Juno News - November 27, 2019
Is the carbon tax the only viable environmental policy? No.
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
169.33757
Summary
Is carbon pricing the answer to climate change? Is there a conservative solution? What should we do about climate change in Canada and around the world? Is a carbon tax the answer? And is there a better way to deal with climate change than the one proposed by climate alarmists?
Transcript
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I think it's about time to really push the needle on the climate change
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conversation and climate change action. Is it needed? Sure it's needed, but perhaps
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not in the way you think I'm going to say. You're probably thinking, oh no, not
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another person saying, we need action, we need to talk about this more, we need to
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do things more. I hear people say it all the time, let's talk about it more, but
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all we do is talk about climate change, all we do is talk about climate change
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action, and usually what they mean by that is ever-escalating carbon taxes and
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more and more punitive measures against various companies and industries that
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are involved in emissions-intensive activities. Brian Mulrooney, the latest
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one to come forward and say at a speech where he was getting an award the other
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day, conservatives need to be bold when it comes to climate change. Don't just do
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stuff if you're afraid of it being unpopular. Be a leader, go against the
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grain. A lot of people took that to mean Brian Mulrooney calling on conservatives to
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embrace carbon pricing. I fully reject that. I fully reject a lot of the climate
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alarmism as well. Scientists coming forward more and more now saying, hold on a
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second, Miss Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest, yes we have
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some concerns about these issues, but you're taking things a little bit too far.
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A climate scientist at Forbes.com writing about this IPCC panels, the
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International Panels on Climate Change put together by the UN, they do not
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support the things that Miss Thunberg and others are saying, this massive
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alarmism that says, yes you can take an extreme weather event that happened just
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yesterday and prove there's a direct correlation between climate change. That is
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not happening. The IPCC report does not say that's going to happen. The report
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also does not say there's going to be mass migration to the tune of hundreds of
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millions of dollars of climate change refugees. It's not happening. It's not a
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thing. And these are what the highest level scientist reports discuss. But enough
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on that. Let's talk about where the conversation should go and what we should do
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and what we can do in Canada. A lot of frustrations on this front because it's
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assumed that there's massive carbon taxes or there's nothing else. That's the
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conversation. It's a complete duality there. It's either one far end or the
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other. But a lot of people in this conversation, including Brian Mulrooney, are
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forgetting the origins of what conservative philosophy is. That it's about what can the
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family do? What can the individual do? What can communities do? Not an automatic
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assumption that what can big government do from the top down and really clamp down
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on you. And there's actually some good news in all of this. A lot of corporations
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out there investing a whole lot of R&D research, a lot of intensive activity into
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building a better mousetrap on a whole bunch of fronts, a whole bunch of sectors, a
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whole bunch of industries, building the electric car and so forth, getting to a point
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where it is viable. We need to talk about that more. Is there a conservative
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solution to all this? Of course. Just embracing all of those companies out
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there that are doing things. Innovators. Industry. The frustrating thing is Justin
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Trudeau, former Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, the new Environment
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Minister Jonathan Wilkinson. We'll see what his approach on all of this is. They
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don't actually talk about that stuff. Maybe they do a little bit here and there on the
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B side of the album after they've done their alarmist statements. But I've never
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heard them talk about that. Actually embracing new initiatives. Embracing all the
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stuff going out there in Canadian research, in our institutions, in the
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educational facilities, in private companies. Stuff that's going to be hitting
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the market soon. Nobody's talking about that. So by all means, let's go and do things
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that are not as emissions intensive. Let's buy these products. Let's get them
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into the marketplace. And conservatives can actually be champions of selling that
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side of things. Flipping the coin around on all these alarmists and saying, why do you
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only ever talk about this carbon tax? Why don't you actually talk about all these
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other opportunities out there that are voluntary? That are not compulsion? If you
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really want to deal with these issues, you'd think that all these new endeavors out
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there that are being researched, that they are actually better solutions in this
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one blunt, aggressive, authoritarian instrument that is the carbon tax, carbon
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pricing, and top-down government measures. Change the conversation. And that's a
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great way to do it. Not only does the alarmism not meet the facts, but carbon
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pricing? Probably not actually when we look back decades from now, a century from now.
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It's not actually going to be the thing that made a dent in anything. It's
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probably going to be the industriousness of human nature that will turn around and
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have changed the game. And that's where the conversation should have.