Here is an older post to remind us of why the LIE-beral cqrbon tax is a total failure!
As a result of running my canoe in the Trent Canal/Severn River area I have some new thoughts re environment and carbon taxes: I saw a motorboat approximately 25ft long-maybe 30ft-with a 250 horsepower engine? Or350hp? 0r 450 hp? Hard to tell-but it needed regular gas fill ups in the FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR RANGE running up and down the bay with a group of teenagers taking turns surfing on the wake thrown up by the boat....yeah, the boat is big enough to throw up waves you can surf on- and there it, is grinding up and down for hours while the kids play and the environment suffers!
Some people are worried about their jobs, some are worried about heating their home and paying rent or mortgage, some are worried about getting enough to eat or getting winter clothes for their kids. And some are worried about making sure they get enough GRAVY to keep on teaching their kids to surf even though they live a THOUSAND MILES from the ocean! With this in mind-read the next piece carefully!
It seems to me that loonie leftists and radical activists masquerading as `environmentalists` and the unscrupulous politicians that cater to them for money and votes are confused about carbon and crap- and think they are both about the same thing. How else to explain how it is that every time they start to talk about the one, the other spews out of their mouths! All loonie leftists INSIST that the only way to save the environment is to implement a carbon tax but there is every reason to think this is foolish and quite SELFISH thinking on the part of the swine! The Hogs certainly have a plan BUT it is NOT about clearing the air!
Consider who will and who will NOT be affected by a carbon tax:
Your old granny living in her little room and living on a miserly pension learned long ago to put on a sweater when the cold winds blow-cranking up the heat is not an option for poor granny! So No change to her carbon footprint since she is ALREADY as frugal as can be; but there WILL be massive changes to her financial state as EVERYTHING soars in price-food, heat, water, lighting, clothing all will cost MORE! Granny will face the dilemma that an increasing number of Cdns ALREADY face: they must choose between 3 meals per day and a roof over their heads OR they can pay for prescription drugs they need for their health-ONE OR THE OTHER...but not enough money for both-this IS the future for your granny and many other Cdns!
Or the waitress serving your meal and drinks in a restaurant or bar-in Toronto a lot of women working evening shift feel compelled to DRIVE to work as they don’t feel safe coming home late at night on public transit. The truth is that Lie-beral `hug a thug` judges practicing their `catch and release` bullshit simply are not protecting the public! And there are vast numbers of Cdns who live in places just outside Toronto that MUST drive to their work since either they live in a place with NO public transit or else the transit shuts down at 9pm leaving them with no sensible way home late in the evening after shift change UNLESS they drive.
These tens of thousands of Cdns will face a stark choice: PAY UP on carbon taxes and drive...or be unemployed......in a lot of places like Durham Region, a potential employer will ask detailed questions about the car you drive-make and model and how old and how many miles on it as they gauge which prospective employee is most likely to show up most regularly-no car means NO WORK in much of Canada-so NO change in carbon output in most of Canada in spite of the carbon tax!
There has been a steady rise in the number of Cdns doing 2 part time jobs to make ends meet...or else doing one job and going to school to improve their situation-in many of those cases they simply cannot meet their demanding schedule UNLESS they drive-you cannot get there from here on a bus-not on time anyway and chronically late means FIRED!
Your local supermarket wont change its ways either-the food MUST be kept cold-sell food gone bad and you are quickly out of business. Same sort of deal with movie theatres and shopping malls-keep the place at a comfortable temperature or risk losing customers. Same thing with your local hospital or old folks home-with the added bonus that already short staffed nurses may be deluged with complaints from patients who are too cold or too hot and too feeble to get their extra clothing on or off in a timely way.....just what they need-a few good cases of pneumonia!
When your furnace breaks down, your plumbing seizes up, your brand new big screen tv needs installation, your roof needs repairs-all these things REQUIRE that a repair person DRIVE to your place with a truck and tools and spare parts....no way around that-not by bus anyway!
Sadly, Canada no longer has much manufacturing but what little there is will be hit hard by rising operating costs and there are ALREADY too many good reasons to ship the jobs off to China-why add MORE by greatly increasing operating costs!
Mining is a big energy user and its in the same boat as manufacturing-hit Cdn miners with soaring costs and watch jobs move away to other, less taxed and regulated places-the dangerously unstable and threatening Russian government would be DELIGHTED to take up the slack and supply resources if Cdn mines closed down! And Russians don’ t sweat the environmental stuff like we do-money talks LOUDER than green `ecco` heroes in that ruined land!
NONE of the people listed above have any way of altering their carbon footprint. For them, a carbon tax is simply an EXPRESS WAY of emptying their wallets and messing up their lives! But the environment is NOT doomed-there ARE things we can do! The quickest and cheapest way to save our environment is to balance our government books-do away with deficit financing and start paying back some of the massive debt that is hobbling us at every turn!
Take a drive up to the scenic country side roads east and north of Newmarket-if you can afford it- and look at all the wonderful estate lots with their huge custom homes-3 acres, 5 acres, 10 acres-with beautiful manicured lawns and ask: how many of these homes are owned by civil service Working Family Hogs whose names are prominent on the government `sunshine` list of overpaid govt employees? Hint: HIGH numbers!
We know that a typical riding lawn mower of the type used to cut grass on such an estate spews out as much pollution in 5 minutes as a modern car does running on a highway for an hour. And of course there is NO public transit available for those estates-get a good look at all the THREE and FOUR car families.
Or get a canoe and paddle around any typical upscale Muskoka lake and look at the array of gas powered toys heaped on the docks-the personal water craft zooming in circles around the lake, gas weed eaters, Bass boats that can do 60 MILES per hour-are they afraid the fish will escape? Get out onto Georgian Bay or the Trent Canal on a Sunday afternoon and listen to the masses of motorboats-30ft, 40 ft, even 50ft long- rumbling across the water and then remember these machines are far LESS fuel efficient than your car.
Look at the carbon footprint of such a boat-the hundreds of dollars of fuel needed in a single fill up and once the beast is motored to a suitable anchorage, then the Zodiac yacht tender with its own motor is set out so the family dog can be motored ashore to pee and the parents can go fish or the kids can explore-with carbon spewing all the while. Look at the generator that is set out so the microwave can be used to cook dinner or power music or play a movie...and marvel at the amount of gas being consumed by the privileged members of the Sunshine list! I don’t suggest we should do away with motor boats but I do ask if there should not be some restrictions on the size of engines and fuel consumption rates and top speeds of some of these floating palaces? They are on HOLIDAY....do they NEED to go 40 miles per hour in a floating palace when the world environment is at stake?
On the many high end upscale lakes, Dad doesn’t drive up highway 400 on Friday night at end of work week to be with wife and kids any more; instead he often takes a real SERIOUS gas guzzler-a rented float plane- and gets dropped off Friday and picked up on Sunday. Several high ranking members of Ontari-owe Power Generation have got into trouble for using OPG helicopters to haul them to their summer homes-the copters were SUPPOSED to be used to quickly inspect hydro lines and haul crews into remote locations-NOT to haul fat ass Hog executives to their holiday destinations AFTER they had finished lecturing the rest of us about being environmentally sensitive!
The latest `must have`toy of the sunshine gang is a `bubble system`. The number of gas guzzling toys stowed on a typical Muskoka dock is now so large and so costly that if the dock gets mashed by winter ice and floats away, it will take tens of thousands of dollars of toys with it! So the Sunshine gang installs pipes and an electrically powered air compressor around their valuable docks and costly toys-the pipes laid on the lake bottom spew out a constant mass of air bubbles in the water ALL winter long that disrupts the formation of ice and keeps the water from freezing around the dock-so no ice damage-just a HUGE environmental mess as electricity MUST be generated ALL winter just for the Hogs! And THESE are the people who insist we need a carbon tax! The swine expect US to live in a little box in a slum and walk or bicycle every where while they own TWO large homes and enjoy a HOST of gas guzzling toys suitable for play in all seasons! We already pay HEAVILY for their privileges and now they DEMAND even MORE!
Or head out to the airport and try to guess how many of the people lining up for a flight are civil servants or employees of a `protected` industry that does NOT have to kow-tow to standard market forces because they have a near monopoly on some service-you know who I mean-senior bankers, insurance company chiefs, cable company executives, gas and oil chiefs, tenured university professors with their too frequent left wing views, extravagantly paid hospital CEO/bean counters
who often get more money than the doctors doing brain surgery, and all those on the Sunshine list-all the people who get THEIR money-IN FULL- regardless of economic conditions. People in protected industries charge pretty much what they feel like because they have NO competition!
The not so clever dolts at CIBC bank lost OVER a billion dollars in the 2008 meltdown and simply raised bank fees here in Canada to recover the cash-they took OUR money outside prudent Cdn investment regulations and LOST It in a total screw up.....and then simply beat more money out of our Cdn hides-we DON’T GET a benefit if they profit-but we GET HAMMERED if they screw up! Time for changes in the way we do bank business in this country, and OUTSIDE it too! And remember, a carbon tax will increase operating costs for your local bank branch, meaning MORE bank fees, but no cleaner air-UNLESS they start CLOSING bank branches! That would mean less bank service and more unemployed Cdns as low level employees got dumped.
And remember-traveling by airplane is absolutely the DIRTIEST WAY to go anyplace-in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack, TWENTY FIVE percent of the worlds airliners were grounded and in the 9 months after the attack there WAS a measurable improvement in air quality around the world! It is environmentally more sound to drive an SUV to Florida than it is to fly....and of course trains and busses are cleaner still. Maybe its time to start treating people on planes in the same way as smokers-as in: get your SHIT out of my FACE!
Remember-THESE PEOPLE WANT A CARBON TAX because they figure they are immune....and BECAUSE THEY WILL DEMAND MORE GRAVY FROM GOVERNMENT TO COVER THEIR INCREASED COSTS of the tax-and they probably WILL get it too-if Lie-berals and NDP have any say, so there will be NO CHANGE to THEIR lifestyle or carbon footprint! And THEY are already the ones with the biggest carbon footprint!
And your granny and the repair man and the waitress and the cashier at the market-all these people will PAY....while the carbon continues to be spewed into their air!
We know from Statistics Canada that civil servants get paid about one third MORE than people in private sector doing the same job...and that’s NOT including the solid gold pension and assorted perks most of the Hogs feel entitled to! The outgoing chairman of OSSTF-the Ontari-owe high school teachers union-let it be known on TVO The Agenda that OSSTF will have a pension deficit of FIFTY FIVE BILLION DOLLARS by about 2018-just in time for the next provincial election.
And there are 19 separate civil service unions out there-whatever golden deal the teachers get from Ontari-owe premier McWynnty-known to some as The Great Whore because she has sold herself and her party and OUR FUTURE to the Hogs of Working family Coalition-will be the standard set for the others to shoot for...and Lie-berals have already promised at least TWO HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS in `catchup` pension payments to the Hogs and the REAL cost may be much closer to THREE HUNDRED BILLION since other union heads are more cautious about blurting out their situation than OSSTF honchos! Now who REALLY wants a carbon tax? And will it really clean the air? Or just your wallet?
