To Carbon Tax or Not, the Debate Rages

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BC's fractious and unreliable environmental leaders have outdone themselves during this provinical election. High flying media darlings like David Suzuki and Tzeporah Berman politically chastised the NDP for its opposition to the BC Liberal "carbon tax," while ignoring other huge negatives in the government's greenhouse gas balance, such as subsidies for oil and gas, coal exports and highway expansions, to name a couple that any enviro worth their granola should be able to pick out in a dark room. Then strategic dark horse Will Horter of the Dogwood Initiative, in his role as Chair of the Conservation Voters of BC, released an Anybody But Carole volley that really set the cat among the pigeons, and speculation flying about Horter's real motivations, such as support for a certain handsome mayor of Vancouver.

But then, sanity returned, and the Dogwood folks hosted two articles on the much vaunted world-saving carbon tax. Cliff Stainsby posted a guest piece, an article calling for a ban on carbon emissions, "cap and dividend" and Horter himself, bold-facedly dissing the "partisan bickering" which he himself had fuelled, blogged that Stainsby had convinced him that neither cap and trade nor carbon tax could work.  

In a follow up piece on why a carbon tax could never work , Stainsby wrote, "Let’s try to imagine (seriously) an economic forecast that accurately predicted the impact today on government revenues, resource use, or on any variable for that matter, of a tax imposed in 1969!  Then let’s ask ourselves, why would an economic forecast made today provide any better reliability for outcomes in 2050?" That's just one zinger of a thought - read the rest for yourself at http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/

Finally elder of the eco-hordes, Michael M'Gonigle, weighed in with two decisive articles, Tapping Our Wild Rivers Can't Fix Climate Change and Beyond the Carbon Tax, arguing that if this truly is a climate emergency, all these paltry plans which call for reductions by 2050 are so much useless "carbon fluff," when what we need is real action.

Whew - we can only hope they all settle down and listent to their elders!