Carbon tax is necessary

Re: Moe’s commentary on greenhouse gas emissions issue (SP, Aug. 2)

Premier Moe recently asked for “collegial” discussion on the issue of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time he declares the proposed federal carbon tax as a “poison” and unconstitutional.

Premier Moe’s alternatives in reducing greenhouse gases relies heavily on passive circumstance inherent in his “Prairie Resilience” platform. For example, carbon sequestration by means of zero-till agriculture and carbon stored in Saskatchewan’s northern forests as well as uranium exports to other countries count only marginally in efforts to recuse existing high levels of emissions in the province.

Premier Moe also makes reference to the Boundary Dam billion-dollar carbon capture facility.

This project, although it does have some merit, nevertheless is an expensive and ultimately selfdefeating response as it requires the continued use and expansion of fossil fuel resources.

We need alternative models that render fossil energy less and less necessary over a reasonable time period.

We also need a more proactive policy that would make possible achieving the Paris Climate Accord goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

A carbon tax is an effective, and transparent method (however inconvenient and unpopular it may be) to reduce these emissions as part of a local and global strategy.

Global warming is a crisis that needs to be dealt with as a crisis.

Paul Sopuck, Saskatoon