other governments may want to try as an alternative to shift subsidies now enjoyed by the polluting energy technologies to environmentally sound ones. That would entail serious confrontation with those wielding real power, able to corrupt more than ever following their bloated recent profits. But if democracy is already too weak for that now, they can probably prevent any solution. If so, it ought to be known.
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