Ignoring Climate Change Will Not Make it Go Away

British environmental activist and author, George Monbiot, gives Stephen Harper and the Conservatives a place of honour in his book Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning

Thanks to the efforts of Mr Harper and your environment minister, Rona Ambrose, Canada's global reputation is now beginning to catch up with its performance. When they say that Canada cannot reach its Kyoto targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, they mean that they do not intend to try. Their surrender within the first few months in office is an astonishing instance of political cowardice. Having presented himself to the Canadian people as a man who can make tough choices, Harper declared himself an irresolute wimp as soon as he was faced with a choice between upsetting a few industrial lobbyists or helping to save the planet. Keeping Canada's promise to cut emissions by 6%, he says, is just too hard. When I first heard that, I couldn't help bursting into bitter laughter. (1)

Stephen Harper didn't try because he doesn't believe in the science of climate change. In fact he doesn't believe in science at all. How else could you explain his appointment of a creationist to the science portfolio?

But denying climate change doesn't mean that it will just correct itself.

The image at the top of the page is from a billboard going into the climate change summit in Copenhagen in 2009. The world was taking notice and the world was not impressed. And in Copenhagen we won not only many Colossal Fossil awards of the day, but ran off with the top prize. The Colossal Fossil of the summit.



And not simply because of our inaction on climate change, but because Harper tried to sabotage the negotiations.

And in an attempt to rescue our reputation, the prime minister ... well ... did nothing. In fact he missed most of the conference, instead arriving with wealthy oil execs to have lunch with the Queen of Denmark.

And when he was reminded that smaller nations were being devastated by global warming, he made one of the most shocking statements ever to come out of a world leader, let alone a Canadian pm:

"This may be a shock," Harper said last month in the House of Commons, "but the negotiators Canada assigns to international negotiations (like Copenhagen) are there to represent the interests of Canada, not the interests of Mali."

With that statement he painted Canadians as cold and heartless.

We are a nation now being defined by the Tar Sands. And it is giving not only Canada but Alberta a black eye.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has often referred to Canada as an emerging "energy superpower" due largely to the development of the Alberta oil sands. But what has been the long-term legacy of fossil fuel development in Alberta -- the epicenter of the Canadian conservative movement and Harper's political powerbase?

Deficits, foolish giveaways to corporations at the expense of taxpayers, and environmental "carnage" without funds to fix it, according to Allan Warrack, a former minister in the Alberta government who nearly 40 years ago helped craft the province's plan for saving and intelligently investing its oil wealth.

And putting his entire focus on the Alberta oil patch has been misguided at best. Goldman Sachs is now warning their clients not to invest in Canada:

A Goldman Sachs strategist has told investors that it is time to dump their Canadian stocks, so they can avoid suffering losses in the short term as oil prices decline.Noah Weisberger told investors Tuesday that Canadian stocks "made new highs last week, even as growth jitters and higher energy prices were constraining equity markets elsewhere."

But he advised Goldman Sachs clients to drop their Canadian holdings as "risks to the forward view of economic growth are more balanced as are the risks to oil prices."

And Harper's pipeline plans will flow all the good jobs South, even though apparently they don't want them.

And his entire environmental platform is a fraud. It's why he appointed fraudster Bruce Carson to write copy for the Tar Sands and their so-called "ethical oil".

George Monbiot wrote a piece for the UK Guardian: Canada's image lies in tatters. It is now to climate what Japan is to whaling. In it he says of Canada:

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Kate Heartfield wrote last week for the Ottawa Citizen: John Baird rewrites history In it she calls out Baird for his flip-flop on cap-and-trade.

In her closing statement she says: "Granted, the Liberals have changed their carbon-pricing policy too since the last election (from the tax shift in 2008 to cap and trade now) but at least they're being honest about it."

The Liberals were left with no alternative. Stephen Harper, with the help of Jack Layton, made "carbon tax" akin to poison. Which is sad because a carbon tax is a much better initiative.

It is open, transparent and can be made revenue neutral, which is exactly what the Green Shift was. But sadly, in 2008, both the Conservatives and NDP campaigned against it, as a "tax on everything".

It helped them politically but greatly damaged our chance at reversing the trend.

Now the media is giving the Conservatives a free pass on the environment, simply because they are claiming they will do what Obama does, knowing full well that the Tea Party/Republicans are severely tying his hands.

One of the budget measures they insisted on was the gutting of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, mimicking our own government's gutting of environmental protection, under the guise of removing red tape.

It's fitting that Monbiot referred to the Harper government as "a chimpanzee's tea party". The Canadian version of the Koch Brothers Tea Party.

You do the math.

And when you're done make sure you vote on May 2, and vote wisely. Our reputation depends on it.

Sources:

1. Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning, By George Monbiot, 2006, Random House, ISBN: 13-978-0-385-66221-5

Harper Lay Off the Sleeping Pills. There's a Climate Wake-Up Call!

Knowing that Canada is now dead last on climate change initiatives is dreadful, but knowing that our own government doesn't believe in the science of global warming is catastrophic. We have got to get rid of these bums immediately. Mr. I'd rather eat donuts has got to go.

Global ice melt worsening
September 23, 2009
SETH BORENSTEIN
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON – New satellite information shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica continue to shrink faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode.

British scientists for the first time calculated changes in the height of the vulnerable but massive ice sheets and found them especially worse at their edges. That's where warmer water eats away from below. In some parts of Antarctica, ice sheets have been losing 30 feet a year in thickness since 2003, according to a paper published online Thursday in the journal Nature.

Some of those areas are about a mile thick, so they've still got plenty of ice to burn through. But the drop in thickness is speeding up. In parts of Antarctica, the yearly rate of thinning from 2003 to 2007 is 50 per cent higher than it was from 1995 to 2003.

These new measurements, based on 50 million laser readings from a NASA satellite, confirm what some of the more pessimistic scientists thought: The melting along the crucial edges of the two major ice sheets is accelerating and is in a self-feeding loop. The more the ice melts, the more water surrounds and eats away at the remaining ice.

"To some extent it's a runaway effect. The question is how far will it run?" said the study's lead author, Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey. "It's more widespread than we previously thought."

The study doesn't answer the crucial question of how much this worsening melt will add to projections of sea level rise from man-made global warming. Some scientists have previously estimated that steady melting of the two ice sheets will add about 3 feet, maybe more, to sea levels by the end of the century. But the ice sheets are so big it would probably take hundreds of years for them to completely disappear.

As scientists watch ice shelves retreat or just plain collapse, some thought the problem could slow or be temporary. The latest measurements eliminate "the most optimistic view," said Penn State University professor Richard Alley, who wasn't part of the study.

The research found that 81 of the 111 Greenland glaciers surveyed are thinning at an accelerating, self-feeding pace.

The key problem is not heat in the air, but the water near the ice sheets, Pritchard said. The water is not just warmer but its circulation is also adding to the melt.

"It is alarming," said Jason Box of Ohio State University, who also wasn't part of the study.

Worsening data, including this report, keep proving "that we're underestimating" how sensitive the ice sheets are to changes, he said.

A Video Kingston's Brian Abrams Should Watch Because He Was Wrong About Carbon Tax

This is an important video for Kingston's Brian Abrams, Conservative candidate for the upcoming federal election. Last time around he joined the lies of his Party and tried to claim that the Carbon tax would hurt the economy and raise the price of everything.

However, the fact is that the Carbon tax would have been revenue neutral, while the Conservative 'Cap and Trade" will be paid for by the consumer. In other words, US.

I hope he gets his act together and does a little research before just making stuff up.

We need immediate action on climate change, and if he's not prepared to provide answers, then the question becomes, why vote for him?

If I want to hear lies I'll go straight to the mouth of the horse; his boss, Stephen Harper.

Back to: The Brian Abrams Story: I Want to be a Potted Plant

I Am So Damn Mad at Jack Layton and the NDP NOW flogging the Carbon Tax!

The NDP will be holding their convention in Halifax this coming weekend, but are starting to roll out a potential platform.

One of their new policies will be to try to get Stephen Harper a majority, because in a scorched earth scenario, they feel that if the Conservatives completely destroy the country, we will beg the NDP to fix it. (If there's anything left to fix)

That must be it anyway, because they are apparently now devoted to cutting and pasting from the 'Ignatieff Me' website for their next election campaign.

However, that is not what has me the most upset about the whole nonsense. It's the fact that they are now claiming they only supported cap and trade because Harper did, and instead feel they should have gone with the carbon tax. Duh!!!

"In the last federal election, the NDP took the simple route of favouring cap-and-trade over carbon taxes. It ignored the fact that climate change will only ever be controlled by an across-the-board system of carbon pricing that includes both cap-and-trade and a carbon tax of some kind. A better approach would have been to support the intent of Stéphane Dion's proposal ..."

Now who's just in it for himself?

I thought Jack Layton and the NDP cared about this country and Canadians. Clearly they do not if they hid in the background while the Conservatives hammered away at the Carbon Tax, a policy that most environmentalists and economists agree is the only plan that will work to address global warming.

Well Jackie boy. Will your campaign include 'Michael Ignatieff can't run from the carbon tax?' You're already stealing Conservative rhetoric ... '34 years ... torture ... Iraq' ... without learning the facts.

What a disappointment. Tommy Douglas would be so ashamed.

Experts Say Conservative 'Cap and Trade' is a Dead Policy Walking

The video reveals the scam of the Conservatives first environmental program; emission-intensity; but their expensive and confusing 'Cap and Trade' (fancy term for a hidden carbon tax) will be devastating both to the Canadian economy and the environment.

Yet they are once again trying to use the carbon tax against the Liberals, claiming that Michael Ignatieff is trying to run away from it. They use several quotes on their Ignatieff Me site:

The Facts on Michael Ignatieff’s Carbon Tax

He was the first to call for energy taxes:

“Taxes have to rise; there is no other way” — Ignatieff on using higher taxes as “solutions” for the environment (Kingston Whig-Standard, June 10, 1991)

He campaigned for leader on imposing a carbon tax:

“We’ve also got to have popular, practical, believable policies that may involve some form of carbon tax, for example, to increase the penalties on emissions. The time for action really is now” — Ignatieff during a Liberal leadership debate (Globe and Mail, June 15, 2006)

He took credit for pushing Stéphane Dion to embrace a carbon tax:

Craig Oliver: “Now you were the first leader, as a candidate [for] leader, to talk about a carbon tax and you took a little bit [of] heat for that. Do you still believe in a carbon tax? Of course you do.

Michael Ignatieff: “I do Craig. I learned that there’s no punishment more severe in politics than being the first guy with a good idea but I’m glad, I’m glad our party seems to be moving that way.” (CTV Question Period – May 25, 2008)

Well it seems that Mr. Ignatieff knew as long as 18 years ago, what experts are only now realizing.... "those who care deeply about climate change will find that a carbon tax system has become the last, reasonable policy standing."

Those are the words of Robert Shapiro, chair and co founder of the U.S. Climate Task Force and former Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs, who has lent his voice to countless environmental experts who say that the 'cap and trade' tax will not work. Energy prices will soar and corruption will abound.

That Michael Ignatieff is a pretty smart guy.

Tax vs. Cap-Trade

April 2009 updates: Robert Shapiro, chair and co founder of the U.S. Climate Task Force and former Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs, makes a compelling political case that “the costs and lessons of the financial crisis may effectively swamp the prospects for cap-and-trade. If cap-and-trade has become a dead policy walking, those who care deeply about climate change will find that a carbon tax system has become the last, reasonable policy standing.”

CTC regards carbon taxes as superior to carbon cap-and-trade systems for six fundamental reasons:

Carbon taxes will lend predictability to energy prices, whereas cap-and-trade systems will aggravate the price volatility that historically has discouraged investments in less carbon-intensive electricity generation, carbon-reducing energy efficiency and carbon-replacing renewable energy.

Carbon taxes can be implemented much sooner than complex cap-and-trade systems. Because of the urgency of the climate crisis, we do not have the luxury of waiting while the myriad details of a cap-and-trade system are resolved through lengthy negotiations.

Carbon taxes are transparent and easily understandable, making them more likely to elicit the necessary public support than an opaque and difficult to understand cap-and-trade system.

Carbon taxes can be implemented with far less opportunity for manipulation by special interests, while a cap-and-trade system’s complexity opens it to exploitation by special interests and perverse incentives that can undermine public confidence and undercut its effectiveness.

Carbon taxes address emissions of carbon from every sector, whereas some cap-and-trade systems discussed to date have only targeted the electricity industry, which accounts for less than 40% of emissions.

Carbon tax revenues would most likely be returned to the public through dividends or progressive tax-shifting (this was Mr. Dion's Green Shift if the Conservatives hadn't made it the grim reaper), while the costs of cap-and-trade systems are likely to become a hidden tax as dollars flow to market participants, lawyers and consultants.

Carbon Taxes Will Lend Predictability to Energy Prices. With carbon taxes ramped up through a multi-year phase-in, future energy and power prices can be predicted with a reasonable degree of confidence well ahead of time. This will make it possible for literally millions of energy-critical decisions — from the design of new electricity generating plants to the purchase of the family car to the materials used in commercial airframes — to be made with full cognizance of carbon-appropriate price signals.

In contrast, a cap-and-trade program will exacerbate the volatility of energy prices since the price of carbon allowances will fluctuate as weather and economic factors affect the demand for energy. The vaunted advantage of cap-and-trade — that future levels of carbon emissions can be known ahead of time — is mostly notional, particularly if the cap-and-trade system includes a “safety-valve” for auctioning off additional carbon allowances if the price of allowances exceeds a predetermined level. And even certainty in future emission levels is of questionable value, since there is no agreed-upon trajectory of emissions for achieving climate stability and preventing disaster. The real target for which the U.S. must aim is to reduce carbon emissions as much as possible, and then more.

Carbon Taxes Will Provide Quicker Results. The taxes themselves can be designed and adopted quickly and fairly. Cap-and-trade systems, by contrast, are devilishly complex and will take years to develop and implement. Thorny issues must be addressed intellectually and resolved politically; the proper level of the cap, timing, allowance allocations, certification procedures, standards for use of offsets, penalties, regional conflicts, the inevitable requests for exceptions by affected parties and a myriad of other complex issues must all be resolved before cap-and-trade systems can be implemented. During this time, polluters will continue to emit carbon with no cost consequences.

Carbon Taxes Are Transparent and Are Easier to Understand than Cap-and-Trade. A carbon tax is transparent and easy to understand; the government simply imposes a tax per ton of carbon emitted, which is easily translated into a tax per kWh of electricity, gallon of gasoline or therm of natural gas. By contrast, the prices for carbon set under a cap-and-trade system will vary with market fluctuations and be impossible even for big business (let alone small businesses or consumers) to predict. A cap-and-trade system will require a complex and difficult to understand market structure in order to balance the many competing interests and ensure that the trading system minimizes abuse and maximizes real carbon reductions.

A Carbon Tax’s Simplicity Inoculates it Against the Perverse Incentives and Potential for Profiteering that Will Accompany Cap-and-Trade. In contrast to the simple and straightforward process of implementing a carbon tax, the protracted negotiations necessary to implement a cap-and-trade system will provide constant opportunities for the fossil fuel industry and other invested parties to shape a system that maximizes their financial self-interests as opposed to an economically efficient system that maximizes societal well-being. If allowances are allocated based on some type of baseline reflecting past pollution (which has been the practice with NOx and SO2trading programs), rather than being auctioned, polluters will have perverse incentives to maximize emissions before the cap-and-trade system goes into effect in order to “earn” those pollution rights. (The voluntary carbon cap-and-trade system currently operating has already been criticized for questionable offsets that have produced huge profits but little environmental benefit. )

Carbon Taxes Address All Sectors and Activities Producing Carbon Emissions. Carbon taxes target carbon emissions in all sectors — energy, industry and transportation — whereas at least some cap-and-trade proposals are limited to the electric industry. It would be unwise to ignore the non-electricity sectors that account for 60% of U.S. CO2 emissions.

Carbon Taxes Can Produce a Far More Equitable Result than Cap-and-Trade. As discussed in our Issue Paper, Managing the Impacts, carbon tax revenues can be returned through dividends or can be used to fund progressive tax-shifting to reduce regressive payroll or sales taxes. (Again the Liberal Green Shift) The costs of cap-and-trade systems, both implementation and the costs incurred as more expensive technologies replace older and less expensive coal-fired combustion, are far more likely to be imposed upon consumers with less possibility of rebating or tax-shifting. Moreover, because cap-and-trade relies on market participants to determine a fair price for carbon allowances on an ongoing basis, it could easily devolve into a self-perpetuating province of lawyers, economists, lobbyists and other market participants bent on maximizing their profits on each cap-and-trade transaction.

General Electric, DuPont, Alcoa, Caterpillar and other industrial pigpens this week endorsed cap-and-trade limits on carbon dioxide, which would turn their established habit of using the atmosphere as a free waste disposal into a property right, worth billions. Talk about a low-hanging fruit. They are accustomed to treating carbon dumping as a gimme. Now they’d at least be in a position to get paid for dumping less.

The dollars that will be funneled into making the market work could be better spent reducing regressive taxes, protecting poorer households and/or helping consumers use less energy.

The Conservatives 'cap and trade' is a hidden tax which will only benefit industry; while consumers will pay the bulk of the costs. Gee. Where do I sign?

Wall Street Journal Says Harper's New Cap and Trade Tax Will Hurt Economy

The Wall Street Journal says that "Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name."

As most people know the plan now being flogged by Jim Prentice is a carbon tax, that will raise the price on just about everything.

Consumer guru Ralph Nader and Canadian environmentalist Toby Heaps, co-authored a piece for the Wall Street Journal, discussing why Michael Ignatieff's and Stephan Dion's and just about everyone who knows anything about the environment's, carbon tax is the only solution to address climate change.

They agree that the Conservatives' Cap and trade tax will be expensive, chaotic and ineffective in the long run.

We Need a Global Carbon Tax
The cap-and-trade approach won't stop global warming
Wall Street journal
By RALPH NADER and TOBY HEAPS

If President Barack Obama wants to stop the descent toward dangerous global climate change, and avoid the trade anarchy that current approaches to this problem will invite, he should take Al Gore's proposal for a carbon tax and make it global.

A tax on CO2 emissions -- not a cap-and-trade system -- offers the best prospect of meaningfully engaging China and the U.S., while avoiding the prospect of unhinged environmental protectionism.

China emphatically opposes a hard emissions cap on its economy. Yet China must be part of any climate deal or within 25 years, notes Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, its emissions of CO2 could amount to twice the combined emissions of the world's richest nations, including the United States, Japan and members of the European Union.

According to the world authority on the subject, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it will cost $1.375 trillion per year to beat back climate change and keep global temperature increases to less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

Cap-and-traders assume, without much justification, that one country can put a price on carbon emissions while another doesn't without affecting trade or investment decisions. This is a bad assumption, given false comfort by the Montreal Protocol treaty, which took this approach to successfully rein in ozone-depleting gases.

Chlorofluorocarbons are not pervasive like greenhouse gases (GHGs); nor was the economy of 1987 hyperglobalized like ours today.

Good intentions to limit big polluters in some countries but not others will turn any meaningful cap into Swiss cheese. It can be avoided by relocating existing and new production of various kinds of CO2-emitting industries to jurisdictions with no or virtually no limits. This is known as carbon leakage, and it leads to trade anarchy.

How? The most advanced piece of climate legislation at the moment, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, contains provisions for retaliatory action to be taken against imports from carbon free-riding nations. Married with the current economic malaise, the temptation to slide into a righteous but runaway environmental protectionism -- which Washington's K Street lobbyists would be only too happy to grease -- would almost certainly lead to a collapse of the multilateral trading system.
This scenario was presented to the world's trade ministers last December at the United Nations climate talks in Bali by David Runnalls of the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

True, trade anarchy might reduce emissions via a massive global depression. But there would be a lot of collateral damage. Because of the sheer scale of the challenge and the state of the hyperglobalized economy, we will need the same price on carbon everywhere, or it won't work anywhere.

President Obama can define his legacy in the first 100 days by laying the groundwork for a global tax on carbon dioxide emissions that is effective, efficient, equitable and enforceable. An effective, harmonized tax on C02 emissions must stabilize the growth of atmospheric concentrations of GHGs by no later than 2020. The tax must also be adjusted annually, by a global body, according to this objective.

The IPCC has crunched the numbers and says this means a tax of about $50 levied on every metric ton of GHGs, or carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e to use their terminology). In the short-term, consumers would feel the pinch. But the tax would pave the way for cheaper, cleaner energy and ways of getting around.

The most efficient way to apply a carbon tax is at a relatively small number of major carbon bottlenecks, which cover the lion's share of GHGs. The key points where flows of carbon are the most concentrated include: trunk pipelines for gas, refineries for oil, railroad heads for coal, liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals, cement, steel, aluminum and GHG-intensive chemical plants.

Collecting and spending the bulk of revenues from a carbon tax must remain the sovereign right of participating nations. For instance, nations could decide to make the tax revenue-neutral (Dion's Greenshift would have done that) by reducing taxes on income or helping finance industrial retooling for a green economy.

However, we in the rich world must recognize our culpability for creating three-quarters of this global warming mess, as well as our greater capacity to finance industrial retooling. Thus, there could be a carrot for developing-world nations which commit to applying the phased-in carbon tax: Access to a portion of the carbon tax levies from rich countries to help preserve forests and to prepare for climate change through flood walls, improved irrigation, drought resistant crops, desalination facilities, and the like.

This is no small change: 10% of $50/metric ton CO2e carbon tax levied in all rich countries would be $100 billion per year. The stick for carbon free-riding countries would come in the form of incrementally severe penalties, leading up to countervailing duties on carbon-intensive imports.

A global carbon tax levied on a relatively small number of large sources can be monitored by satellite and checked against the annual surveillance of fiscal and economic polices already carried out by IMF staff. Thus, the accounting involved is much more precise and much less subject to the vagaries of corruption and conflict over which industries and companies get their free handouts of carbon credits -- carbon pork -- than in a cap-and-trade system.

There are three reasons why countries, such as China and India, that have traditionally resisted any notion of a common responsibility to make current polluters pay would do well to enlist in this effort.

First, while there is no limit on the downside for missing a hard cap, with a carbon tax you just pay as you go. If a fast-growing country like China accepted an emissions cap and then overshot it, they would have to purchase carbon credits on the international market. If they missed their target by a lot, carbon credits would be scarce, and purchasing them would suck dry their foreign exchange reserves in one slurp. That's why a carbon tax is much easier to swallow and, anyway, through the power of the price signal, it would produce the same desired result as a hard cap.

Second, administering billions of dollars of carbon credits in a cap-and-trade system in an already chaotic regulatory environment would invite a civil war between interest groups seeking billions in carbon credit handouts and the regulator holding the kitty. By contrast, a uniform tax on CO2 emissions levied at a small number of large sites would be relatively clear-cut. During the Montreal Protocol talks in the 1980s, India smartly balked at a suggestion to phase out CFCs in certain products and not in others because of the chaos that would result from the ambiguity.

Third, key people in China read our newspapers. They see the ominous clouds of protectionism under the guise of environmentalism in bills like Lieberman-Warner and they don't want to be harmed; neither should we, given the trillions of dollars of Treasury bills they hold. Showing compliance with a harmonized carbon tax at a small number of large bottleneck points would be child's play compared to the chaos of cap-and-trade.

If President Obama hits the ground running fast in the direction of a global carbon tax, he can usher in a new dawn that might finally make peace between man and climate.

Mr. Nader is a consumer advocate and three-time presidential candidate. Toby Heaps is the coordinator of Option 13, a campaign to help broker a successor to the Kyoto Protocol that includes all major nations.

So the Conservatives might say that Ignatieff can't run from the carbon tax on their ridiculous Ignatieff Me website, but why would he want to run from it? Harper and Prentice might want to put on some running shoes, because soon they'll have to escape from their 'Cap and Trade' tax that would "....disproportionately hurt working families and seniors living on fixed incomes".

I, Me, Stephen Harper, Can't Run From the 'Cap and Trade' Tax

So the next bit of nonsense from the Ignatieff Me website posted by a desperate Conservative Government has to do with the Carbon Tax. They did such a great job turning it into the boogey man last election, that they are going to give it one more spin around the block.

However, while they claim that Michael Igantieff can't run from the Carbon tax, the rest of the world is running toward it, and most top environmentalists agree that it is the best answer to fight climate change.

In fact, some opponents of the "cap and trade" introduced by Barack Obama, have said that his "cap and trade" is a carbon tax, because permits will have to be purchased.

When asked the question: "Do you believe that we need a carbon tax in addition to a cap-and-trade program?"

Obama answered: "I believe that, depending on how it is designed, a carbon tax accomplishes much of the same thing that a cap-and-trade program accomplishes. The danger in a cap-and-trade system is that the permits to emit greenhouse gases are given away for free as opposed to priced at auction. One of the mistakes the Europeans made in setting up a cap-and-trade system was to give too many of those permits away. So as I roll out my proposals for a cap-and-trade system, I will price permits so that it has much of the same effect as a carbon tax."

Jim Prentice has stated that he will be following the model outlined by the U.S. "Canada's Conservative government, shifting positions in the wake of Barack Obama's election as U.S. president, said on Wednesday that it would work to develop a North America-wide cap-and-trade system to limit emissions of greenhouse gases."

However, many experts suggest that if Obama is altering his "cap and trade" to function as a carbon tax, why not just call it a carbon tax and go for the full package?

The Real Price of Obama's Cap-and-Trade Plan President Obama's budget numbers depend heavily on revenues from a proposed cap-and-trade program for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Under the plan, these revenues will come at the cost of higher energy prices ....

Before the last election, Harper was telling everyone who'd listen that cleaning up the oil sands would be costly and we could expect a rise in prices on gasoline and home heating, as a result. He brought forward a form of the 'cap and trade', that MacLeans Magazine said, when compared to the Liberal Green Shift, was 'just as expensive, twice as confusing and half as effective'.

From the Wall Street Journal: "Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices who would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depending on vast new carbon revenues in his budget and Congress promising a bill by May, perhaps Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways that climate costs would be distributed across regions and income groups."

From BusinessWeek: "...Obama proposes that companies buy an allowance, or permit, for each ton of carbon emitted, at an estimated cost, to start, of $13 to $20 per ton. (Those permits could also be bought and sold.) Even at the lower range of $13 per ton, energy companies and utilities would likely pass along the added cost to consumers. It's estimated the price of gasoline would go up by 12 cents a gallon and the average electricity bill by about 7% nationally..."

I tend to agree with Green Party Spokesman John Bennett, when he says "I think the Canadian government is just trying to con the Canadian public into believing that it's going to do something about climate change".

I don't think they really have any intention of doing anything to fight climate change, but are just pretending to. Most of us believe they are just buying time, but if in fact they do adopt the U.S. 'Cap and trade' model; my friends - WE HAVE A CONSERVATIVE CARBON TAX!!!!!

Run, Harper, Run!!!!!