This morning, I caught an interview with Ontario Minister of
Environment, Conservation and Parks Rod Phillips.
In a previous post on this thread, I noted the disproportionate
attention given to household basement flooding. Turns out the Minister
has recently experienced basement flooding personally. I suspect that
says a lot about the depth of thinking that has gone into environmental
policy in the Doug Ford government.
In recent memory, Minister Phillips has criticized carbon tax plans as
being ineffective (despite widespread evidence and economic theory -
recently garnering a Nobel prize saying the carbon tax is the most
effective tool to promote behavioural change). He was asked how his
'plan' would be more effective, which led to verbal floundering and no
real answer. When asked how the reverse auction tool would work,
especially in light of exemptions for many large emitters, pretty much
crickets. When asked where the money would come from to fund the Carbon
Trust (as it won't be funded by a carbon tax, cap-and-trade fund or GHG
reductions allowances), the eventual, tortured answer is: taxpayers.
Uh-huh, another win for the For Gouging the People party.
So to recap. "No carbon tax", except the one on large emitters, so
essentially the entire Ontario economy. "No price on carbon" except the
one which has to exist for the reverse GHG emissions auction to work.
"Polluters will pay" unless they are large emitters competing in the
international market (Ontario is a trading jurisdiction, and pretty much
no large businesses located here don't compete internationally -
automotive, oil refining, steel, aluminum, electricity, electrical
equipment manufacturing, other industrial manufacturing, lumber ...) No
price signal to consumers. The new bureaucracy will be funded by
Ontario taxpayers, not by a pricing disincentive on GHG emissions.
From Leaders to Laggards. Sigh. Perhaps it's time to resurrect Green
Tags in Ontario. And back to personal projects to reduce energy
consumption and switch even further into renewables.
On 11/30/2018 4:51 PM, Darryl McMahon wrote:
https://prod-environmental-registry.s3.amazonaws.com/2018-11/EnvironmentPlan.pdf
The tone is set at the end of page 2 (Minister's Message), where Rod Phillips throws in the towel on addressing climate change, taking leadership on reducing GHG emissions and tells Ontarians to brace for the catastrophic climate change consequences to come. (Notably flooding; flooding gets a lot of coverage in this document. Spoiler alert, this government is not going to help you with that; they just want you to prepare for it.)
