Juno News - Is the carbon tax the only viable environmental policy？ No.

00:00:00.000 I think it's about time to really push the needle on the climate change

00:00:09.400 conversation and climate change action. Is it needed? Sure it's needed, but perhaps

00:00:16.140 not in the way you think I'm going to say. You're probably thinking, oh no, not

00:00:20.160 another person saying, we need action, we need to talk about this more, we need to

00:00:24.360 do things more. I hear people say it all the time, let's talk about it more, but

00:00:28.880 all we do is talk about climate change, all we do is talk about climate change

00:00:32.560 action, and usually what they mean by that is ever-escalating carbon taxes and

00:00:37.240 more and more punitive measures against various companies and industries that

00:00:41.880 are involved in emissions-intensive activities. Brian Mulrooney, the latest

00:00:46.700 one to come forward and say at a speech where he was getting an award the other

00:00:50.000 day, conservatives need to be bold when it comes to climate change. Don't just do

00:00:55.800 stuff if you're afraid of it being unpopular. Be a leader, go against the

00:01:01.480 grain. A lot of people took that to mean Brian Mulrooney calling on conservatives to

00:01:05.520 embrace carbon pricing. I fully reject that. I fully reject a lot of the climate

00:01:11.180 alarmism as well. Scientists coming forward more and more now saying, hold on a

00:01:15.840 second, Miss Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest, yes we have

00:01:20.600 some concerns about these issues, but you're taking things a little bit too far.

00:01:24.980 A climate scientist at Forbes.com writing about this IPCC panels, the

00:01:30.180 International Panels on Climate Change put together by the UN, they do not

00:01:35.260 support the things that Miss Thunberg and others are saying, this massive

00:01:39.620 alarmism that says, yes you can take an extreme weather event that happened just

00:01:44.220 yesterday and prove there's a direct correlation between climate change. That is

00:01:48.020 not happening. The IPCC report does not say that's going to happen. The report

00:01:54.520 also does not say there's going to be mass migration to the tune of hundreds of

00:01:58.980 millions of dollars of climate change refugees. It's not happening. It's not a 1.00

00:02:03.100 thing. And these are what the highest level scientist reports discuss. But enough

00:02:08.200 on that. Let's talk about where the conversation should go and what we should do

00:02:12.420 and what we can do in Canada. A lot of frustrations on this front because it's

00:02:18.500 assumed that there's massive carbon taxes or there's nothing else. That's the

00:02:23.140 conversation. It's a complete duality there. It's either one far end or the

00:02:29.840 other. But a lot of people in this conversation, including Brian Mulrooney, are

00:02:33.540 forgetting the origins of what conservative philosophy is. That it's about what can the

00:02:39.040 family do? What can the individual do? What can communities do? Not an automatic

00:02:42.880 assumption that what can big government do from the top down and really clamp down

00:02:47.480 on you. And there's actually some good news in all of this. A lot of corporations

00:02:52.420 out there investing a whole lot of R&D research, a lot of intensive activity into

00:02:57.640 building a better mousetrap on a whole bunch of fronts, a whole bunch of sectors, a

00:03:02.620 whole bunch of industries, building the electric car and so forth, getting to a point

00:03:06.800 where it is viable. We need to talk about that more. Is there a conservative

00:03:12.040 solution to all this? Of course. Just embracing all of those companies out

00:03:17.080 there that are doing things. Innovators. Industry. The frustrating thing is Justin

00:03:21.820 Trudeau, former Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, the new Environment

00:03:25.960 Minister Jonathan Wilkinson. We'll see what his approach on all of this is. They

00:03:29.660 don't actually talk about that stuff. Maybe they do a little bit here and there on the

00:03:33.520 B side of the album after they've done their alarmist statements. But I've never

00:03:37.840 heard them talk about that. Actually embracing new initiatives. Embracing all the

00:03:43.360 stuff going out there in Canadian research, in our institutions, in the

00:03:48.580 educational facilities, in private companies. Stuff that's going to be hitting

00:03:53.240 the market soon. Nobody's talking about that. So by all means, let's go and do things

00:04:00.620 that are not as emissions intensive. Let's buy these products. Let's get them

00:04:04.940 into the marketplace. And conservatives can actually be champions of selling that

00:04:09.980 side of things. Flipping the coin around on all these alarmists and saying, why do you

00:04:15.020 only ever talk about this carbon tax? Why don't you actually talk about all these

00:04:19.340 other opportunities out there that are voluntary? That are not compulsion? If you

00:04:25.820 really want to deal with these issues, you'd think that all these new endeavors out

00:04:28.940 there that are being researched, that they are actually better solutions in this

00:04:34.460 one blunt, aggressive, authoritarian instrument that is the carbon tax, carbon

00:04:39.320 pricing, and top-down government measures. Change the conversation. And that's a

00:04:44.120 great way to do it. Not only does the alarmism not meet the facts, but carbon

00:04:48.180 pricing? Probably not actually when we look back decades from now, a century from now.

00:04:53.900 It's not actually going to be the thing that made a dent in anything. It's

00:04:58.760 probably going to be the industriousness of human nature that will turn around and

00:05:03.620 have changed the game. And that's where the conversation should have.

Juno News - November 27, 2019

Is the carbon tax the only viable environmental policy？ No.

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