Dear Editor:
RE: Wastewater decision will take months, Feb. 7.
At the Town of Erin Mayor’s Breakfast on Jan. 31, guest speaker Andrea Khanjin, parliamentary assistant to the Ontario Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, made this statement: “It’s important to practise environmental stewardship, but not at the cost of our economy.”
These days, as climate change is becoming more treacherous, even school kids “get” that any healthy economy is totally dependent on a robust, resilient and climate-stable environment – and not the other way around. In October, the UN’s leading climate scientists issued their latest – and most alarming – warning yet: unless we humans get a grip and reduce greenhouse gases emissions at an unprecedented rate over the next dozen years, our failure to act will “significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people” around the world.
Our best hope to avoid the worst-case scenario is for every government everywhere – including Ontario’s – to apply the most effective policies to get us off fossil fuels, and sooner rather than later. But how, without killing the economy?
Economists of all stripes overwhelmingly agree that adding a “revenue-neutral carbon tax” to reduce fossil fuel consumption is the lowest cost, most market- and taxpayer-friendly way to put the brakes on climate change – and speed up our transition to a much healthier zero-carbon economy that creates more, and more sustainable, jobs.
At the mayor’s breakfast, it was agonizing to hear Khanjin so proudly say that as the PC government has jettisoned the Liberals’ cap-and-trade program, “there has been a dramatic reduction in gas prices” – as if that’s a good thing. But of course it’s not: lower gas prices just add fuel to the fire. The less we pay at the pumps, the more we buy and burn, resulting in even higher emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases.
Who doesn’t like paying less for a litre of gas, including me? But come on – at what cost to children and future generations? As 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg told the recent Davos conference in Switzerland: “Our house is on fire … I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.”
While it’s a relief to hear Khanjin say her party “is not denying climate change,” Ontario’s independent Environment Commissioner decried the PC’s new climate plan for being “one-third as ambitious” as the cap-and-trade program it replaced. This is kind of like the government shouting “fire!” then turning the hoses down to a trickle.
Liz Armstrong,
Erin