Good suggestion re reading up on NEP; when you wrote 'it would be foolish and dangerous to tear our country apart by recklessly punishing, say, Alberta', history of the NEP didn't inform me, though I'm aware of equalization payments and views about them.
That said, my own arguments stand up pretty well.
Your article seemed in two parts and "the status quo isn't an option" is still a very good conclusion to the first. And I still would have ended there. (Cold beverage still stands too.)
Who is being foolish and dangerous? Now I know, and it's not the hysterical hysterics in the first part of the article. It's the federal Liberals - who seemed to sneak out of the woodwork in part two.
And putting wealth above health and the environment is not common sense in my book, or post.
Cheers, Gord Harrison
Mr. Goldstein responded in less than 2 hours. The man never sleeps.
Putting wealth above health and the environment?
You might want to talk to folks like Kenyan economist James Shikwati, who exposes such simplistic slogans for the nonsense they are.
As he argues, for people living in the first world like you and me, to lecture people in the third world not to use their fossil fuels to elevate their standard of living - which is what we did in the industrial revolution and which is why we live in what's called the first world today - is akin to asking Africans to commit economic suicide.
The reason is that the availability of electricity and energy through the use of fossil fuels, which lies at the heart of the entire debate about global warming, is the key to societal advancement.
As Shikwati notes, without electricity, people must stop working when the sun goes down, meaning lower productivity.
Without electricity, people must rely on firepits to heat and light their homes as well as to cook their food - resulting in the premature death of millions of Africans and others living throughout the third world every year, particularly children, from the air pollution that goes into their lungs every day as a result.
Without electricity, a country cannot develop an industrial base and thus is doomed to perpetually high unemployment levels.
Without electricity, people cannot store food or medicines effectively, which usually must be stored at certain minimum or maximum temperatures, lest they spoil or themselves become sources of disease.
Without electricity, you can never have effective, clean hospitals or sterile environments.
That's why Shikwati calls it counselling suicide when smug first worlders who think they're environmentalists come to Africa lecturing it not to do what the West has done to improve its own standard of living - make use of fossil fuels to provide electricity and energy.
You can't just look at the theoritical risk of climate change in isolation, which is what the Al Gore Nation foolishly does.
You have to weigh that against the known risks, economic and social, of arbitrarily reducing the use of fossil fuels, or of pricing them so high that no one can afford them, given that renewable energy resources and carbon capturing are years away from becoming either practical or affordable.
Finally, whose "wealth" are you talking about in the First World?
Do you think everyone in Canada is rich?
Carbon taxes are a tax on consumption and such taxes are regressive in that they are flat taxes, unlike income tax which increase as incomes rise.
That's why consumption taxes disproportionately hurt the poor.
Finally, simple restating that in your opinion your thesis holds up isn't defending your thesis.
Any competent university professor could explain to you why it isn't.
If you want to debate these issues seriously, perhaps you should do a little more research.
Cheers,
LG
Research. That’s a big one.
Wealth vs health. Sustainable development. Where should I begin?
Be sure to read Mr. Goldstein’s point of view in the London Free Press on June 9 (A hot summer doesn’t mean we’re doomed) and my first response in the post below.
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