Canadians are rejecting the Liberals climate agenda
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
192.58727
Summary
In this episode of the podcast, I talk about the carbon tax, climate change, and the free market approach to climate change in Canada. I talk through a piece of polling that was done well, and try to explain why the government should be focusing on other areas of the economy, like clean energy and infrastructure, rather than climate change.
Transcript
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Despite the fact that the carbon tax is one of the least popular policies from the Liberal
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government in Canada, to the point where they've literally rebranded it from the carbon tax
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to the carbon rebate, if you look at a lot of policy-based polling, you'd think Canadians
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still approve of it. I saw a poll like a month and a half ago that showed that 57% of people
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still thought we need the carbon tax, and it's a result of policy polling being so poorly done
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often. A lot of pollsters are super accurate with their national polling numbers, but when it comes
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to policy-based polling, they mangle the questions, and all the questions seem to imply if you
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disagree with the carbon tax that you somehow don't like the environment. So I see pulsed questions
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like, do you still think we need the carbon tax to fight climate change? And if you say no, a lot of
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Canadians are going to think that the implication of saying no is that they don't care about the
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environment at all, whereas really it's just asking you, do you like the carbon tax or not? And that's
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a far better question. I have finally found a piece of policy polling that was actually done well in
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I'll read it to you and then just go over the results. So this one I think was from Innovation
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that reads, the Liberal Party of Canada supports establishing clean energy regulations as a way
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for Canada to show leadership in moving to net zero climate change emissions by 2035, even if it
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means some increase in electricity prices. And then it reads, the Conservative Party of Canada
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opposes establishing clean energy regulations and prefers the federal government to avoid increases
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electricity prices and focus on encouraging investment in new technology to reduce emissions
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instead. Do you tend to support the liberal approach or the conservative approach? And it shows
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that only 31% of people somewhat or are very supportive of the liberal approach and 49% support the
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conservatives. And I think that those saying 11% saying don't know, or 10% saying neither. I think
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most of those people by the time the next election comes around will go with the conservatives. The
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conservatives only need 2% more to have more than majority of Canadians supporting their agenda.
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And I think this poll shows that once you kind of break away all the very abstract kind of talk
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about, do you want to fight climate change or not? And you actually talk about different approaches to
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the environment saying, hey, do you think that the government should be taxing people in order to get
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them to act in ways the government wants? Or do you think that the government should maybe have some
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incentives out there for car companies or other sort of oil and gas firms to just reduce
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their emissions through better technology? Most people like market-based solutions. Most people
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always choose the market-based solution. But just based on the way that the legacy media covers
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these issues and the way a lot of pollsters, I think, unintentionally pull the issues, a lot of
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people see it as a sort of completely binary option between liking the environment and not when,
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if anything, it has been the free market that has made technology so much more efficient over time
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and has reduced emissions. If you really care about emissions and you think it is the absolute
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gambit to what controls the climate, you should be siding with the free market doing what it has
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always done best, which has make more efficient products for people to buy. People don't like
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paying that much for gasoline and they like that whatever amount of gasoline they buy lasts them as
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long as humanly possible. A truck from the 1970s and a truck now are completely like in worlds apart
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in terms of how efficiently they burn gas. Trucks these days are not nearly what gas guzzlers used
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to be in the 70s. And I think people should own whatever vehicles they want, but people have demanded
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over time that vehicles become cheaper in price and that they, in terms of their mileage,
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mileage. So that even without government incentives, whenever gas prices have naturally
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gone up, people have demanded more fuel efficient vehicles. And that's why we have a lot of very
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fuel efficient vehicles on the road or hybrids. With the government trying to now reduce the amount
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of roadways, as Stephen Gilbeau implied, and then Justin Trudeau basically says, Stephen Gilbeau is
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stupid. He just misspoke. A lot of people are now, I think, seeing that a lot of the government
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solutions to these problems are not just not effective actually reducing emissions. They're
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incredibly brutal and grinding on the average citizen, basically trying to force you to conform
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to the way that the government wants you to around the climate issue, rather than just giving out the
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right incentives, having the right regulations in place that would allow companies to choose in order
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to make more efficient technologies. And frankly, I really don't care about the climate change issue that
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much. Shock gas, does why not care about the environment? No, I do care about the environment.
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And that's why I don't care about the climate change issue that much, because it's not actually
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environmental. It's basically replacing real conservationism with a more abstract idea of
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trying to reduce emissions, even though Canada can hardly have an impact on that.
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Anyways, but I've always cared more about what are people's costs of living? Because the great thing
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about capitalism is that because people are selfish and want more fuel efficient vehicles,
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they naturally end up reducing their emissions, they naturally end up reducing their environmental
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impact over time. And that's a good thing. But guess what? Never has a government ever actually made
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more fuel efficient vehicles through mandates. They maybe force people to buy like Teslas and other
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hybrids. But over time, they usually just incentivize people to keep older cars on the road longer by
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making newer cars more expensive by forcing you to pay for more expensive vehicles that meet certain
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environmental standards. This is also the problem with our housing market right now is that people
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are not actually buying homes that have better insulation for heating, so they don't have to
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burn as much fuel, because all the zoning laws and all the environmental inspection checks you need
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make it more difficult to build a house, meaning that people don't end up actually renovating their
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homes. They don't end up buying new homes that are better insulated because it's too expensive,
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because the government never does half measures, letting people sort of improve the way they do
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things, make more efficient options slowly over time. They always make you jump from the top of
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the stairs to the bottom of the stairs. It's like vehicle safety back in the 1960s and 70s with Ralph
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Nader. It wasn't good enough that people would just buy more efficient, safer vehicles over time because
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people actually tend to value safety. No, they have to 100% value safety. So they made cars thousands of
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dollars more expensive back in the 70s so that you have to buy every little safety feature possible
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in whatever new car you bought so that people just were incentivized to keep their T-birds
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driving around or the Corvair that Nader thought was so dangerous because they couldn't afford the new
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cars because all the new safety features were out of people's price ranges. So they drove around the
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cars that were super dangerous. It's just the way that government policy tends to come back on itself
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and completely contradict its intended goal. Anyways, that should be it for me today. I just
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want to do a quick plug because I always do that I, Wyatt Claypool, am running for the Calgary Signal
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Hill Conservative Party nomination. So if you live in these riding boundaries, buy a Conservative Party
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membership. It's just $15 for a one-year membership and you'll be able to vote for me whenever the
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nomination date gets called to be able to make me the nominee in your area for the Conservatives.
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If you want a real Conservative, please go visit my website, WyattClaypool.com. And then I also have
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my gifts and go link in the description as well. We're being sued by a billionaire developer for
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defamation. It's a complete nonsense case. He has no point. He hasn't barely even submitted any evidence
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that what we've said is wrong. Really, none of his evidence suggests anything that our guest writer
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said about him was wrong. And our guest writer was actually fully relying on previous reporting about
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him. So he's just suing us because he thinks that we can't pay for the lawsuit, unlike the Globe and
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Mail where most of our information came from. Anyways, that should be it for me today. I'll be back