I could support a Carbon tax if it were for all the right reasons.

[Hopalong]

Some good points and interesting discussion.
Takes me back to time of national energy policy of elder Trudeau.
Point was often made that fossil fuel resources are finite and that we should save them for benefit of future generations. Do not remember climate change and green house gasses being much of an issue.
Since that time, technology has made world running out of oil much less of an issue, also advances in alternative energy.
Think we give too much attention to fearmongers and not enough to our ability to develope new technology.

[foragefarmer]

Albertafarmer

You obviously put some thought into your post, compared to so many other posters that have ranted on and on about how bad the Carbon Tax will be, and running down anybody not agreeing with them. There are so many details that haven't been released, so I'm not sure how any opinions can be formed at this point.

The consumption of oil can not continue on the pace it is, as it will eventually run out, efforts have to be made to find some type of alternative energy sources, and let's have some faith in human innovation to come up with them. When our forefathers were farming with horses I'm sure with the arrival of the first steam powered farm equipment they were skeptical. Fuel consumption has to be curbed somehow, when driving in the cities or on major highways you see far to many single person vehicles on the road, car pooling or public transit is being less and less.

If the tax is funneled to research and development to increase fuel efficacy within Canada, or for new technology which could in itself become an major industry adding jobs within the country which could be sold or exported to other countries, I'm for it.


Yes, I know as farmers we have no alternative at this point to put and take off our crops with what we have, and will continue to use the current technology, but we don't even know how this tax will effect us at this point.

[furrowtickler]

this whole global warming thing reminds me of the false WMD the Iraq never had . It won't be till 15-20 years from now they will admit this was just a scam to pull money from one sector to anouther.
This is simply wealth transfer under a clown mask.
This will have zero effect on how much carbon dioxide is being emitted

[nicolaas]

is this carbon tax to be levied against industry as well? Or is it just for the public? The one in BC is essentially revenue neutral I hear. I am curious to see how it will affect ag.

[bucket]

K+S potash signed an agreement with nature conservancy of Canada to offset their emissions. ..that's where the transfer happens.



Neighbors sell their land to NCC then rent it back.... then the NCC peddles this land as a carbon sink for big money....but no government will direct pay to farmers the same fees.

[cottonpicken]

A lot of scientists believe oil is abiotic meaning it didn't come from dead dinosaurs,beyond me though.

[perfecho]

Certainly enjoy this discussion page more than others....
Heard an interview last night...haven't checked out facts, but some things for thought...
The carbon tax goes back to the provinces, so not an eastern thing...
BC already has a $30 per ton, so some of this is to level playing field between provinces....like AF5 says...it would be great to level between countries.
Sweden is up to close to $300 per ton....wow...they seem serious....although some items are not taxed.

This page has some good info...
http://www.carbontax.org/where-carbon-is-taxed/

There is a graph there that shows Australia brought in a carbon tax in 2012...175,000 ton of emissions...was repealed in 2014, even though emissions were trending down to below 160,000 tons and after the repeal it started trending up.

I know I didn't do anything about my electricity until it got real expensive here in Alberta...then I made changes.
Even if climate change is a hoax, what ever we can do to do better for our environment, cant be a bad thing. Trouble is...we have all gotten use to the wasteful society and easy living....

[grassfarmer]

And your solution grassfarmer return us to the stone age? Do your part 1st grassfarmer tear down all your barbwire fences, sell the herd, let the bison roam free and move into teepee. Taxing us so JT can provide a full handout to another 50000 immigrants will hardly solve the problem.

No we can do way better than that biglentil. We take down and put up cheap flexible little electric fences every day mimicking the action of the bison that built the tall grass prairie to organic levels of 10% or more. We are achieving this carbon sequestering effect and producing beef for food as a byproduct. Its profitable, burns minimal fossil fuel and we work to make it as sustainable as possible.

[canolacrazy]

i think everyone could get on board if they all truly believed that mother earth was going to be saved by this tax. even the policians supporting it don't believe that. otherwise they would be jacking the price up to where the "experts" say it should be, about $200/tonne of carbon.
their actions dictate that this is just a tax grab and nothing more. my prediction is we'll look back in ten years and see the earth hasn't cooled the 1.5-2 degrees these taxes are supposed to provide. you might as well try and hold back the tides.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Absolutely AF5, I have said many times that irregardless of the causes of climate change the solutions put forward involving reducing fossil fuel use are needed for sustainability anyway. It should be obvious to anybody with a brain that we can't continue to burn through finite resources at the rate we are. We live in a wasteful world - how many resources does it take to support the Kardashian family who appear to contribute nothing of value to society? Extreme examples apart we are not immune to waste in agriculture. The North American food system from field to plate including processing, transportation etc is said to use 13.3 calories of energy (mostly fossil fuel) for each calorie going into the consumers mouth. An old fashioned agriculture using mostly human and animal energy as still happens in many parts of the world would typically return 3-6 calories of food for every calorie expended.

Now consider that all of those calories came from solar energy, mostly in the form of fossil fuels, which is just really old stored solar power. If the current mechanised ratio is 13.3 calories in, to 1 calorie out, when we run out of the stored solar power, the future of mechanised farming doesn't look very promising. I know these likely aren't problems that I will encounter in my lifetime, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't care.

I know livestock get a bad reputation from the greenies of the world, but if one were to include the entire lifecycle and all non renewable inputs/ soil loss/ degradation, we are probably better off harvesting sunlight indirectly with grazing ivestock than with plants, at least using the current models.

[grassfarmer]

That's the way I see it anyway AF5.

[burnt]

i think everyone could get on board if they all truly believed that mother earth was going to be saved by this tax. even the policians supporting it don't believe that. otherwise they would be jacking the price up to where the "experts" say it should be, about $200/tonne of carbon.
their actions dictate that this is just a tax grab and nothing more. my prediction is we'll look back in ten years and see the earth hasn't cooled the 1.5-2 degrees these taxes are supposed to provide. you might as well try and hold back the tides.

You can bet huge money on your guess that "the earth hasn't cooled the 1.5-2 degrees these taxes are supposed to provide" for several reasons - 1) there is a complete absence of solid evidence that CO2 increases temperatures (all their vaunted "science" does is demonstrate correlation, not causation), and 2) even if it were causative, our miniscule reduction achieved through reduced carbon release is ABSOLUTELY negligible in the larger scheme.

Consider that India, who just signed on to the Paris Accord, is allowed to INCREASE their CO2 emissions for another 15 or 20 years. Their increases will be multiples of any supposed reductions our slavering, tongue-dragging PM hopes to achieve through this blatant tax grab.

But oh, how valuable is our [I]moral[I] contribution, hmmm? Puke.

[tweety]

Burnt, you shouldn't confuse global warming with conservation of hydrocarbon based energy. Whether global change is occurring or not is merely a discussion.

The fact remains, there is limited oil and gas and once its used up the easy days are over. So what are we doing about it today? Are we investing in renewable sources so the next few generations aren't forced doing it when energy is scarce and extremely costly? No, we are not. We just buy bigger Escalades with bigger motors and argue about whether temps are increasing or not.

Silly humans.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Burnt, you shouldn't confuse global warming with conservation of hydrocarbon based energy. Whether global change is occurring or not is merely a discussion.

The fact remains, there is limited oil and gas and once its used up the easy days are over. So what are we doing about it today? Are we investing in renewable sources so the next few generations aren't forced doing it when energy is scarce and extremely costly? No, we are not. We just buy bigger Escalades with bigger motors and argue about whether temps are increasing or not.

Silly humans.

You get exactly what I am saying.
I do support investing in alternative energy sources. I do not support inept governments choosing the winners and losers and subsidizing their cronies money losing alternate energy schemes. What I do support is all energy users paying closer to the true cost of a non renewable resource, which will motivate all people to find creative sources of energy, and conservation. I know I will finish perfecting my perpetual motion machine as soon as oil hits $200 per barrel. I already have the alternators mounted to the wheels of my car, I just couldn't attract enough capital to finish the design when oil dropped to far. I'm sure the creator of the 200 mpg carbeurator will come back when oil gets expensive again. There might even be practical ideas already out there that just can't compete with nearly free fossil fuels. And no I don't think it is a grand conspiracy by oil companies, I just think that oil is such a perfect energy source that nothing else can compete with it, until we accept that it is not a perpetual energy source.

By the time we realize that the easy cheap hydrocarbons are gone, it is going to require ever greater energy to retrieve the remaining supplies. At some point, the last supplies will be less than break even. It will require more energy to extract them than they contain. But at that point, we will still need to completely rebuild our infrastructure to whatever the new energy system might be. Most likely nuclear power generation, but possibly something we haven't even fathomed yet. Either way, building the infrastructure for getting enough power to my farm to charge my electric tractor and combine, building and designing those machines, finding and refining the rare earth elements to make the batteries, building the power generating stations, at the same time as all of the existing energy needs compete for that dwindling resource will be challenging. And could possible lead to war over resources (already did in the last go around), not to mention civil unrest if not outright anarchy if people are hungry, cold and can't access facebook and video games. I have little faith in our elected officials to ration that remaining energy so vital industries such as agriculture can function, people just aren't that far sighted, and are too far removed from production.

[grassfarmer]

By the time we realize that the easy cheap hydrocarbons are gone, it is going to require ever greater energy to retrieve the remaining supplies. At some point, the last supplies will be less than break even. It will require more energy to extract them than they contain.

We are there already AF5, perhaps not in absolute energy in for energy out terms but it terms of hugely greater cost relative to return and huge risk (environmental/water etc) we are already there - its called fracking.