For those who don't want to be saddled with additional costs such as carbon taxes to battle climate change, may I humbly suggest that the price of doing nothing is even greater, as the following amply illustrates.
Start the video at the 4:15 mark:
Clearly, payment has come due.
It's a mess and a very costly mess. Hydro crews got my power restored just before darkness yesterday, the shortest day of the year. We're under another wind warning today. Friends in Nanaimo who got their power back around the same time as we did yesterday called to say they're out again. These storms come in clusters out from the central Pacific.
ReplyDeleteThis raises the question of whether we need to invest in a more resilient electrical grid, perhaps with more of the power mains underground.
We were lucky yesterday, being out for just 36 hours. I was lucky to have a gas stove and hot water heater. The stove burners just needed a barbeque lighter. And I was able to keep the house warm thanks to a wood stove/fireplace. However when darkness falls at 5 o'clock it makes for a long, dreary evening.
When are we going to see some action on adaptation measures? We have to go on something akin to a wartime footing. Governments that keep stoking economic growth in part through defunding themselves in the name of staying "competitive" are sacrificing the wellbeing of the populace. Even the economy is not immune to their obsession with perpetual exponential growth. I realize that's a difficult idea to sell a Tory but why are the Liberals so at odds with the reality of our predicament?
I was thinking of you when watched this story last night, Mound, and I read your log report about it earlier today. It seems that these storms will only get worse. A far better use of any carbon tax would to be to build infrastructure resilience rather than rebate it to the people, but with an election coming up next year, that will not happen.
DeleteYou might have a point if "neoliberal" carbon taxation was a plan of action that inspired confidence.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me it's just a GHG-emissions shell game. Offshore carbon-intensive production to China. Sweep the problem under the rug. Self-congratulations all around. Except global emissions continue to grow. And, not only that, you just wasted decades on foolishness – decades you didn't have to waste.
A real, effective solution is to slap green tariffs on environmental free-loaders. Call it, direct carbon taxation. Hit the polluters directly. Hit them where it hurts. Oligarchs hate the word "tariff."
The EU could impose green tariffs on all offensive goods entering their markets. Get other countries in on the action. Leverage a majority of Western-market access against the polluters. Then these free-trade-globalization shell games would no longer work.
Of course, you won't hear much about real solutions in the corporate media. Perhaps corporations don't care as much about the environment – or the people – as they narrate. They only tend to care about short-term profits. Maximize shareholder value. The future of humanity, one could say, is WAY outside their purview.
Therefore the fate of humanity is in the hands of the people. We have to do like the Grand Generation and whip these slimy Robber Barons into shape. It's all been done before.
I can't say I disagree with anything you say here, Anon. Norway goes a certain way in doing what you suggest here, as they levy taxes on fossil-fuel burning cars, while providing substantial inducements for people to purchase electric vehicles:
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/25/norway-leads-way-electric-cars-green-taxation-shift