Whenever I hear politicians propose to cut the carbon price, I can’t help but think back to my childhood growing up with divorced parents.
On the rare occasions my dad took me for weekends, he would offer me candy and let me stay up late.
“Why can’t you be more like him?” I’d yell after returning home as my mom made me do my homework, eat vegetables and go to bed on time.
So it is with proponents of Axe the Tax. They offer us candy, when the federal government, like my mom, expects us to live responsibly.
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But a politician’s promise that pollution can be free is no more realistic than my childish fantasy that I could live on candy alone.
We are all entangled in an energy system that helps and harms our children. While it enables us to taxi our kids around, and keep them warm, it also poisons the air they breathe, evaporates the water they need to drink and burns the forests in which they play.
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To preserve summers without smoke, winters when our kids can ski, water they can drink and forests and wildlife with which they can live in awe.
That’s why we pay for our pollution.
This dude gets it. We need to do so much more, but walking back the carbon tax is a terrible idea.
I don’t get people’s criticism about this.
My friend tried to turn me against carbon tax by pointing out that I’m being taxed for keeping my home warm.
I told him, I don’t have to pay that tax if I upgrade to electric heating. And this is exactly what is good about it, it incentivizes someone like me to make an investment in electric heating.
The electric heat in this province comes from coal and natural gas. that’s most provinces, actually.
86% of electricity in Ontario is renewable.
That stat borders on being somewhat dishonest.
The three most populous Provinces in Canada (Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia) each have over 90% green power generation, either via hydroelectricity or via nuclear power. Manitoba likewise produces 97% of its electricity from hydroelectric sources.
Those four Provinces have a population of roughly 31 million people. Canada has a total population of just over 39 million — meaning “most provinces actually” only accounts for 20% of Canadians. 80% of Canadians get their electricity from 85+% green sources. By total capacity, nearly 70% of all electrical generation in Canada is from green sources, and thus “electric heat” for the vast majority of Canadians is not from coal and natural gas.