Carbon Tax rejected by the masses.

[Triple_R]

Canadians did reject a carbon tax... during a global economic crisis. Experimenting with a new tax, or a tax shift geared towards the environment moreso than the economy, at a time of economic crisis, simply isn't prudent.

Now, perhaps at a future date of greater economic stability, we can bring in a carbon tax, if we are unable to find a more effective/palatable way to combat potentially disastrous climate change.

However, it should be noted... the only effective method to combat climate change, on a global level, will involve the full participation of big polluters like China, India, and America. These countries have to be brought onside before there's any chance whatsoever of effectively combating climate change.

[Smallc]

It is pretty obvious that Canadas close proximity to the United States makes people think Canada is ¨tax heavy¨.

If you actually compare Canada to the rest of the first world you would see this is pretty far from the truth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world

It would be nice if people would actually compare their nation to the rest of the world before coming to ludicrous conclusions. Canada is one of the most capitalist nations on the earth and people should realize that reducing taxes more and more is not always the answer.

Thank you so much. no one ever seems to remember that fact.

[Alta4ever]

Thank you so much. no one ever seems to remember that fact.

looking at the wiki page listed it seems we are in the upper end for taxes in 2 categories.

Commercial greater than or equal to 35% most of the world is 30% or less, look at europe.

Personal greater than or equal to 40% most of the world is less, part of europe is compairable, notmany countries higher, a lot lower then us.

Sales Tax/consumer taxes we are al little less the most of the world.

Just going by the what you quoted from brunopolis

[Smallc]

looking at the wiki page listed it seems we are in the upper end for taxes in 2 categories.

Commercial greater than or equal to 35% most of the world is 30% or less, look at europe.

Personal greater than or equal to 40% most of the world is less, part of europe is compairable, notmany countries higher, a lot lower then us.

Sales Tax/consumer taxes we are al little less the most of the world.

Just going by the what you quoted from brunopolis

The 2005 OECD chart on that page shows us at the lower end. Its also important to remember that we pay less tax now then we did in 2005.

[blueblood]

Blueblood. Mine doesn't need to but if you attended one they should consider it so that they don't have to count you among their alumni given that the best you could offer is that NOT witty retort.

Clearly your knowledge of economics is as piss poor as is your understanding of how markets work or fail too. Sadly you present the stereotypical myopic and misguided responses, what little their was, of an ideologue.

Well how about Finance. Considering that the banking sector is a bigger employer and produces huge profits I'd say we've found another. Moreover their is nothing wrong with oil production but it can be done more efficiently and with less emissions than is currently being done.

Because the free market does a piss poor job of providing a true price for the commodity that represents it's true cost, when it fails to price negative externalities and this is a perfect example of market failure.

Moreover the market doesn't do a good job of regulating use, despite your ideological leanings. The market seeks a kind of equilibrium, but one which is not solely based on economic fundamentals and that equilibrium is only a kind of equilibrium since the system is entirely dynamic and a true equilibrium in the sense of the a static system doesn't exists. Moreover market lags, dislocations, and friction prevent the system from even finding a true optimal dynamic equilibrium. You need to get your understanding of economics to a level beyond Econ 20. Fama's efficient market hypothesis holds, only over the longer term and then only the weak version of the hypothesis holds.

Funny cause pretty much every economist worth their salt, you know all the people that made you think the free market is perfect - since you clearly never came up with that thought on your own - agree that a carbon tax is a more efficient means placing a price on negative externalities.

Lets look at truck sales in north america, they went down. Why, because they are expensive to run and burn a pile of gas. Did we need a carbon tax to get people to buy cars which burn less fuel? Score 1 for the free market. That is a chunk of CO2 gone.

Agriculture/agribusiness is one of the biggest employers in Canada. Hitting that industry with a carbon tax is lunacy, it will just make everyone poorer.

Carbon which Canada produces is not a negative externality in the grand scheme of things. We only contribute 2%, and by slapping a tax on carbon and gouging our industries which keep Canada going is also lunacy. I'll wager that most economists will say that doing nothing is best of all.

My understanding of economic fundamentals are just fine, my farm would be bankrupt years ago if I didn't. I also didn't need to waste 5 years of my time in University to understand economic fundamentals either.

[Mad_Michael]

Only if the planet actually starts to warm again. Until then when can afford to wait and see.

Given the long timeframes needed to 1) assess the changing situation and 2) to effect a reduction in carbon outputs, and 3) the extreme potential danger of climate change, it is irresponsible to dismiss the issue.

Nuclear war or nuclear accidents are very low probability, but the extreme dangers of this small probability are considered worthy to mitigate against with expensive measures.

Likewise with global climate change. Even if there is only a small probability of ecological damage, because of the enormous impact this would have (like nuclear meltdown scenarios), it is prudent to take measures to mitigate against it.

To wait for final data is like waiting for a final solution.

Edited October 17, 2008 by Mad_Michael

[Riverwind]

Given the long time frames needed to 1) assess the changing situation and 2) to effect a reduction in carbon outputs, and 3) the extreme potential danger of climate change, it is irresponsible to dismiss the issue.

Imagine if your doctor found a lump in your leg and told you it could be cancer be he was not certain. Would you insist on amputating your leg immediately based on uncertain data or would you wait and see even if that put your life at greater risk?

Most people would choose the second option. The carbon emission cuts required to prevent the hypothetical disaster are equivalent to amputating the leg of the economy. It is irresponsible to advocate such actions given how little we really know about the effects of CO2. The only people advocate such actions are people to have fooled themselves into believing that they will not have to make any personal sacrifices and that the problem is caused entirely by "others" who should be forced to make sacrifices.

Nuclear war or nuclear accidents are very low probability, but the extreme dangers of this small probability are considered worthy to mitigate against with expensive measures.

There is a high probably of an earthquake in California yet nothing is done to prevent people from moving into harms way. Building regulations can only do so much.

The precautionary prinicpal not an absolute. The harm of inaction must be weighed against harm caused by acting. Any uncertainty in the likely outcome makes it impossible to justify causing harm in order to prevent a hypothetical problem.

Edited October 17, 2008 by Riverwind

[Slim MacSquinty]

[quote name='shoegazer' date='Oct 15 2008, 08:12 PM' post='351696']

"Yes and the country didn't swallow the GST/MST tax shift too well either but guess what, the electorate was wrong then as well. Just because the electorate votes in a given way doesn't make the electorate correct any more than the market's response to the prevailing economic conditions is rational or correct given fundamentals, which is why David Ricardo made himself a wealthy man and why Buffett is making himself a wealthier man, markets often over-correct and simply exhibit herd behaviour, which isn't rational. "

Carbon tax has nothing to do with the stock market, your rationale eludes me, the gst replaced a whole bunch of hidden taxes and replaced them with one very visible tax, very different than the carbon tax. Furthermore the gst did exactly what it was supposed to do, make people more aware of the taxes they pay so they were conscious of government intrusion.

Perhaps but perception doesn't make something right. People perceive things to be a certain way all the time but it doesn't make their perceptions right and they can change over time.

Yes they can. Taxes can be an efficient means of creating a price signal to deal with an existing, environmental and economic problem, just as taxes are added to tobacco and alcohol to deal with the negative externalities - increased health costs - associated with consumption of these behaviours, which leads to a lower of this behaviour as people decide it's too expensive to smoke.

First the comparision to tobacco and alcohol is only valid in the sense that the carbon tax is a sin tax and so are they. In fact I doubt that the sin tax has been effective in either case, alcohol consumption is regularly setting new records, and tobbaco decreases I suspect have more to do with social and health reasons than taxes. So in effect sin taxes are a cash grab, justified by negative social perceptions. I'll deal more directly with taxes in a minute.

To paint the notion of a lower corporate tax rate as temporary belies and overt agenda. Any tax can easily be changed, the carbon taxed could easily be changed and eliminated. That said I don't see it as likely, that the corporate tax cuts would be changed given that it was the Liberals who started cutting corporate income taxes in the first place and the recent Conservative corporate tax cuts were only an acceleration of the existing schedule of corporate tax cuts contained with the Liberals past budgets. So what I believe is an insinuation that the Liberals would reverse the cuts seems to be to be based on nothing but wild speculation with no substantiative support. Moreover such a position is so highly cynical that one wonders what possible policy proposals could ever pass such a test.

The notion of taxes lower taxes and less of them is pretty easy to understand, the record of any government of lowering and eliminated taxes is not good, on the whole taxes as a percentage of any measure of incomes or economy have trended in one direction, UP. If you could imagine yourself a corporate director who was about to spend 100's of millions on a new plant or expansion your main ambition is risk aversion. Carbon taxes look risky to business no doubt, since it is another layer of taxes, not a replacement tax and knowing the general tendancies of taxes to rise. Plus the carbon tax from outward appearances looks to be aimed at business, and has been portrayed by some members of the Liberal party as a "the greatest wealth transfer program in the history of Canada" which of course smacks of expensive socialist theory which of course in the long run costs governments, and hence taxpayers, money long into the future.

Regarding Norway, they have chosen to exempt a huge amount of industry from the carbon taxes which is why carbon emissions have continued to rise and thus it is not similar to what was proposed here. Denmark's carbon taxes were far more similar to Canada's as proposed and they experienced an emissions reduction. Considering that Mark Jaccard, who was hired by the Conservatives to analyse their program concluded theirs wouldn't accomplish anything meaningful in way of reductions due to similar loopholes to Norway makes the status quo far from a reasonable alternative. Moreover the cost of $65/ton carbon credit for non-exempt industries will certainly raise prices for consumers with no offsetting income tax reductions.

The standard socialist answer, "well they never did it right, if only it was done right it would work just fine"

Both carbon taxes and cap and trade seek to create a pric signal in the market for the negative externalities and a number of recent comparisons such as that in the Economist conclude that carbon taxes are the more efficient means to achieve emissions reductions. Intensity reductions do little themselves. Under that metric the LIberals from 1990 - 2006 were a resounding success as emissions intensity dropped 21.1% from 1990 - 2006, yet emissions increased 21.4% during the same time frame, down slightly from 25.4% over 1990 levels as of 2003.

As opposed to what?

That's great we'll forget about the economy and just worry about CO2, then we can invent the perfect system.

The reality is that we have to compete right here in North America, our energy cost are already high due to distance of transportation and the cold climate, we produce a tiny amount of the world's CO2 and our vast forest should get us a big fat carbon credit so I figure we're doing OK already. Regulations have worked very well at eliminating or reducing lots of other bad things and that with some federal incentives will greatly assist in developing new technology which should move us in the right direction with much less pain.

I've read all the textbooks too, but am not eager to step into the abys of theoretical government.

[shoegazer]

These kind incremental efficiency improvements happen without carbon taxes because the efficiency of products increases anyways. e.g. A dryer bought today uses less energy than one bought 10 years ago. However, such improvements are a drop in the bucket if CO2 is really a threat and you will need a lot larger price signals to get people to get rid of the dryer and use a clothes line instead. Getting people to put up with that kind of inconvenience will take very large price signals.

Really? That's funny in a large number of cases that's hardly true. New features, which consumers want result in increasing energy consumption, not lower, though perhaps higher efficiency does occur over longer time period but change ONLY occurs en masse if they have similar prices. Think of lightbulbs. Compact fluorescent (light) bulbs are far more efficient than incandescent bulbs but due to an upfront price disparity incandescents still outsell CFLs, even though CFLs are more cost effective over the long run. When Ontario soon mandates the switch to CFLs, it is estimates that this change will result in 6 TWh of energy savings per year, the equivalent of 6% of OPGs energy production per year or if confined to reducing energy production from coal, amounts to 6.2 million tons of GHGs being eliminated and that's just Ontario and just light bulbs.

The devil is always in the detail. No business will spend 1.1 billion to save on 1 billion in taxes. They would simply raise prices or find cost savings that don't reduce Co2.

You're out of your gourd if you think a business would not spend $1 billion in capital investment to save $1 billion in annual recurring taxes, especially when they get capital cost deductions and the savings, clearly you forget most of your engineering economics and you've never worked on project budgeting or project finance.

The point of the example was to demonstrate price changes must exceed a certain threshold before any behaviour will change. If the price of the more efficient options is comparable to the less efficient option then people will always choose the more efficient option and no additional incentive is required.

And this is different from what I said how? What I said was there are many examples where a minor change in the tax structure can push people to differing behaviours. Yes tere are thresholds for these decisions, an energy barrier of sorts to overcome but you seem to think the threshold is massive and that's simply not the case, there are technologies that become viable at a number of differing incremental steps.

As someone with engineering background who has built and used numerical models I can tell you that hindcasts tell us nothing about the predictive skill of the models because there is no way to know whether the match is the result of correct theory or the result of curve fitting. The only way to know if the models are useful is to make predictions and compare the results with the real data. So far, the models have consistently predicted more warming than has actually occurred. The fact that the models over-predict climate trends and the scientific funding mechanisms which encourage hyperbole and exaggeration means that any reasonable person should be very cautious before adopting radical economic changes based on the model outputs.

More importantly, models may do ok on the hindcasts for GMST but they fail miserably when it comes to hindcasting regional trends or trends in other parameters suh as rainfall. i.e. you cannot reasonably take a model that can't hindcast regional rainfall patterns and then use that model output to predict the cost of water shortages in Saskatchewan 50 years from now.

Well let me respond by saying that as someone with a background in engineering and applied mathematics including a doctorate in mathematics and as an expert in computer modelling, you're quite mistaken. Furthermore, since I've taught engineers I happen to be quite aware that engineers know next to nothing about non-linear dynamics or systems, and that includes mechs who've studied the navier-stokes equations, which are the largely pertinent equations, since the versions engineers study are the linearized ones where the non-linear terms drop out.

I've written more source code than I care to recall, including MPI code, to solve multi-dimensional non-linear dynamical problems, including but not limited to moving boundary value problems. I'm fairly well versed in stochastic modelling, which if you're unfamiliar is probabilistic modelling, which has connections to PDEs, depending upon there form of the stochastic equation.

Moreover I spent a number of years working, where I ripped models apart and thus am quite experienced in looking at models and seeing how well those models work. I'm familiar with calibration issues and over fitting problems and backtesting of models is completely sound and is used in numerous fields of research, from physics to finance.

As I said are the models perfect? Nope, but they are fairly good and have good conformance to historical data. Are there variables of interest that are not fully understood or properly weighted and calibrated, perhaps and those weaknesses are addressed going forward and projections are revised as new data and research becomes available, but one doesn't simply though up one's hands and wait for a perfect model because no such thing exists. Newtonian mechanics is actually wrong but under a certain set of assumptions, work quite well as a first order approximation. Relativistic mechanics is also likely incorrect but again works as a very good first order, perhaps even second order approximation under certain conditions.

Your comment about them doing ok for GMST but then performing poorly for regional ones is a bit of a non sequitur. What is being modeled is global climate. The more localised projections rely on courser datasets, lower resolution and are more susceptible to localized phenomenon. Newtons law of cooling does a very poor job of telling you what the local temperature is at a specific voxel on a specific streamline in a turbulent flow but it will give a very good idea of the total system temperature over a period of time. This is the difference between climate and weather. Weather is a localised phenomenon, subject to highly non-linear equations, whereas, first order approximations of climate are far better, because they dont require the same level of resolution and arent as sensitive to perturbations in input data.

The same issue exists with weather events like hurricanes - the models don't have the resolution required to produce these kinds of a phenomena which means they can tell us nothing about the frequency or patterns of such events in the future.

Again this is a different between climate and weather. There are separate models which address the linkages between specific localised weather patterns and climate, the GSM models don't need to be a catch all.

The ridiculously wide uncertainty bounds is one of the reasons why the models have no useful predictive skill. If any possible weather outcome is said to be "consistent with" the models then the models do not help us make decisions.

First you're mistake is assuming what a useful level of uncertainly is in a climate model. In quantum mechanics the degree of accuracy or precision required of model predictions is far far higher than it is for Newtonian mechanics, which is higher than that for turbulent fluid dynamics.

A climate scientist who has no clue about the energy system or the economy can reasonably argue that we have to "do something" given our limited knowledge. The trouble only shows up when we have to decide what that "something" is. You seem to be an advocate of small measures that will only have a marginal effect on CO2 production. Such an approach is fine for people who like symbolism over substance.

I'm an advocate of introducing a price signal into the market, which pretty much every economist is saying is necessary to properly deal with climate change. Why is it that 230 economists wrote a letter during the election campaign urging action. Why is it that every major scientific body including the Royal Society, the National Institute of Science, NOAA, etc. urges action be taken. Why is it Shell, BP, numerous insurance companies and many many others who have all looked at this problem from various angles agree.

You say in an insulting tone, that I prefer symbolic measures or symbolism over substance. Bullshit. It seems you prefer doing nothing, ignoring problems out of some sort of "what can one person do" fallacy.

Until pollution is all forms is properly priced it will continue. Placing a price on carbon is the FIRST step in reducing it and it has positive side effects as well. It favours industries that provide high profit for each tonne of GHG, thereby having an intensity reducing impact on emissions.

I don't take that approach. I look at what the IPCC and others are saying we need to do to actually stop climate change and they are saying we need to limit global CO2 concentrations to 450ppm or less. They also say that reaching that limit will require that virtually all electricity production be CO2 free by 2050 - a goal which is simply not obtainable when faced with the demands of a developing world and a growing population.

This puts us in a situation where we could spend more trying to limit our own CO2 emissions only to find that it makes zero difference in the end and we have to pay the adaptation costs anyways. This makes it impossible to justify any more than token measures that won't hurt the economy but they won't do much about emissions either.

You're simply relying on a do nothing approach based on FUD. The sky is falling economics, yet numerous companies from BP, Shell and SUncor have said complying with Kyoto wouldn't be economically damaging as have numerous economists. The Economist magazine has come out in favour of carbon taxes and they've always been market and business friendly so clearly they believe the cost/benefit of inaction to be far worse than action.

The last point is fundemental to our disagreement. You seem to think that a mitigation strategy has a reasonable chance of success and should be viewed as an insurance policy. I see mitigation as a risky choice that is not likely to succeed. Given those perpectives we could agree completely on facts yet come to opposition conclusions on how to deal with the facts.

By your own admission we need to switch to natgas or nuclear - both of which are resources in limited supply. In fact, they are currently more limited than coal so you can hardly argue that we are protecting ourselves from future supply shocks. That is one of the reasons why Germany and the UK are now looking seriously at coal again because they want energy sources which they can supply domestically.

We have plenty of uranium domestically so uranium isn't a problem and we can build breeder reactors so that continuous supplies of fuel are barely even necessary since they are self fuelling and sustaining nuclear reactions. Hell 2 2nd year university students at the university of Chicago made one a number of years ago as part of the UoC scavenger hunt by using thorium and americium as a beta source from smoke detectors. Fast breeder technology would allow us to move the entire global to nuclear power and still have abundant supplies of uranium. Consider as well that uranium is not anywhere near as heavily explored for as oil and thus there are likely vast unexplored uranium deposits, yet the same is almost certainly not true of oil anymore. Moreover thorium and salt water can be used in breeder reactors as a fuel soruce making fuel supplies for breeder reactors essentially infinite.

Coal is abundant and there may be technologies for clean coal, Germany is investigating this but while generating power based on dirty coal costs less than that of clean coal, dirty coal will remain. The costs of various technologies have been passed on to consumers that was designed to eliminate pollutant, be it SOX and NOX from exhausts, with expensive catalytic converters on cars, which didn't kill the industry and the impact was real and it has a measurable cost.

Really? If the carbon tax is large enough to make projects viable that would not be viable otherwise then it is going to be large enough to increase the cost of concrete, steel and fuel required to build it. Of course, the utilities could cheat by importing the required materials from countries with no additional taxes on CO2 but even then you will see the cost of alternatives increase as the price on CO2 increases. Whether the additional costs are large enough to make a project not viable will depend on the numbers for particular project.

NO it isn't because there is an asymmetry in where and how the taxes are applied. Steel may increase somewhat to be fair because steel is a carbon intensive industry but there are alternatives to coke making for steel to move to lower GHG steel. Just analyse OPG and tell me OPG wouldn't be incented under a carbon tax to invest in lower emitting technologies.

For example, a project that costs $900 million and saves $1 billion would deliver a positive ROI, however, a 10% increase in costs would make that project unviable. This scenario is not unreasonable because we are talking about projects which are supposely not viable without the "small" carbon tax that you advocate.

You really are obtuse. You seem to be under some misguided belief that what is small for one part of the system is small everywhere. It isn't. The incidence of carbon taxes and the sources of carbon emissions as asymmetric. It will be large emitters who will see significant increases in their costs and IIF they passed on all of the costs to consumers the costs would be relatively small. That said because they would have large costs, whether they pass them on or not, which can be reduced by investing in alternative technology THEY would have very real incentives to invest. Your $900 million vs $1 billion is missing the point that the $900 million is a one time capital cost, which itself results in lower income taxes paid out over a number of years due to the CCA deduction, the lower corporate taxes with a corporate tax cut and thats before one factors in a reduction in the carbon taxes being paid which are annually occurring expenses, NOT one time ones.

[Riverwind]

When Ontario soon mandates the switch to CFLs, it is estimates that this change will result in 6 TWh of energy savings per year, the equivalent of 6% of OPGs energy production per year or if confined to reducing energy production from coal, amounts to 6.2 million tons of GHGs being eliminated and that's just Ontario and just light bulbs.

Mandating use of more efficient technologies is much effective than adding 'price signals'. Do you think the green shift tax would have been sufficient? My example of the washing machine presumed that government regulations were in place requiring efficiency improvements. The important difference between carbon taxes and government mandates is government mandates don't deny people access to something unless there is an alternative available.

That said, how many tones of GHGs are emitted manufacturing those CFC bulbs in China and how much would those bulbs cost if the true emissions were factored into the price?

You're out of your gourd if you think a business would not spend $1 billion in capital investment to save $1 billion in annual recurring taxes, especially when they get capital cost deductions and the savings, clearly you forget most of your engineering economics and you've never worked on project budgeting or project finance.

Where did I say the $1 billion savings was a recurring cost? The $1 billion was the total saving was over the lifetime of the asset.

Moreover I spent a number of years working, where I ripped models apart and thus am quite experienced in looking at models and seeing how well those models work. I'm familiar with calibration issues and over fitting problems and backtesting of models is completely sound and is used in numerous fields of research, from physics to finance.

Ok I guess I got pwned. Your experience with models obviously trumps mine.

That said, I have a question that you may be able to answer. I know that evaluating climate models requires multiple runs which can be used to construct a probability distribution and that the models can be considered good if the real earth climate falls somewhere within that distribution and that an exact match between the ensemble average and the real climate is extremely unlikely. However, the IPCC insists on creating that distribution by combining multiple runs from different models that have completely different parametrization. In some cases, models that leave out important forcings like volcanoes are included in the ensemble even though we know that those models are "wrong" because they left out volcanoes. I know of no of scientific justification for such an approach I feel that it artificially inflates the confidence intervals of the models which makes them seem more useful then they actually are. References to papers that provide the scientific justification for these multi-model ensembles would be appreciated.

As I said are the models perfect? Nope, but they are fairly good and have good conformance to historical data. Are there variables of interest that are not fully understood or properly weighted and calibrated, perhaps and those weaknesses are addressed going forward and projections are revised as new data and research becomes available, but one doesn't simply though up one's hands and wait for a perfect model because no such thing exists.

But the question is whether models that can demonstrate reasonable skill in predicting the future. So far they have been overpredicting warming and that suggests a bias. And yes I know that the current non-warming trend could be a glitch and warming will resume soon but you cannot rule out the possibility that the models missed something major and CO2 sensitivity is much less than expected. Only time will tell.

Your comment about them doing ok for GMST but then performing poorly for regional ones is a bit of a non sequitur. What is being modeled is global climate.

Predictions of catastrophe are based on presumptions about regional climate changes. e.g. models that can't get the rainfall patterns right cannot tell us much about the frequency of droughts in 100 years.

Again this is a different between climate and weather. There are separate models which address the linkages between specific localised weather patterns and climate, the GSM models don't need to be a catch all.

If GCMs cannot produce major features like weather fronts and cyclones then the cannot possibly be solving the equations they claim to solve. They could, in theory, still be useful heuristic algorithms but we cannot know until they are validated against future data. Furthermore, models that cannot produce these features cannot tell us anything about the frequency of major weather events which is a big part of the global warming "catastrophe" story line.

You're simply relying on a do nothing approach based on FUD. The sky is falling economics, yet numerous companies from BP, Shell and SUncor have said complying with Kyoto wouldn't be economically damaging as have numerous economists. The Economist magazine has come out in favour of carbon taxes and they've always been market and business friendly so clearly they believe the cost/benefit of inaction to be far worse than action.

That is where I call BS. We don't know what is going to happen to the economy in 10 years - never mind 100. Any calculations of future costs are speculative fiction whose outcome depends entirely on the biases of the calculator. Also, complying with Kyoto is trivial compared to the demands required to stabilize at 450ppm or 350ppm.

We have plenty of uranium domestically so uranium isn't a problem and we can build breeder reactors so that continuous supplies of fuel are barely even necessary since they are self fuelling and sustaining nuclear reactions.

Great. Good luck convincing the public to accept a massive build out of nuclear power even if there were price signals. We just had a run of the river hydro project shut down because people did not like the power lines going through a park. That said, I do agree that nuclear and hydro is the future but there is no way we could build enough of them fast enough to meet the global CO2 targets demanded in the next 20-30 years (what canada does is completely irrelevant because our emissions are so small compared to emitters like China and India). Edited October 24, 2008 by Riverwind

[Alta4ever]

The 2005 OECD chart on that page shows us at the lower end. Its also important to remember that we pay less tax now then we did in 2005.

Where did that change come from, it wasn't the liberals

[Smallc]

Where did that change come from, it wasn't the liberals

Actually, part of it was.

[capricorn]

Canadians did reject a carbon tax... during a global economic crisis.

Actually, the majority of Canadians rejected the green shift/carbon tax even before they became concerned about the economy.

This Ipsos Reid poll was released September 2, 2008:

An Ipsos Reid poll of 1,003 adults completed Aug. 26-28 found that a majority 51-per-cent support for the Green Shift in July has declined to a majority of 52 per cent opposed. That is a seven-point decline in support and a nine-point rise in opposition. Four per cent are undecided.

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/s...8f-a36c1fb4fcd6

Then the Environics poll released around the same time indicates 51% of Canadians were not worried about the economy and the majority preferred the government's plan over the green shift.

Sixty-eight per cent of respondents approved of the government's approach on the environment, while just 42 per cent said the same of Dion's Green Shift plan.

----

Overall, slightly more than half of the country, 52 per cent, isn't particularly worried about the Canadian economy, whatever the latest news about the stock market, oil prices and unemployment.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/09/07/full-poll.html

This poll result released September 28 shows a further decline in support for the green shift:

According to an Angus Reid poll released Sept. 21, Canadians are more skeptical of the plan now than they once were, with just 40 per cent believing the proposed carbon tax will ultimately lead people to be more mindful of their carbon consumption – down 25 points since July.

http://www.thestar.com/FederalElection/article/507687

Once the economy rose to the top issue of concern for Canadians, it was curtains for the green shift and for the Liberals.

The decision of Canadian voters to reject the green shift/carbon tax has drawn attention in other countries.

It is unusual for a Canadian election to have much of an impact on the policies of other nations. But Mr. Dion's decision to propose a carbon tax in the clearest possible terms, and the subsequent reaction among voters to it, will be understood abroad.

At a breakfast sponsored last week by the Canadian High Commission in London to discuss the election results, one British journalist astutely observed that the rejection of the tax by voters of a G7 nation could have consequences for the climate change debate. Despite all the scare-mongering from the United Nations and hand-wringing about an alleged "scientific consensus," Canadians nonetheless refused to swallow the tax. If courteous Canadians (that's how Europeans view us) are willing to say "no thanks" to elite opinion-makers, might not voters in other democracies?

With respect to paying more for energy, Canada found its voice in the global warming debate. It certainly wasn't the one environmentalists envisioned when the carbon tax was proposed.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=901882

It seems we may have irked some world renowned environmentalists in not bending under their hard sell tactics. Too bad, so sad.

[Wilber]

Ah, politicians, don't you love them? Here in BC, we have Campbell adamant that he is not going to back off on the carbon tax while lobbying the feds to drop the moratorium on on offshore drilling so that we can sell oil to people who guess what? Don't have a carbon tax.