Carbon pricing’s (LIBERAL) dirty secret
http://www.torontosun.com/2016/04/30/carbon-pricings-dirty-secret
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It’s hard to tell whether it was deliberate or a gaffe — meaning what happens when a politician accidentally tells the truth — but Ontario Climate Change Minister Glen Murray told the truth last week.
In an interview with the Sun’s Shawn Jeffords, he said cap-and-trade and other government decarbonization initiatives will be very expensive, which politicians almost never do.
As Murray put it in responding to a Globe and Mail story about Ontario’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: “It costs a lot of money. It’s going to cost the private sector, and it’s an investment, and it’s going to cost the public sector money.”
The only thing I would have added is an acknowledgment that having the private and public sector pay a lot more means all of us are going to pay a lot more.
Too often, politicians talk about carbon pricing in terms of “making the polluter pay”, implying the costs will be magically absorbed by carbon intensive industries.
That’s nonsense. In fact, we are the polluters, since we buy the goods and services that fossil fuel energy creates and we are the ones who will end up paying more.
Murray also acknowledged meeting goals such as having 1.7 million electric and hybrid vehicles on the roads by 2024, will require “a generous subsidy for the first generation of that change”.
Less impressive in terms of candour was Murray’s observation that, “there are incredible savings and returns on that (carbon pricing) investment for everyone.”
Not quite. This is similar to the happy talk former federal Liberal leader Stephane Dion used when he introduced his Green Shift plan prior to losing the 2008 election.
At the time, he said: “Canada will cut megatonnes of emissions, but we will also make megatonnes of money.”
The reality is that decarbonizing a country like Canada — big, cold, sparsely populated, resource-based — is going to be very hard and very costly.
Worse, Premier Kathleen Wynne plans to do it in the worst way possible — through a cap-and-trade system that has been a disaster in Europe and that will take almost $2 billion annually out of the Ontario economy to start, beginning next year.
That, plus the government picking winners and losers in terms of who it will subsidize and who it won’t. (like ADSCAM??)
That’s as far away from an effective carbon pricing scheme as you can get — a 100%, revenue neutral carbon tax, verified by the provincial auditor general every year, in which the government returns all the money it raises through carbon pricing to the public in the form of an annual cash dividend, or income tax cuts and cash grants to the poor who don’t pay taxes.
That would be a plan actually designed to encourage people to adopt a less carbon intensive lifestyle, as opposed to a mere cash grab for the government, which is what Ontario’s plan is.
But at least Murray was honest about the costs.
http://www.torontosun.com/2016/04/30/carbon-pricings-dirty-secret
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It’s hard to tell whether it was deliberate or a gaffe — meaning what happens when a politician accidentally tells the truth — but Ontario Climate Change Minister Glen Murray told the truth last week.
In an interview with the Sun’s Shawn Jeffords, he said cap-and-trade and other government decarbonization initiatives will be very expensive, which politicians almost never do.
As Murray put it in responding to a Globe and Mail story about Ontario’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: “It costs a lot of money. It’s going to cost the private sector, and it’s an investment, and it’s going to cost the public sector money.”
The only thing I would have added is an acknowledgment that having the private and public sector pay a lot more means all of us are going to pay a lot more.
Too often, politicians talk about carbon pricing in terms of “making the polluter pay”, implying the costs will be magically absorbed by carbon intensive industries.
That’s nonsense. In fact, we are the polluters, since we buy the goods and services that fossil fuel energy creates and we are the ones who will end up paying more.
Murray also acknowledged meeting goals such as having 1.7 million electric and hybrid vehicles on the roads by 2024, will require “a generous subsidy for the first generation of that change”.
Less impressive in terms of candour was Murray’s observation that, “there are incredible savings and returns on that (carbon pricing) investment for everyone.”
Not quite. This is similar to the happy talk former federal Liberal leader Stephane Dion used when he introduced his Green Shift plan prior to losing the 2008 election.
At the time, he said: “Canada will cut megatonnes of emissions, but we will also make megatonnes of money.”
The reality is that decarbonizing a country like Canada — big, cold, sparsely populated, resource-based — is going to be very hard and very costly.
Worse, Premier Kathleen Wynne plans to do it in the worst way possible — through a cap-and-trade system that has been a disaster in Europe and that will take almost $2 billion annually out of the Ontario economy to start, beginning next year.
That, plus the government picking winners and losers in terms of who it will subsidize and who it won’t. (like ADSCAM??)
That’s as far away from an effective carbon pricing scheme as you can get — a 100%, revenue neutral carbon tax, verified by the provincial auditor general every year, in which the government returns all the money it raises through carbon pricing to the public in the form of an annual cash dividend, or income tax cuts and cash grants to the poor who don’t pay taxes.
That would be a plan actually designed to encourage people to adopt a less carbon intensive lifestyle, as opposed to a mere cash grab for the government, which is what Ontario’s plan is.
But at least Murray was honest about the costs.
