Get serious about energy alternatives

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/11/2023 (685 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WE have all had the experience of trying to swallow something that will just not stay down.

The problem, of course, is that regurgitation just starts the cycle all over again. It never tastes any better the next time around.

I have this feeling about the federal government’s carbon tax, and the generally idiotic provincial responses to it.

This is not a new subject for me here — I probably have written on it half a dozen times — but the problem (like bad food) keeps coming back up.

Briefly: we need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or we will pay a fierce price for our foolishness. A rising tax on carbon consumption is one tool to use in what must be a comprehensive, society-wide response.

That being said, a carbon tax is unlikely to change our behaviour unless there is a clear and affordable alternative that doesn’t burn fossil fuels.

What’s more, rebating that tax to the carbon consumers is pointless, because then their incentive to change disappears.

At the beginning of then-Premier Brian Pallister’s first term, there was a multi-sector consultation at the legislature about carbon tax options. The consensus (astonishing, I know!) was to set the carbon tax revenue aside, using it to fund alternatives to fossil fuel consumption.

Even after first taking care of lower-income Manitobans (with an individual rebate), this was estimated to set aside over $200 million a year, starting seven years ago, for everything from EV charging stations, to geothermal pumps, to electric buses, to a light rail system — anything that would give consumers an alternative to using fossil fuels and paying that increasing carbon tax.

Everyone, and every sector, had to be taxed — there were no dodges for anyone, just as there are no options for living elsewhere than an overheated Earth.

And yet this idea, this consensus, died on the altar of ideology, sacrificed to political egos on all sides. Manitoba refused to cooperate with the federal government.

Seven years later, we have no good alternatives, just rising fossil fuel costs and a rapidly warming global climate that will make the bad news of 2016 look cheery in 2024.

Bluntly, it was a stupid and arrogant decision, and no amount of lobbying could get the government to change its mind. Nor could successive environment ministers (in their revolving door offices) do much about it, either, before they were spun back out onto the street.

So now we wait, wondering if the new premier and the new environment minister will double down on past mistakes they didn’t make, or whether instead wisdom and common sense will prevail.

As many different people have pleaded, we need to create alternatives to fossil fuel use, both to mitigate the effects of a changing climate, and to enhance our local resilience against an impending global catastrophe. A carbon tax, where users pay an increasing cost for not shifting to alternatives or finding a better way, is a direct and transparent way to raise the money we need to create those other options, while also pressuring those users to change.

Forget individual carbon tax rebates, except to Manitobans in lower income groups, and find obvious and practical ways to spend that money on alternatives that benefit all Manitobans, present and future.

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On a personal note, this was going to be my last column in the Winnipeg Free Press. By the numbers, it has been eight years, nearly 200 op-eds, and more than 150,000 words. That’s at least two of the other books I haven’t yet had time to write, because of my contract teaching load. It was time to do something else; worse, I feared I was writing mostly for myself.

I passed that farewell draft to some friends whose feedback I knew I could trust, and they were surprised. Then (over the next week) I was further challenged to rethink this conclusion a dozen times by unsolicited comments from random strangers, old friends, letters to the editor — even someone from my high school days long ago — appreciating my writing.

I have long felt that the public square, where people from all sides debate the important issues of the day, is crucial to the health of our democracy. One place that still happens, at least in Winnipeg, is in the Think Tank/Editorial Page section of this newspaper.

So, chi miigwech — you know who you are. I will try to live up to the expectations you so warmly expressed and keep contributing here, until I am not wanted on the voyage.

Peter Denton writes from his home in rural Manitoba.