Climate Catastrophe

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Fair play

Utter hypocrisy, more like.

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as a gardener, I can attest that artificial fertilizer is what’s WRONG with food production.

nope. bullshit.

exactly. I love how this “Carbon Tax” has come about and is increasing. I live in a country that’s Carbon negative, we produce more oxygen than carbon dioxide here. and how the f*** is a government tax going to help the environment?

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Hmm…well, the UK is at the forefront among large developed economies striving to reach a net zero target as soon as possible as well as supporting developing nations so I don’t see how Johnson exhorting large developed nations to do more for poorer countries is either hypocritical or “bullshit”.

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Canada is nowhere close to carbon-negative, and our forests have been at best marginal as a carbon sink for years now. Worse, we are living on top of one of the truly frightening negative feedback loops in the permafrost. There is an enormous amount of methane trapped in the permafrost of the North, and it is becoming un-trapped rather quickly. Per capita, we were already one of the worst countries in the world. If we start accounting for those passive methane emissions, we are up there with Saudi Arabia.

As for how the tax helps the environment, well, the revenue doesn’t, and ideally there would be other corresponding tax cuts. Not going to happen with this government, to be sure. But carbon pricing definitely does, it is just marginal at $30/tonne. My neighbour with an F150 complained bitterly about the effect on gas prices (A teacher, FFS, no real need for an F150) but it made him think about a more efficient vehicle for commuting.

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Having participated in those discussions for years until about a decade ago, I have never really understood the relevance of those funds.

The developed nations are expected to make the emissions reductions, which is only fair in light of per capita emissions. Those nations need to bear those costs. Any successful climate agreement must get the developed nations and the major emitters to agree on reductions.

The less developed major emitters need only agree on their share of the burden. That is complicated, but understandable. Some measure of support to assist energy transitions in some of those emitters is negotiable, though by and large, most of those countries are fairly wealthy.

The developing nations, on the other hand, have made it an article of faith that they bear no responsibility for reductions. On a per capita basis, that is actually fair. Where I have a question is why are they then important to a global deal? There is no quid pro quo, yet somehow the funds to be made available to them are critical? What would happen if there was a round of UN climate talks where they just didn’t show up? What different outcome would occur?

Those funds have been slow to come into existence because every government in the world that is expected to provide them know full well they are close to useless, simply adding an extra cost onto transition costs. They were agreed to solely because of the absurd decision process of the UN conventions, which have achieved almost nothing in damn near 30 years. Had the 2005 G8 summit at Gleneagles not been interrupted, we probably would have seen far more progress outside the UN.

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yes, but much of that is our of our control. the invasion of the Pine Beetle, and forest fires which occur naturally account for a LOT of that CO2 release that happens naturally

https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/forests/state-canadas-forests-report/disturbance-canadas-forests/indicator-carbon-emissions-removals/16552

Right, but if you want to count the carbon sinks, you have to count the stuff that happens to the carbon sinks.

yeah, I get it. but we’re really not the problem here Arminius. Why is a country like Canada forcing it’s citizens to pay taxes, whilst promoting investment in China who are BY FAR the worst offenders in the world when it comes to carbon footprint? refer to Doing business in China

it’s theivery, plain and simple.

The only reason China is worse than Canada is there are more Chinese people than there are Canadians. A lot more. We are at close to 20 tonnes per annum per inhabitant, in the developed world only the Aussies are worse - and the other countries around us produce a lot more oil per capita. China is at 8.87 tonnes per person, so how are they worse? A world of 7 billion Canadians doesn’t support life past about 2040.

As for promoting investment in China, well, agreed, but that would be the case without climate change. State-sponsored hostage taking gets me there by itself.

That said, as a major emitter (the major emitter now, really), a global deal has to include China in some capacity, or it is pointless. Per capita, Chinese emissions are now into about the same range as Germany’s (9.72) and no one would think of excluding Germany from a global day.

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our GGE is on the decline. #1 and #2 on the list of reasons are directly as a result of living in this country. Cold Climate (heating) and long distances (transportation). No amount of taxation is going to fix those two. the amount of fuel that my industry (logistics) uses to move food and goods across the country would blow your mind.

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Agreed about where the emissions are. But looking at cold climate, we compare poorly with other developed cold-climate economies, largely due to crap building standards in past generations. Hence the building retrofit programs, which have to happen but aren’t particularly cost-effective. Transport, again, look at the miserable percentage of Canadians who use rail/subway for commuting, let alone intercity travel. We have a crappy infrastructure that was built for and locks us into incredibly GHG-intensive transport usage…and then my dumbass neighbour drives a F150 (empty bed, natch) to his white-collar job every day…then complains about the price of gas.

As for the second…those are projections, and those graphs are very much ‘jam tomorrow’. Every external analysis of the plans needed to make those trajectories happen has stated the policy measures are inadequate. Real emissions aren’t going down, actual 2019 was 730 Mt, higher than the December 2017 prediction. This government keeps congratulating itself for future events, not actual accomplishment…then building pipelines. Absolutely no one truly believes that 580 Mt in 2030 target was going to happen.

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I had to look up what an F150 was. I kind of want one. If only oil was a renewable that didn’t kill the planet when consumed.

my wife has forbidden me from owning a truck, but we own a house on a 1/4 acre lot. so I have a 4x8 utility trailer which is used to dispose of yard waste, getting firewood for our home heating (we primarily use a high-efficiency furnace but sometimes will have a fire in the fireplace. I pull it with a Santa Fe 2.0T.

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Covert it to electric.

Already done

https://www.ford.ca/trucks/f150/f150-lightning/2022/

Of course, only as clean as your grid. Thinking about Quebec usage, that is pretty clean.

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