In response to Tom Fletcher’s column on carbon taxing, A voter’s guide to carbon taxes, Feb. 8 Saanich News.
Dr. Weaver’s main focus is education. It’s the number one priority in the B.C. Green platform. Lucky for you, I’m a high school science (and socials) teacher with an MSc. Interdisciplinary. So I hope this helps:
No one, Mr. Fletcher, is “suddenly” suggesting that human generated CO2 is the “sole driver of climate change”. Not anyone in the scientific community, not even us lowly high school teachers. That propaganda is yours.
What six consecutive Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports are suggesting is that, over and above the climate’s normal variation, the burning of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution has put so much carbon in the earth’s atmosphere, that it is out of balance causing the earth to warm at an unprecedented rate. The carbon tax, then is a mechanism to push us back into balance and to help us shift to different energy sources so that our economy can be more resilient as we move forward into the 21st century.
India is looking to invest $100 billion in renewables by 2022. The United States now employs more workers in the solar industry than it does in oil and gas. Trump will have a hard time bringing coal back into energy policy given that solar is now cheaper than coal in most states thanks to Obama’s incentives and now massive private sector investment. And China has just invested $361 billion in renewable energy.
To your point, Canada is the 11th highest emitter of anthropogenic carbon, eighth in the world if one uses population as an indicator. Canada has always “punched above its weight class” when leading global change. We could again.
Your opinion of the B.C. voters’ choices is, at best, uninformed and at worst, an attempt to impose upon B.C.’s citizens the idea that they should continue to rely on the dying industries of the 20th century. We know better. And I hope you now do as well.
Mark Neufeld
Saanich