Ethics and the Canadian Carbon Tax.

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Oct 2018

RE: Climate change is real, and deserves more than empty rhetoric (by John Milloy, Hamilton Spectator 22 Oct 2018.  John Milloy is a former MPP and Ontario Liberal cabinet minister currently serving as the director of the Centre for Public Ethics and assistant professor of public ethics at Martin Luther University College, and the inaugural practitioner in residence in Wilfred Laurier University's Political Science department.  He is also a lecturer at the University of Waterloo.  The article in question was also published on the political hum NationalNewswatch.com)

Thwack!  Thwack!  That sound you hear is of a dead horse being beaten.

It is interesting that after more than twenty years of intense, one-sided propaganda someone still has to insist the Global Warming is real, and that we have to do something about it.  Perhaps the degradation of the groves of academe may explain why the climate alarmists aren’t being taken seriously.

Ethics is right up there with metaphysics on the hierarchy of philosophical reasoning, and Prof Milloy doesn’t understand how one can “separate the concept of a carbon tax from the threat of climate change.”  Old Aristotle would have no problem separating them because taxes and threats belong to different genera. At best, they are only accidentally related to one another.  He would recognize that a statement like “endorsed by many leading experts” is an appeal to authority, a common rhetorical device that is a logical fallacy, since even experts can be wrong.

One would think that a statement like “governments have a right to govern” would declare some principle of politics, but the tenor of Prof Milloy’s article is that the recently elected Ford government lacks the moral right to change government policy on taxation of carbon, of all things.  The selective application of ethical principles is itself unethical and unprincipled.

Empty rhetoric is all the global warming issue has been getting from politicians because there is a strong stench of deception and politicization of this “science” about it.  All the solutions, including the Paris agreement, involve the crippling of western economies while allowing India and China – the two worst emitters – to raise their national outputs unchecked through to at least the year 2030.

Even stupid politicians can see the danger to their careers if the electorate found out.

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