To whom it may concern - It…

To whom it may concern -

It’s unfortunate that you are cancelling cap and trade.

That said, I do not point blame squarely at the government for this decision. The government responded to the views of voters. Blame should therefore rest upon those who helped give climate action negative connotations in a couple of ways.

The first is vernacular: Cap and Trade has been conflated with a carbon tax. These are very different mechanisms - and cap and trade is superior for many reasons - yet the terms are often used interchangeably. Surprisingly, there was a time when carbon tax wasn’t on the radar in Canada. But a range of economists and think tanks wonks took it upon themselves to add it to the discourse. Ontarians disappointed by the cancellation of cap and trade should therefore be blaming these actors for leaving their ivory towers, becoming involved in public policy, and injecting a toxic term like carbon tax into our public discourse where it could be used to the detriment of cap and trade.

Second is the Green Energy Act (GEA): many of those same economists and think tank wonks helped develop the Green Energy Act - the worst designed renewable energy program in the world. Like a carbon tax over cap and trade, these economists preferred a Feed in Tariff over other incentive mechanisms because it allows them, rather than the market, to set the price of environmental attributes. Worse, these same economists let the government use ratepayer resources in a bold, and failed, policy experiment of renewables policy as industrial policy given domestic content requirements.

In short, cap and trade became the innocent victim of voter angst against both the GEA and carbon taxes.

Since economists and think tanks are responsible for the GEA and carbon tax lexicon they should be held to account in some way. During the Liberal reign some of these people moved from universities and think tanks to MOE. These people should be identified within MOE and there employment revoked.

We cannot ever tackle climate change with these people involved in our public policy. While they probably had good intentions, their policy prescriptions are so demonstrably bad and unpopular that they need to take a break from it all for the good of the planet.