A plan to reduce carbon…

A plan to reduce carbon emissions is a good idea. A few suggestions follow:
1. Since this plan closely resembles the plan scrapped just recently, there needs to be a full audit of the costs involved in the cancellation of the Liberal's cap and trade regime and this one. By rights it would be done by the Environmental Commissioner's office though the financial implication should also involve the Auditor General.
2. Since Ontario's forests may in fact be emitting carbon rather than removing it from the atmosphere, there need to be more aggressive targets to cut back on carbon production as well as to plant new trees whose growing phase will absorb much more of it. Dead and rotting trees don't help the carbon balance.
3. There need to be incentives for small businesses including farms to remove carbon emissions. In the case of farms, that could and should be support for bio-digestion for the production of fuel and soil amendments. Given support only to large businesses means that small business will wither in the disadvantageous environment in which which large businesses are in line for breaks.
4. There need to be incentives for the production, use and purchase of low-carbon vehicles. The world is moving rapidly there. For Ontario to be competitive in production and therefore jobs, means there needs to be sales of product.
5. Similarly, there needs to be more places to fuel an alternative fuel vehicle - electric, hydrogen or synthetic compressed gas (see also #3).
6. Since concrete uses and emits huge amounts of carbon in its production, Ontario road construction needs to move away from "white-top" dramatically, and reduce cement in other infrastructure uses through a mix of "green procurement", incentives and even disincentives.
7. Dumps emit massive methane amounts. A total ban on organics in dumps will remedy that while helping make lands more fertile thus boosting food production and the economy. With a rising American dollar and walls of various kinds around the USA, it is only wise to produce and consume more local food. Incentives to do so could include support for food recovery, windrow composting, anaerobic composting (as in bio-digestion again).
8. Hauling garbage all over and out of the province is a carbon waste. It's treatment, beginning with significant reduction, needs to be relocalized so that communities take care of their own. There are jobs and other economic benefits to this too.
9. Landfills are a significant part of the climate-change problem and need to cease expansion or new approvals.