Posted by The Canadian Brainwashing Corporation’s propaganda machine went into overdrive today in response to Prime Minister Trudeau Jr.’s announcement that he was going to levy a federal carbon tax. His original intention was politically smart; tell the provinces that they had to implement their own carbon tax or the Federal Government would do it for them anyway. What a great way to shift voter blame and anger for a highly regressive tax to someone else while still being able to virtue-signal to his hard-core environmental constituents that he was doing something about climate change. But with “Ford Country” Ontario pulling out of the national climate framework, a gaping hole was put into this plan forcing Trudeau Jr. to go to plan B or what he calls the “backstop plan”.
Like the well-oiled (with taxpayers dollars) propaganda machine that it is, the CBC did not publish one but FIVE pieces on this policy change – all of them toeing the Liberal party line and waxing eloquently about the carbon tax and how it will save the planet. Let’s start with the first article, “Trudeau promises rebates as Ottawa moves to levy carbon tax on provinces outside the climate plan“. Trudeau says, “”The science is unequivocal: putting a price on pollution is one of the best ways to move forward… Starting next year, it will no longer be free to pollute anywhere in Canada. And we’re also going to help Canadians adjust to this new reality … Every nickel will be invested in Canadians in the province or territory where it was raised.”
I’ll translate this for you. It basically hoists the old canard that this is all about science and it is incontrovertible, which any sensible scientist will tell you is horse manure as there is nothing unequivocal about science given that it is constantly changing as new facts and discoveries challenge and sometimes replace old ones. Second, Trudeau is trying to make the point that this new tax is “revenue neutral” which is modern political speak to try to fool you into believing new and higher taxes actually won’t cost you anything. They even came up with a nice infographic to show you not only will you not pay more taxes, but you will actually come out ahead after the government rebates you for the new carbon tax.
Wow. That’s amazing. Not only will Trudeau single handedly save the planet by making us reduce our carbon emissions through higher taxes, we actually will get more money back as a result of the higher taxes. If you believe that, I have some swampland I can sell you – cheap. The whole point of a carbon tax is to make it economically painful to you so you drive less and reduce your emissions as it costs you money. But in the unicorn-land that Trudeau lives in, not only will you not feel any economic pain, but actually come out ahead monetarily while still reducing your emissions.
The CBC’s second propaganda article, “What is a carbon tax, and will it make a difference?” I’ll summarise this article which states, “Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer says carbon taxes are the solution to climate change“. Well, I have little regard for economists in general – it is known as the dismal science for a reason – and even less respect for Nobel Prizes awarded by a small group of Swedes and Norwegians. But if you want to make an argument, an appeal to authority and expertise is always a good way to start and dropping quotes from Nobel Prize winners is a sure fire way for journalists to accomplish this. The article then goes on to talk about B.C. and it’s experience with a decade long carbon tax.
It started off at $10 per tonne in 2008 with a planned increase of $5 per tonne over four years. Beginning on April 1, 2018, the government increased it by another $5, raising it to $35 a tonne. It will continue on its $5-a-year-plan until it reaches $50 per tonne in 2020.
According to the B.C. government, since implementation GDP grew by 17 per cent and net emissions dropped by 4.7 per cent. There are estimates that B.C. could see a reduction of anywhere between five and 15 per cent under this plan.
Wow, sign me up. Not only is B.C.’s carbon tax “revenue neutral”, it succeeded in reducing emissions and the economy grew like a weed as well. Heck, everyone should have done this a long time ago. Yeah that’s sarcasm. Well, what do you expect from an article written by Nicole Mortillaro, Senior Reporter, Science whose credentials apparently are that, “[she] has an avid interest in all things science. As an amateur astronomer, Nicole can be found looking up at the night sky appreciating the marvels of our universe.” So deep and profound; maybe she saw some unicorns flying through the rainbow-hued nebulas while she was looking up there as well.
Unfortunately, the real truth can be found in a great article titled “Don’t believe the hype on BC’s carbon tax“, written by Marc Lee, Senior Economist with CCPA-BC who is actually a big advocate of carbon tax. “BC’s economy did not collapse due to the carbon tax, but nor did it grow faster than its neighbours… If you take 2007 or 2008 as your base year, then you can construct a story that BC’s emissions have fallen, but the reality is that since 2010, BC’s GHG emissions have increased every year; as of 2013 they are up 4.3 per cent above 2010 levels.” In other words, the carbon tax hasn’t been a boon for the economy nor has it reduced emissions which, on a per capita basis, were declining well before the tax was implemented. The use of a base 2007 is a typical statistical trick as it is a peak high of economic activity just before the great recession caused by the US housing market crash. I bet you carbon emissions fell across the board for most places without carbon taxes between 2008-2010 as well.
So while left-leaning publications like to wax eloquently about B.C.’s carbon tax and how wonderful it is, like this article in the New York Times, “Does a Carbon Tax Work? Ask British Columbia“, reality sometime falls well short of the propaganda. The Financial Post wrote a counter piece titled “B.C. tricked Canadian politicians into believing its carbon tax policy works. It doesn’t.”
The current B.C. government has dropped the term “revenue neutral” altogether and now calls the carbon tax a “tool.” Before the charade was abandoned entirely, this is what “revenue neutral” meant for the B.C. carbon tax: In 2016–17 the provincial government raked in $1.2 billion in the carbon tax from taxpayers. The amount is listed on page 68 in the budget document as a frame entitled: “Revenue Neutral Carbon Tax Plan.” Then, the government scraped together 17 sundry tax credits and stuffed them into the carbon-tax frame, making the tax sum balance out to zero. Abracadabra: “revenue neutral.” That’s all it meant.
More of the same facts can be found in another Financial Post article titled, “How B.C.’s formerly ‘revenue neutral’ carbon tax turned into another government cash grab“.
The third propaganda article (remember all this came on the same day) was titled, “How the Liberals hope to escape the ‘Green Shift’ curse in 2019“.
The Liberals learned the hard way back in 2008 that running a campaign around a promise to introduce a new tax is a recipe for electoral failure. Stéphane Dion was pummeled in that campaign for his inability to explain that his so-called Green Shift would be revenue-neutral. The Conservatives won that election and Dion was soon gone as Liberal leader.
But that was then. A few things have changed since.
But questions of ‘effectiveness’ are only going to make up part of this debate. Many voters will be asking themselves what the plan will cost them, personally.
Hence, the rebates. The Liberals are counting on delivering them just as the new price on carbon emissions kicks in — a suitable incentive (they hope) for voters in the four affected provinces to buy into the plan.
Ha ha ha… The newsrooms at the CBC must be hazy from all the pot smoke now that cannabis has been legalised. Only the dumbest of liberals could possibly believe that the carbon tax will be “revenue neutral” as we have seen that lie flop badly in British Columbia already. Yes, things have changed since then. The previous Liberal Ontario government nearly bankrupted the province and forced many people to make the choice between paying the rent and paying their electricity bills. As this article in Toronto’s City News put it, “From the gas plant scandal to soaring hydro bills, Kathleen Wynne’s tenure as premier was largely defined by energy. On election night, Ontarians emphatically pulled the plug… The problem of skyrocketing electricity prices and high bills is a made-in-Ontario problem directly tied to the provincial government’s policy choices.” Come on people, one doesn’t need a Nobel Prize in economics to figure out that carbon taxes and green energy comes at a price. There is no free lunch here and some sad attempt to package it as “revenue neutral” or “rebates” cannot possibly pass even the most casual of sniff tests.
I now come to the fourth and most egregious of the CBC’s propaganda puff pieces (the fifth one is an article about clean energy which you can read yourself). It is penned by Don Pittis, senior producer at CBC’s business unit whose great qualifications to write and comment on this subject are “[he] was a forest firefighter, and a ranger in Canada’s High Arctic islands. After moving into journalism, he was principal business reporter for Radio Television Hong Kong before the handover to China.” For those who don’t know, NOBODY listens to RTHK, let alone the English version. Not even bored taxi drivers. I would guess that Pittis was like so many caucasians I met in Hong Kong during the British colonial administration (ie, before the handover to China); their only qualifications for the job were they were white and spoke English. We used to have a term for those people – FILTH – Failed In London Try Hongkong. Pittis’ article titled, “Trudeau gambles Canadians will take the long view on climate” under the auspices of “analysis” and typically falls way short of the mark.
As someone old enough, and nerdy enough, to have used the term “tarsands” before it picked up its negative baggage and been forced to change, I fear I may soon find myself in the same position on carbon taxes.
But for many of us who have been steeped in resource economics for decades, in pollution pricing, “tax” is not a bad word. To most economic thinkers, carbon taxes forces us to take account of something that will come back and bite us in the end.
Well Mr. Pittis, the term tarsands does have negative baggage because it is not only factually incorrect (bitumen is not tar so organic chemistry is also not one of Mr. Pittis’ strong suits) but has been co-opted to link the industry to “dirty”. Economic thinkers? That’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one. PhD economic professors at universities are some of the most inane and idiotic people I have ever had the displeasure of listening to on the subject of economics. Kind of like my professor at the Stockholm School of Economics back in the early 90s who thought the Euro was a great idea.
If you trust the view of the vast majority of scientists who insist that climate change will eventually bring economic ruin to vast swaths of humanity.
Yeah sorry. Scientists are the last people I trust to make predictions that climate change will bring economic ruin. They should stick to the science without apocalyptic commentary on how that will affect society, business and the economy as they are woefully unequipped intellectually to make those judgments. Kind of like how I don’t take economic or business advice from a firefighter who somehow fancies himself to be a “business” correspondent.
The fact is, humans, as well as wanting our rewards now, are in general very poor at planning for future crises. While almost everyone would certainly escape from the path of a flooding river, people commonly build in low areas known to flood every few decades despite the inevitable future cost.
Most people fail to save for retirement unless forced, even when the alternative is an old age of misery. Even on a shorter time scale, people commonly refuse to evacuate homes in front of a hurricane, having to be rescued after the fact.
There is a great and inspirational video on Facebook by Nas Daily titled, “The City that beat a Typhoon“. (You can watch it through the hyperlink on YouTube). I was so moved that I wrote this post on Facebook linked to that video (something I seldom do now due to all the flame wars nowadays).
Yup, while our media was all focused on a piddling Cat 2 in the Carolinas, the biggest storm this year (equivalent of Cat 5) hit Hong Kong with zero deaths.
My conclusion. While we waste time and resources debating climate change and banning plastic bags and straws, maybe we should spend the money wasted on subsidized solar on things like storm and flood mitigation. That’s probably the only solution because cutting CO2 emissions isn’t going to work
So Mr. Pittis, I submit to you my new thoughts and views on climate change. Instead of wasting trillions of dollars trying to “prevent” climate change (which many of the scientists that you like to quote already seem to think is now unavoidable in any case) maybe we should be using our limited money and resources to ADAPT to climate change. More time and resources spent on bioscience and genetic modifications so that our food crops are better able to withstand “extreme” weather conditions. More money spent on dykes and flood mitigation so New Orleans doesn’t become a giant lake the next time a big Hurricane hits. Hong Kong, despite all the complaints about fallen trees and snarled traffic the days following (I was there and had to listen to it ad nauseum), has adapted to super typhoon Mangkhut and continues to adapt. Here’s a recent SCMP article on that subject: “Holding back the tide: Hong Kong government commissions study to find ways of stopping sea from flooding communities during superstorms and typhoons“. So while you and all the other idiots in the West continue to debate climate change (which you aren’t going to be able to prevent anyways no matter how many billions you spend on solar panels and electric cars), other more pragmatic and intelligent people are planning and preparing for the future crisis that you say that people are incapable of doing.
Update 1 (1 November 2018): One has to sometimes believe in conspiracy theories because I somehow completely missed this CBC article on the Liberals rolling back a key part of their carbon tax plan two days ago and wouldn’t have even noticed it if someone didn’t post it on their newsfeed. NB Power to dodge major carbon taxes after Ottawa proposes looser rules on coal plants.
In a climate-policy retreat over the treatment of coal, federal Liberals are proposing to loosen emission standards for power plants that burn the fuel, effectively lowering carbon taxes on each tonne of greenhouse gas released from coal-burning stations, like NB Power’s Belledune, next year to less than $1.
That could mean significant benefits for New Brunswick consumers, eliminating the need for power rate increases to pay for carbon taxes.
But it also undermines federal claims made as recently as last week that major greenhouse gas polluters, like Belledune, would pay the most under Canada’s new carbon pricing scheme…
The proposed exemption for coal is so large it will eliminate most of the carbon taxes New Brunswick’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, NB Power, was warned it would be facing just six months ago.
It would also allow it to continue releasing most of the greenhouse gases it currently produces at its coal-fired generating station in Belledune for free.