Comment
I urge you to withdraw this legislation. I am appalled by your cavalier approach to environmental protection and in this instance, to dismantle an effectively functioning program of the previous government to mitigate the carbon emissions that are driving the accelerating global climate disruption that we see all around us.
This legislation is not about problem solving, as governments are elected to do, but rather about destroying solutions that are working and will bring long-term benefit that far outweighs any immediate pain. The cap and trade system was working. It furthermore was acceptable to the federal government as a method of pricing carbon that could comply with the federal carbon pricing system to begin in 2019. It involved coordination with another province (QC) and an international entity (State of California), and held economic promise for global influence in dealing with the climate issue.
Since no alternative method of adequately reducing Ontario's greenhouse gas emissions is proposed, to begin to deal with the undeniable human causes of climate change, the new government perhaps prefers to believe that the problem will go away. Rather, it is human life and society as we know it that will not endure, alongside the extinction of many other life forms, from mammals to ocean coral. Check out the recent report of the International panel on climate change for an update (http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_spm_final.pdf). It's not a joke. We have perhaps a decade to undertake collective global action on an unprecedented scale to dramatically reduce emissions and take other actions to protect the complex ecosystems around planet earth that sustain life.
Again, I urge you to withdraw this legislation. Short of that, impose a rising carbon fee (not a "tax" because it would be revenue neutral) and distribute the revenues equally to all Ontarians. It's called "carbon fee and dividend", or perhaps the "carbon bonus". The collected fees could do their work in making carbon emitting products more expensive and less attractive, leading to innovative substitutions (good for Ontario entrepreneurs), and local economies would boom, because some 2/3 of lower income (and generally carbon thrifty) Ontarians would receive more $$ back than paid out in fees. Of course, some billionaires might object. But please think about it.
Climate change is real, and it is non-partisan. It will cost us more and more until we deal with it, long-term and collectively.
Submitted October 11, 2018 10:05 PM
Comment on
Bill 4, Cap and Trade Cancellation Act, 2018
ERO number
013-3738
Comment ID
10771
Commenting on behalf of
Comment status