Far As the Eye Can See!

Dion’s proposed carbon tax has everyone in a tizzy. Its not a bad idea in and off itself, the only problem is its about twenty years to late.

The point of a carbon tax would be to ween society off of fossil fuels by making other options more economical. Also, proceeds would go to create a new sustainable infrastructures that people could switch too. Thing is, to really work it has to be in place BEFORE oil prices skyrocket. You know, ease the blow, create a smooth transition of rising cost rather then smack people with a sudden skyrocketing and no well established alternative to turn too.

To put an extra cost burden on fuel, even if it is compensated for with other tax adjustments, makes living and doing business in Canada that much more difficult. You may know that your getting a tax break elsewhere but people still need to save money, and cutting back on fuel will become a significant way to do so. This may be the whole point of a carbon tax but putting it in at this late a date presents some problems.

Adding extra cost for people to buy fuel on top of the record high prices is ludicrous, especially for the poor and working class who are stuck in an oil based system and have no choice but to forgo other expenses in order to meet essential fuel needs.

Canadians have large essential fuel needs. We’re cold so we need heating, we have an increasing amount of snow to plow, we’re fucking huge geographically and spread out very thin so we need to drive and fly around more then probably anyone else in the world. Also, due to gentrification many working class people are forced to live outside of the city they work in and have to commute. Many small business owners also have no choice but to drive trucks and van’s and other fuel guzzlers. You cannot blame them, or tax them, for not being able to afford a million dollar condo and a brand new hybrid.

An increasing number of people are living with increasingly tight budgets thanks to our selling out of good paying manufacturing jobs for the shitty serve the rich jobs that are replacing them. These people will likely benefit little from other tax adjustments but will still need to buy fuel to live and so have to pay into the carbon tax while not being able to afford the luxury of low fuel consumption. As well, a fuel tax would affect food, clothes, tools and other essentials which will again hit the poor harder then the rich.

Your barren waste land or mine?

What we need is something other then a consumer oil tax. We need a producer oil tax.

Major producers of Carbon emmissions should indeed be penalized, but we also need a tax on the production of carbon based fuel. They should be paying for the flooding of our markets with cheap dirty fuel. The oil bums may bitch and moan but can you really take them seriously when oil companies have record breaking levels of profit, and not just industry based profit records but records in entire history of profit, records that they re-break every year. (To think that they could beat out the East India Company or the Spanish crown’s rape of South America!)

Yummy!

They are rolling in retarded amount of cash as the cost to produce oil remains the same yet the price per barrel continually rises. So they should pay for the carbon producing product, bare the burden of the filth they put out on the market, not the consumer who as yet has little choice whither to buy fossil fuel or not.
On top of this there should also be a water tax. This is not for water use so much as for stressing water.

For too long we have had a pretty lackadaisical approach to water use. If someone breaks an environmental law involving water, they first have to get caught by an underfunded and often neutered enforcement agency and then maybe they get fined but that’s okay because the money made from contaminating the water is much more then the little fine that had to be paid. Besides, the company can just go defunct and leave that huge expensive mess for the tax payer to clean up.

But what if we we’re to put this into our tax structure. Not paying taxes or cooking the books is taken a lot more seriously then slap on the hand environmental fines.

Major users of water would have to keep accounts of everything their water is subjected to, everything put in, taken out, where it came from, where its going. Then an accounting system would tally water taxes far all the stress and damage to our water or water systems.

Proceeds could then go to protecting, cleaning and managing our water which is central to the well being of every living thing in every eco-system in the known universe, including us.

Permanently toxifying water would involve astronomical taxes, as would damaging water sheds, head waters, or wet lands. Not that these shouldn’t be protected by sever limitations and steadfast regulation but we will always need to use some water and right now companies are doing these things with little thought or repercussion.

Water use would then have the funding and the clout of tax authorities who could audit water use, see if it is breaking water use regulations or if water use is being properly recorded and paid for. Also, politicians may gut our environmental regulators but no government is going to cripple its tax collectors. Also, the environmental issues become more integrated into doing business and less an afterthought.

I’m no expert on these things and could be entirely wrong but where are our politicians with effective and timely solutions? Something needs to be done soon. Once these resources are destroyed they are gone for good. We will never get back those lakes after the mining companies are through with them and Alberta will likely have no potable water left at all if the tar sands has its way. These things cannot be undone. Its about time our politicians got off their asses and started to confront these things before its too late.