Editorial: Carbon taxes leave Canadians cold

The week ended July 5, the 27th trading week of 2008, saw two very bad ideas come to the fore in Canada.

• In the face of record oil prices that have doubled in the past year, the B. C. government introduced Canada’s first direct carbon tax, and the federal Liberal party — thankfully now in opposition — unveiled its plan to massively increase taxes on carbon emitters.

And all this pain would produce no discernable benefits for Canadians, except for a few bureaucrats anxious to feather their nests and expand their little empires.

These moves would be especially hard on Canadians who live and work in remote, northern parts of the country, such as miners. It’s in these places where big trucks, diesel generators and oil furnaces are simple facts of life that can’t realistically be replaced.

Displaying just how out of touch with the boonies B. C. Premier Gordon Campbell has become while ensconced in balmy Victoria, he shot back at critics of carbon taxes by saying that “it’s time we stopped having diesel-dependent communities.” (Yes, Gordon, solar power in Atlin in January; that’s the answer. Call us from Hawaii next winter break to see how well that’s working.)

To size up federal Liberal Leader Stphane Dion, we’d suggest readers actually take a look at the party’s new thegreenshift.ca website, and read its “The Green Shift” manifesto. It’s a shockingly shallow effort, padded like a twelfth grader’s last-minute book report with every conceivable layout trick to stretch it to 48 pages. Reading it, it’s clear that this man and his hangers-on should never hold power in this country.

In essence, the plan — cloaked in the usual environmental gloom-and- doom blather — is a yet another Liberal wealth-redistribution scheme designed to suck money from the Prairie provinces, where Conservative voters are thick on the ground, to provinces where the Liberal party thinks it can pick up votes: Ontario and Quebec. (If Quebec had Alberta’s oilsands, does anyone really think the federal Liberals would have signed on to the transparently bogus Kyoto Accord?)

For more serious reading about how deeply flawed and dishonest the argument for global warming really is, we’d direct readers to Lawrence Solomon’s “The Deniers” series in the National Post, and his excellent new book by the same name, which both profile scientists whose work and commitment to truth over careerism turned them into global warming skeptics.

Another place to look for a contrarian view is Polish scientist Zbigniew Jaworowski’s paper CO2: the greatest scientific scandal of our time, downloadable at warwickhughes.com.

These latest clunker green ideas for carbon taxes are from the same brain trust that thoughtlessly pushed for subsidies and other regulatory advantages for economically dubious biofuel production. The redirection of corn and other crops into ethanol production has helped push food prices through the roof, deeply hurting the billion or so people on this planet who work just to eat and have the most rudimentary shelter. Thanks in part to ethanol proponents, we’re living again in an age of food riots and emergency food rationing in developing countries around the world.

It’s true that humanity has a disturbing tendency towards mindless consumption. But much of what passes for environmentalism today is actually socialism dressed up as environmentalism to make it more palatable to a public that’s rightly concerned about pollution.

It’s no coincidence that just about every wide-ranging proposal for change by environmentalists would result in higher taxes and bigger government, and declining personal freedom and responsibility — the exact consequences of socialism.

It’s satisfying to see ordinary Canadians’ strong negative reaction to these two latest green initiatives. They’re catching onto the scam, and politicians should take heed.

• Ave atque vale–those active in the Australian mining scene said a final farewell to Kevin Andrusiak, who died in Sydney of an apparent heart attack at age 33. A gifted, genial and hard-working reporter, Andrusiak did a super job covering the mining beat for The Australian and the Kalgoorlie Miner before that.

Send your Letters-to-the-Editor and other op-ed submissions to the Editor at: tnm@northernminer.com, fax: (416) 510-5137, or 12 Concorde Pl., Suite 800, Toronto, ON M3C 4J2.