Carbon levy won’t save the planet

Sowing doubt about climate change was wrong; however, the right’s current rhetoric is right. Our entire way of life does indeed run almost entirely on fossil fuels. I agree with Rachael Harder, a carbon levy will do little to address this; albeit it won’t kill “the economy.”

We’ve used cheap, abundant fossil-fuel energy to produce cheap and abundant food, speed up the pace and scale of life, mechanize everything, ship everything everywhere, exploit cheap labour, make cheap crap (China’s emissions are our own), and fuel endless economic “growth.”

Alternative energy sources cannot power the world we know. And as we run out of the cheap, easy stuff, it’s taking more energy to get energy, exponentially increasing emissions despite small efficiency gains. To address climate change we have to imagine a different world, and possibly a better one.

A world without cheap energy would entail human-scaled, lowinput food systems. It would entail once again using human hands and feet to get around and do everyday tasks. It would entail going back to small, local economies and communities. It would entail rediscovering the lost arts of gardening, sharing and thrift. Put simply, it would entail restructuring our relationship to the land, and one another, in a way more in tune with human nature and what we find meaningful. This is a truer form of wealth (and well-being) than that measured by the standards of the fictional dogma we call “the economy,” which is really just a global cabal that extorts us all and an idea used to limit meaningful discourse.

Albeit Stephen Harper didn’t deliver the regulatory approach promised to reduce emissions, such is necessary. Oil companies have warmed up to carbon pricing because it’s better than the alternative: regulation. But when we learned DDT, leaded gasoline, and asbestos were harmful, we didn’t tax them; we banned them. Similar meaningful restrictions are warranted for fossil fuels.

Tanner Broadbent

Lethbridge