Rethinking Lifestyle

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is that part of the UN that speaks to issues of climate change. The IPCC staff is small, but the panel consists of 1,000s of climate scientists, each doing their own work at their own institution or agency. They do not work for the IPCC nor is their work funded by the IPCC. These scientists come together periodically, reporting on their work and their findings. It is where climate scientists get together.

Every six years the IPCC issues a report, and it has just released its fifth assessment report. From the report, it is becoming increasingly obvious that we’re heading toward a world where never-before-seen events become the new normal. Like the Health Canada’s warning to avoid smoking in order to avert lung cancer, the IPCC is  again warning that continued burning of fossil fuels will cost us dearly. Here are just some of the things we should expect:

• The certainty scientists have that humans are causing global warming has increased from 90 percent to 95 percent since the last report.
• Sea levels can be expected to rise 3 feet by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.
• Looking long-term – beyond 2100 – sea levels could rise 15 to 30 feet.
• Ocean acidity will continue to increase, with dire consequences already playing out.

So what’s to be done? Obviously we need to reduce the amount of carbon we are putting into the atmosphere. We can each make our own lifestyle changes to that end, but that alone will make little difference. We need government action.

In Canada thus far, action has taken the form of incentive and regulation. These help, but such steps in themselves are costly and inevitably require a substantial bureaucracy to implement. Furthermore it requires that government choose which technology to favour and subsidize, and which activity to regulate. It is predictable, that government will get it wrong too often. So why go through all those challenges when a market solution is available and doable – a carbon tax.

A carbon tax would be applied at two places only: at the point where the carbon rich fossil fuel leaves the the mine; and at the border, where tariffs would be adjusted on imports from nations that do not have similar carbon pricing. What could be simpler? And the proceeds from this tax? They could either be returned directly to the public, or be used to reduce other taxes depending on the will of the government.

Canadian economist Dr. David Robinson recently stated: “There was a national brainworm outbreak between 2006 and 2008. Economists and environmental scientists had made a powerful case for imposing a carbon tax. Even if we were not facing an environmental disaster, a carbon tax would have been more efficient economically than the taxes it would replace. That’s just basic economics.”

The time is now for our government to “excise the anti-tax brainworm”, directly address the climate crisis with a market-based solution and enact a carbon tax.