Carbon tax would create a clean Canada

David Suzuki Foundation: Carbon Taxes Bring Prosperity

A carbon tax won't make Canada an economic basket case. In fact, it will create jobs and jump start impressive new industries.

As the David Suzuki Foundation described in a fascinating carbon tax report released in February, a progressive Carbon Tax would reduce Canada's GHG emissions significantly over the next dozen years while giving our country the wherewithal to meaningfully embrace new green technologies.

This is how it is being done around the world, particularly in the European Union, but they simply don't have the energy reserves or natural resources that we do. By 2020, a carbon tax would have the potential to add $50 billion annually to federal coffers, which could be used to support renewable energy, make homes energy efficient, and reduce personal taxes.

It would begin slowly, perhaps at $20 per tonne next year, increasing by $10 per tonne each year to $100 in 2019. Tar sand companies - and companies across the country - can reduce the taxes they pay by reducing emissions. With oil at $100 a barrel, oil companies will continue to work the Tar Sands, and they will still make huge profits. We just won't have to suffer for their transgressions.

So we start polluting less, and we start investing in worthy renewable and sustainable projects. For instance, in Nova Scotia, we have 5,000 miles (8,000) in undulating coastline with a long continental shelf. By using proven technologies, in the next decade or two, we could have bountiful renewable carbon-neutral energy produced by wind and wave farms, and Nova Scotia Power wouldn't need gas or coal. In fact, I've been told by someone who knows that wind and wave energy from Nova Scotia has the potential to power all of Atlantic Canada, Quebec, and a sizable chunk of the US.

Imagine that world. And know this. We can get there from here.

But not with Stephen Harper at the helm. He's beholden to the oil barons, and the status quo. He doesn't care about eastern Canada, so I think we should elect someone who does. Someone who will embrace a Green vision of the future. We have three national parties who promise to do so in the Liberals, The Green Party, and the NDP, with the support of the regional Bloc Québécois.

And when Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and New Brunswick become the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy, I promise not to buy a bumper sticker suggesting that those western bastards can freeze together in the dark. Because even now, as they destroy the planet, those Western Bastards are my brothers and sisters. I want them to live in a clean, honorable, prosperous country, too.

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A Carbon Tax

David Suzuki Foundation: Carbon Taxes Bring Prosperity