Breathless in Glasgow

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Nov 21

The drama teacher in charge of the Canadian government told COP26 in his breathiest voice of the splendors of his tax on pollution, by which he meant the carbon tax.  The tax will eventually be raised (by others) to $170 per tonne, and he recommended a world carbon tax to achieve net zero by 2035.

The world leaders did not get to COP26 (or skipped it) by being as foolish, and Mr. Trudeau’s remarks received mere perfunctory applause.  The applause you get when your speech finally ends.  To whom will this global carbon tax be paid?  Will India, Russia, and China pay it?  To whom will the tax receipts be distributed?  Who gets to decide?  So many unanswered questions!

Mr. Trudeau referred to carbon dioxide as a pollutant.  It is not.  It is an essential component of the atmosphere, and plant life could not exist without it.  Animal life could not exist without plant life to begin the food chain.  The content of CO2 in the atmosphere has varied over hundreds of millions of years, being 7000 ppm at the beginning of the Cambrian explosion of life, as low as 180 ppm, and presently is 400 ppm.

The figure of $170 per tonne of carbon as a tax is an admission of failure.  $20 per tonne was supposed to do something, and then $30.  Now it’s $170 to get the attention of those commuters to Toronto.  And it will be Trudeau’s successor who has to play the grim reaper of the carbon tax.  Trudeau takes the credit, and his successor takes the blame.

-30-