Last week, many Canadian conservatives were cheering the news that Manitoba was choosing to entirely reject the federal government’s carbon levy program, instead sticking with their “Made-Manitoba Climate and Green Plan.”
At last, the tide is turning! Soon we shall defeat the tyrannical Liberals and their unjust efforts to battle climate change, which threatens to destroy human civilization within a couple generations. Huzzah!
I could go on for hours about how climate change is now universally-accepted among scientists, or how many are now researching how to mitigate its absolute worst effects — the flooding of coastal cities, the loss of farmland, the acidification of our oceans killing coral reefs, the thawing of permafrost, etc.
But you either accept that climate change is real and likely catastrophic, or you reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. And if you fall in the latter camp, I don’t have the column space, debate skills or patience to convince you otherwise.
Instead, I just want to talk about the actual wisdom of Manitoba Premier Brian Palliser’s decision, since our own upcoming provincial election is essentially a plebiscite on Alberta’s climate change plan and carbon levy.
First off, Manitoba isn’t just rejecting the federal government’s carbon levy on purely ideological grounds, as the United Conservative Party promises to do if elected.
The province actually did seek out the advice of a legal scholar at the University of Manitoba, whose opinion was that rejecting the federal carbon levy had no chance of standing up in court UNLESS Manitoba presented its own plan.
But that’s still committing to a costly legal battle against the federal government that has no guarantee of going in Manitoba’s favour.
And what about this Made-in Manitoba plan (which fully acknowledges that climate change is real and being accelerated by greenhouse gas emissions from humans)? It has four pillars, but the one that matters in the context of this column is the climate pillar.
Manitoba makes the argument that the province already has one of the cleanest electricity grids in the world, and they can further reduce carbon emissions through further investments in renewable energy. It also proposes to create a new agency (Efficiency Manitoba) to help residents make households more energy-efficient.
It’s not unlike Alberta’s climate plan, except Manitoba makes no allowance for a carbon levy, so these measures have to rely on money drawn from public coffers; in fact, Manitoba is now having to scrap a planned income tax break because it needs money for its climate change strategy.
Also, without a carbon levy, Manitobans have no real incentive to actually reduce their energy bills. That includes the big polluters who produce the most greenhouse gas emissions, though the Liberals were, admittedly, proposing giving them a little slack.
Carbon levies just make sense if we want to combat climate change. Even if Manitoba (and potentially Alberta) wins their battle against the feds, all they’ve gained is the opportunity to make the future a considerably worse place.
