A report from the Conservative majority Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, chaired by Mulroney appointee and CPoC supporter David Angus .
The committee found near unanimity among witnesses – from the petroleum industry to environmental organizations – that supported pricing carbon as the most efficient way to reduce emissions. Given the choice, most witnesses favoured carbon taxes over cap-and-trade but both are market-based approaches for pricing carbon and both can be levied at different stages along the fossil fuel supply chain.
Generally, witnesses stated that a carbon tax would be more economically efficient and less complex to administer than a cap-and-trade system. For either method, it was stressed that carbon pricing should be applied broadly and uniformly throughout the economy and across Canada.
What should strike you is the bleeding obviousness of it all. Full report is here.
It won't happen without a wholesale leadership change in the NDP, Liberal and Conservative parties. All three leaders have repeatedly dismissed Carbon Taxes.
ReplyDeleteThey are too proud (or cowardly, sheepish and possibly stupid) to contradict those past statements by adopting the right policy.
In other words, what they're saying is that Stephane Dion was right.
ReplyDeletecrf is completely right about the likely outcome of it all, unfortunately.
I will allow as Dion made a serious strategic error. The goal is to curb carbon use. He should have said that to help counter the downturn that his plan was to invest in Canada's infrastructure by building high speed rail between our major population centres and by aiding provinces and municipalities to do the same within their respective jurisdictions.
Given the insanity of trying to get into and out of Toronto's and Montreal's airports, a high speed link between those two cities (three hours should be completely doable, perhaps even two) would make them competitive with flying... and getting all those people out of planes and into trains would have a huge effect on our carbon footprint.
@PO: If you reread the 2008 LPC platform, and know how to understand carefully phrased paragraph about creating arsm-length investment fund, borrowing at government rates, to fund infrastructure projects, such as high speed rail (named specifically), you'll realise Dion promised just what you're proposing, in such a way as not to to appear to advocate huge govt projects, appealing to both Blue Libs and old PCs. (proposal implied, in reality, that PPPs would used to get projects off the ground, but anyone who understands PPPs/major projects knows that they would eventually be nationalised, directly or indirectly, as with London Tube and British Rail, as such things make economic sense, when all positive externalities folded in, but not as private profit-making ventures. PPPs are stupid except as political dodge to do projects that wouldn't be supported otherwise - get them off the ground, they become popular/necessary, then nationalise when unavoidable, though foreseen by any canny person. Some waste by not using public sector model, but given politics in developed world, better 2nd best option than none at all.)
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