Canada Moving Years Back!

With The Kyoto deadline at the end of the month Canada is in no way going to reach it's target of 6% below 1990 levels. In fact in 2008 the only provinces who actually reduced their emissions below 1990 levels is Quebec and PEI. All the other provinces increased. I think it would be a complete miracle if Harper is going to have a strong new target. With Harper it is business as usual allow companies to continue to pollute the air we breath, The water we drink and the environment that allows us to live. It ecology 101 we need a sustainable planet on order for us to survive. The biggest polluting increase for the next decade will be coming from Transportation and Energy. Ways to fix that have been proposed for years. A carbon tax to reduce the consumption of CO2, Invest heavily like Ontario in changing the energy grid, Invest in high speed rail and mandate more energy efficient cars. Even though Harper isn't doing anything. BC, Quebec and Ontario are. In BC they have a 25$ carbon tax, 15$ in Quebec and The Liberal green energy plan in Ontario. The cost of doing nothing is mounting. The economic effects of Climate change will hurt Canada. From unpredictable weather that will effect the prairies, to more stronger storms and pollution increasing asthma rates and increasing health care cost will cost billions.

Arcand noted that the price of not acting on the climate crisis would be much higher than the cost of these emissions reduction programs.

“In Canada, the costs (of inaction) could go from $5 billion per year in 2020, to between $21 billion and $43 billion by the 2050s,” he said, noting leaving this bill for future generations to pay would be wrong.

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Let's get Real On Climate Change!

Many people like to point to the oil companies for the blame of Climate change, but households contribute to 45% of all emissions. That means if we wish to achieve the goal most climate scientist say will help us avoid disaster we need to reduce household emissions. We must reduce our emissions by 80% by 2050. So even if all industries close there doors today we would still need to cut household emissions by more than half. An easy way to start reducing emissions considering the energy sector is responsible for 82% of emissions is a shift to cleaner sources of energy such as wind and hydro instead of oil and gas for heating and for industry.  Since motor fuel use is increasing it's share of emission promoting public transit will curve that. Products that we buy which contribute heavily to emission as in order to make and distribute a product CO2 a byproduct is released. In order to make it easier for consumer for consumers to by more Eco friendly product without hurting their bottom line. I have urge this forever a Carbon Tax that gives consumers a rebate so that the more Eco friendly product is actually the more cheaper product and can actually save you money. All of these proposals will make a big scratch, but all Canadians as citizens of the world must act together to conserve energy and the planet for generations to come. We must get real on climate change.

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Way to Go Germany!

Germany is making huge pushes to stop the use of dirty energy , and dangerous energy. Germany said that it will eliminate all nuclear plants in Germany of the grid and replace it with renewable energy. That's right renewals. It silly to switch from nuclear to coal or gas, because nuclear out of the three is the safest and the least pollutant. Not to say we should keep nuclear power plants, but rather eliminate first coal, oil and natural gas then move to eliminating nuclear. In Germany all coal plants will be gone in 2018. This shows that Germany will be one of the best countries when it comes to making the shift, and proves yet again that you can have a strong economy that is the fourth in the world, a small deficit and low employment while still having very tough targets when it comes to not only CO2 emissions, but Canada you can say is falling behind. Currently most of our electricity comes from Hydro and other renewable energy, but we still have many coal plants and nuclear in Canada. In Canadian consumption renewable energy only make up 28%.  Oil and Natural gas are first and third respectively. We must move to try and reduce these numbers especially in coal which makes 12% of our consumption. Germany already has a strong plan. Not only in eliminating nuclear and coal out of the country, but also going for a CO2 target of 40% below 1990 levels. Way more aggressive then Canada's. in Germany renewable energy are becoming more visible in consumption although they are currently less than Canada's.Because here it is easier to make hydro plants when you have the most rivers in the world and only have to supply for 35 million compared to Germany which is much smaller, has fewer rivers , and must supply demand for 83 million people.  Germany even with the tough obstacles, has targets that will make Renewable energy the main source of energy in the following decade's possibly surpassing Canada very soon if Canada doesn't try to increase production of clean energy instead of dirty fuel.

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The Carbon Tax Re-Explained (Libertarian Edition) Part 2

                      Now to continue to refute another point that my friend has brought out which is that he believes that there is no way to monitor how much CO2 was used to make a product in a foreign country when it comes in, But it isn't hard to monitor something that is already monitored. First China is going to have a carbon tax in 2012, and many countries already have a carbon tax including some U.S states. Next when a carbon tax will be introduced it will have to clearly state that shops that distribute a product that was made overseas will have to now report how much Co2 they emitted over seas and tax it when in comes in the border. Another false statement is the ideology that oil will last for another 120 years. Under current consumption which is rising dramatically every year as the world becomes more urbanized and developing countries start to need more resources Oil will be needed. The most oil can last for will be another 47 years. Even with more oil reserves found oil can't last much longer these oil reserves are predicted to be in remote places were no country has right over and even if they do the extraction cost would be very high. This just proves oil is unsubstantial. My Libertarians solution to it is allow the free markets to handle it. His theory is that Oil will gradually rise in prices and eventually it will be to expensive to use it so we will move to another source of energy. Thing is if our economy is dependent on fossil fuels now and will be unless something is done if we let the free markets work oil will rise so high that economy would crash, and we wouldn't have the time to shift to cleaner resources, because we waited to long. Canada has to institute a carbon tax now!
                      
                    One last point My Libertarian friend mentioned that Canada only emits 0.00000244666% this is a lie. Canada actually emits 2.3% of the worlds emissions although that is relatively small, but Canada is the 8th largest emitter and every other country of the world must reduce their CO2 emissions accordingly we can't just keep pointing at the biggest polluters which includes technically Canada for being responsible to reduce Co2 Emissions.

The Carbon Tax Re-Explained (Libertarian Edition) Part 1

                   In this post I will re-explain why a carbon tax is a good idea, but this time I will refute the arguments of my Libertarian friend. First my friend said that a carbon tax only worked in Sweden, because  Sweden is has a very capitalist economy. That isn't completely true. First Sweden has the second largest tax burden in the world, and over 80% of it's workers are unionized. The Government of Sweden doesn't allow the free market to go anywhere without intervention. My Blogger friend also said that Sweden had lower growth then other Scandinavian countries. This isn't true again. When a Carbon tax came in place in Sweden in 1991 the Swedish economy was valued at 258 billion and right before the recession the economy was worth 458 billion the growth of Sweden during these years was 78%! Other Scandinavian countries like Norway grew  during the same time period grew by 276%, but Norway was the first country in the 1990's to instate a carbon tax. That only leaves Finland which doesn't have a carbon tax and who's economy at the same time as Sweden and Norway grew  about 116%. So clearly even with a carbon tax an economy can still grow.
                  

Why I am against a Carbon Tax

//For the sake of argument, we will assume that CO2 and other GHGs are bad This will be a rebutal to what vanillaman posted earlier. Firstly, the small point: 1) at no point did I make any reference or allusion to unions. I support the unions' right to exist. I believe that unions are a way that workers can get what they want, them not always having highly desired skills the same way, say, a programmer might. While a highly skilled programmer threatening to go to a competitor might be a strong argument, a waiter doing the same might not have the same power. That said, I don't stand for forced participation, or laws saying that a union must be respected, or any other laws protecting unions from consequences of their actions (like not being able to give raises not negotiated for by unions, or not being able to hire outside the union). 2)Sweden is a poor example. Sweden has a hodgepodge of different regulations. I can use Sweden to prove my point too: Sweden has one of the most open capitalist policies anywhere, they have embraced globalization, and they have one of the lowest inflation rates. Thus proving that an open-capitalist economy, provided it stays that way, is able to support much more than a socialist economy (we do have marketing boards). On top of that, Sweden's growth is mediocre compared to the other countries in Scandinavia, and especially when compared to other countries. 3) citing someone from the federal reserve scares me. The Federal Reserve (hereafter referenced as the FED) is responsible for just about all the recessions and depressions since it was founded. Here is a good video explaining how, in rap battle format. Essentially, the FED sets bond interest rates low, which encourages lending (because more money can be made by lending it out than keeping it in bonds). The problem is that much of this lending should never have happened because the client's business model never made sense (whether it simply didn't, or didn't fit the role or time it was in. See the junk bonds; they have a use, but it was not all over the market.). Now that the small points have been dealt with, I will move on to the larger points, going from easiest to hardest. The last point made was about how regulations were what kept Canada's economy from going the way of that of the US. Firstly, the United States mandated that banks not turn down loans for virtually anybody. This was born out of the thought that everyone had the right to own a home. Because there was this regulation (see, I told you there was regulation) banks had to lend out to people who could never afford to pay back the mortgage. Now more than a few banks saw this as a highly profitable sector, provided it didn't implode. Perhaps it was some greedy people who did much of the spearheading, but it was also the FED (another instance of government fiddling with the economy) that allowed the housing boom in the first place. When it crashed, it was not an all too unforeseeable event. Also, if regulations are the way to go, and should be indiscriminately adopted (as is hinted in the article), then Greece should be the leading player after the economy, along with the other STUPID and PIIGS (and the other acronyms) countries. But wait; those countries are either still on those lists, or are swirling around the toilet bowl, waiting until they get sucked down it. On to the next point. vanillaman suggests that it is better to do it now than when our society is addicted to oil. While the thought is nice, and the logic seems all pristine, it is wrong. The basic logic of his claim is that we should leave a margin. First, society is addicted to oil. I recently saw a bumper sticker on a truck that read, "If you have it, a truck brought it". How true. To prove it, look at whatever you buy. Then see if all the materials came from within your neighborhood, or at least within biking distance. My point exactly. I will now argue that a margin is not necessary, because one is already present. Firstly, oil isn't running out, environmentalists are getting in the way. My evidence: the Bituminous Sands, Shale Gas. All are nearing the point where their technologies reach the point where it is almost completely safe to extract. (And if we removed the, oh yes, regulations that protect companies from people suing them for property damage, companies would have accountability for their actions.) Shale gas will soon be safe within acceptable limits (like the rate at which planes, in good maintenance, crash due to factors other than the pilot. That is to say about never). This will, on top of the remaining oil-fields being pumped, get us through at least 40 years (especially with the world population reaching the top of the S-curve population growth, where growth slows down). Then we can start pumping through the currently untapped but proven oil reserves, for another 10 to 30 years. By that time, we will have confirmed at least some of the unproven oil fields, guesstimated at being 40 to 50 years of oil. This adds up to a 90 to 120 year margin, all on the assumption that we find no other fields not included in the unproven category. I personally feel that this is an acceptable margin to perfect the existing bacteria that synthesize oil out of CO2, as well as all the other horribly less efficient technologies, like solar power and other fuel cells, as well as a good form of alternate, renewable fuel. One of the problems with a carbon tax is that it will raise the price of goods and services. Because of this, companies will take their setups to other places, where there isn't a tax. The foreign countries will also have a competitive edge since they don't have a tax. So the proposed solution would be to add a tax on to the products as they come in. Problem: how would you find that out? Would you just go, "A cabbage head cost X cents in carbon, so we'll charge X cents per cabbage head"? Or would you go, "You imported this from a country that is less efficient than us in carbon output. Therefore we will assume that your cabbage head used more carbon, and tax it more"? How on Earth would you find that out? Also, If you were to take either course of action you would negate the stated benefit, namely that it would incentivise "Green" production. So there is no satisfactory solution to imports, and every developed country is far from self sufficient 100% of the time. Another problem with the proposed solution is associating the cost of the carbon inside the product with the tax credit that is given. Will the tax credits be given according to taxes paid? So if a person pays $100 in taxes, they might only get $1, but if someone pays $100,000 in taxes, they will get $1,000. Or will it be a flat distribution, so everyone gets X dollars? In the current form, the plan is little more than a dream, because it has no idea how it will do any of its components. As if that weren't enough, the system is ready to be exploited. After all, aren't some products worse than others? If someone buys a Hummer, and someone else buys a hybrid, why should they both still have to pay some of the tax? Why not tax the Hummer into oblivion, and then use that money for the good of society? Isn't that the whole reason for the carbon tax, a way of paying off the social price of the carbon emissions? The possibility for this to be exploited by special interests who would normally not be competitive enough to survive is huge. After all, who wouldn't want their product to be subsidized to a point where the competition has no way of competing? Or even have their product mandated to be bought, even when one buys from the competitor? Oh, wait. It's called ethanol. Who doubts that ethanol will get special treatment because it is a "Green" product. I hope that, by demonstrating that the stated premise for the carbon tax was flawed, and by explaining how the whole plan is unrefined and the key mechanics left up to the imagination, I have offered at least reasonable doubt that a carbon tax is not a good solution. As further proof, let me introduce the futility of it: Canada's GHG output was about 734 Mt; China's was 6,100,000,000 Mt. China is opening a new coal-fired power plant every week until 2018. Canada emits 0.00000244666% of the world's GHGs.