Over the years, so many in the Credentialed Media have called for carbon taxes and cap and trade programs. Here’s the latest, as the editorial board of the Toronto Star makes their case
Canada needs to set a price on carbon, once and for all: Editorial
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau knows it. Most Canadians know it. And Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne and most of the premiers know it.
We need to put a serious price on carbon to do our bit to keep the Earth from getting too warm, and inflicting havoc on much of the planet in the form of melting ice caps, freakish weather, heat waves, droughts and floods.
So it’s discouraging that Trudeau and the premiers could not agree at their get-together in Vancouver this past week on a “pan-Canadian framework†to peg the price of carbon at $15 a tonne, $30 a tonne or some other modest but credible figure to deter fossil fuel consumption.
Instead, they punted the decision into the fuzzy future. Despite our heady pledges at theUnited Nations climate conference in Paris a few months ago, Canada will be going green no time soon.
Now, something interesting occurred to me: all the carbon taxes and such that the Credentialed Media calls for would not apply to the TV, Internet, and paper news business. This always applies to Other People. Yet, think of the vast amounts of energy, resources, and fossil fuels needed for the news sector to do their jobs. The Toronto Star needs vast amounts of fossil fuels to gather the news, then deliver their papers. They use vast amounts of paper, which comes from killing trees, to publish their paper. Think of all the energy needed to gather the news, produce the news, then disseminate it, both in dead tree edition and on the Internet. Think of all the resources needed to keep the reporters up and running, as well as the buildings and vehicles. This is all super-bad for climate change.
Hence, I suggest that any news organization that has recommended any sort of carbon tax and/or a cap and trade scheme be subject to
- a carbon tax of $45 a metric ton of carbon pollution
- a surcharge of 35 cents per liter/gallon of gasoline purchased by a news organization
- a road tax of 2 cents per mile traveled for all employees during their work day and on company vehicles
- a tax of $1 per pound of paper used to make newspapers
- a requirement that all news organizations upgrade their buildings so that they are 100% LEED compliant
- all helicopters used to gather news can only use biofuels
- and none may raise the cost of their services/products
Those are very modest proposals, are they not? Reasonable, right? Surely, those who advocate for carbon taxes and/or cap and trade schemes would be willing to participate, right?
