Alberta' Climate Future

[Hamloc]

Hamlock Three points:
First, a tax does not solve climate change. A tax is simply to get consumers to reduce consumption of fossil fuels. Every farm is different, but be honest, is every drop of fuel you use necessary? You reduce what you can .

Second, it is how the tax is used that will reduce the impact of climate change. Simply giving it back to consumers is self defeating. It should be used to reward those (farmers for example) for adopting carbon sequestration practices (like zero till)

Third, you claim the tax will make western Canada uncompetitive. So will $4000 and acre land or $100plus acre rents when we are competing against growers in Russia with land values a small fraction of this.

My point throughout the entire debate is agriculture has always been the solution to increasing greenhouse gas emissions and this should be the focus of farmers - not if climate change is real. But this will only happen when farmers accept man made climate change and demand recognition for what we can and are doing in sequestering carbon. The longer farmers deny, the more it will cost us.

As far as fuel use both my 4wd and my combines have been programmed for fuel efficiency, saved 10-15%. So yes I think a person can cut his fuel consumption in increments but at present the technology doesn't exist to make large cuts.

Alberta had and I believe still has a program where producers are payed for using no till to sequester carbon. I did it for a couple years roughly 10 years ago. Payed $1.69 an acre if I remember correctly. If you owned all your land this program was fairl simple. In my case with lots of rented land some land lords thought they should get a share. The other problem was any acres that required corrective tillage like rutts or sloughs had to be removed for that year, it seemed like more trouble than it was worth.

Your 3rd point is 100% correct farmers are without a doubt their own worst enemy but that doesn't mean we need the government as our enemy as well.


As far as farmers being the solution your fairly optomistic.

[ALBERTAFARMER4]

So now not only is Canada warming 7 times faster than the rest of the world, Alberta (home to our oil industry) is warming even faster than that. What a coincidence.

Are things ok in texas? or Saudi Arabia? or Russia?

Report commissioned by one of Obamas lackeys says it all. I call BS.

Texas is 20% green energy.

[tweety]

I'd like to hear more about reducing energy consumption by 50%. Sounds like win win.

[jazz]

Texas is 20% green energy.

So if we throw up some uneconomical wind turbines you will stop attacking the oil patch? Cause I don't see Texas halting production. In fact they are expanding at break neck speed.

And have a little closet look why renewables work in Texas. Much more sun and wind than AB and close to 10m consumers right beside to take the power. How can we get it to Toronto? And Texas doesn't get that little old thing called a Canadian winter.

I am so tired of these feeble green arguments. It doest work here. Canada is uninhabitable without ff but maybe that's the point. It will become one giant park for the UN and nobody living here.

[Sheepwheat]

All I know is I am so glad that I don’t live in daily fear like the climate crisis folks. I simply can’t imagine living like that, in constant fear that we are going to warm by a degree. I just can’t imagine. I actually feel bad for these folks. Almost.

I find the latest winter storm that will hit Toronto a happy moment. That city needs a dose of reality, and it needs the army too.

Meanwhile, for those of us who actually pay attention, the North has had a very harsh winter. But wait, it’s warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. I forgot, I can’t use one season. That is just weather. But the climate crisis people can use that day a few years back when there was a puddle on the North Pole, and the temperature was a whopping plus four.

[dmlfarmer]

The carbon tax was just ruled unconstitutional in Alberta.
Why are you Liberals begging to pay an unconstitutional carbon tax?

And it was ruled constitutional here in Saskatchewan. So which is right? Want to bet which way the Supreme court of Canada will rule when the Alberta decision is appealed there?

[farming101]

Not sure if the average Joe is going to burn less....
This chart is based on US pricing and inflation.
Rack price this morning in Saskatoon for E-10 is 60.8 cents a liter

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Whenever I see someone stuck in linear thinking mode make absurd projections based on short term trends, I think of Mark Twain:

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

These are the same type of people who buy stocks or real estate at the height of a bubble, or sell at the bottom, and the Malthusian doomsday types who simply project every trend linearly( or worse yet, in this case, exponentially) ad infinitum to certain disaster.

[dmlfarmer]

As far as fuel use both my 4wd and my combines have been programmed for fuel efficiency, saved 10-15%. So yes I think a person can cut his fuel consumption in increments but at present the technology doesn't exist to make large cuts.

Alberta had and I believe still has a program where producers are payed for using no till to sequester carbon. I did it for a couple years roughly 10 years ago. Payed $1.69 an acre if I remember correctly. If you owned all your land this program was fairl simple. In my case with lots of rented land some land lords thought they should get a share. The other problem was any acres that required corrective tillage like rutts or sloughs had to be removed for that year, it seemed like more trouble than it was worth.

Your 3rd point is 100% correct farmers are without a doubt their own worst enemy but that doesn't mean we need the government as our enemy as well.


As far as farmers being the solution your fairly optomistic.

I agree with all your points but have some questions. Why isn't 10-15% in fuel use on a farm enoug enough - that would cover the carbon tax and more. Why do you think fossil fuel cuts need to be large? Especially if we are also paid for sequestration.

The carbon program in Alberta, as I understand does even match the dollars that industry pays for excessive emissions. We should be demanding the value of sequestration, not just a bidding game. Also, a significant portion of the payments are bled off to aggregators instead of going to producers.

Your right, we do not need government as the enemy, so why are farmers fighting the stance of every political party on climate change?

Finally, there are studies showing modern agriculture can sequester all the emissions Canada pr4oducers. That is why I am optimistic. And I want to be paid for the work I am doing in sequesting those emissions right now!

[Oliver88]

And it was ruled constitutional here in Saskatchewan. So which is right? Want to bet which way the Supreme court of Canada will rule when the Alberta decision is appealed there?

It was a 3-2 split decision in Sask and 4-1 decision in Alberta. All farmers are against this tax that hurts farm net income, except you, chuck, and the NFU it seems.
This article that was written by two global warming lobbyists based in Lubbock, Texas you posted on a commodity marketing forum.

My question for you is why you continually promote the carbon tax when you know it hurts agriculture?