It's sobering to understand just how significant and fundamental a change to get a low or zero carbon future will be. Your story exemplifies this perfectly. Unfortunately, we don't have much of a choice. Most climate models predict that a 2 degree increase in temperature is manageable for our ecosystems but anything more would likely have significant consequences meaning that your family farm could be one of the casualties (especially if its located in drought prone Alberta.)
So unfortunately, getting to a low carbon future is going to be painful. For yourself, a carbon tax will induce you to buy as efficient of a new truck as you can afford, it will induce development of low emitting farm equipment, and it will provide your family with reasons to adjust their land-use for less carbon emissions and offsets. The biggest crux is getting other countries to price emissions, and it's happening.
China, seen by many as the biggest climate laggard has the most to lose to drier temperatures and it knows it. It's annual imports of grain has been steadily increasing over the past 20 years as its domestic yields have dropped due to drought and alienation of farm land. China knows that it needs to do something about climate change because the country is more succeptible than any of the western countries to widespread famine. They are waiting for us to do something because we are ethically bound to be the first movers. After all, it isn't Chinese emissions that have warmed the planet to this point. They only started emitting over the past 30 years, we (the western countries ) have been emitting for over 150 and its the cummulative effect of those emissions staying in the atmosphere for over a hundred years which have got us to the situation we're in.
So I guess I take issue with the argument that we shouldn't be doing anything because we don't want to be the first ones to. Everyone will be doing things very shortly, why not start now and exploit some potential first-mover benefits?
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