Alberta Election Poll (new poll added)

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by DiracSpike

Exactly. But also the hippos want you to incur massive externalities to get the baby to pee slightly less while they just continue to do their own thing. The important thing is you're a bad person if you don't go along with it.

To explain the capital flight component of having a carbon tax when the big emitters do not I would change the analogy to:

To pee less the baby can't eat as much food and that decrease in food is transferred over to the hippos who still refuse to stop peeing. Yes the pool keeps getting polluted, yes you're 'doing your part', but you're also starving while enriching those who won't do anything in exchange for the right to be able to say that you're doing your part.

[CaptainCrunch]

Suddenly I have to pee

[stampsx2]

Regarding the carbon tax, if horgan can tie up a federal decision in the courts to not have a pipeline then why can’t or shouldn’t Kenney do the same?

[CaptainCrunch]

That court challenge is already happening in Saskatchwan, Notley didn't sign up to be a part in it.


I don't know when the judgement is supposed to come back on if the Federal Government has a right to impose a carbon tax, but it hasn't been thrown out yet.


But I do remember reading in the twitter posts by the reporters there that the judge seemed to be really confused by the Federal Governments argument.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by stampsx2

Regarding the carbon tax, if horgan can tie up a federal decision in the courts to not have a pipeline then why can’t or shouldn’t Kenney do the same?

Because if provinces lose the right to implement their own tax (The end result of this lawsuit) the federal Carbon tax may destroy the oil industry. The Alberta Carbon tax has some reasonable accommodation of the oil industry.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by GGG

Because if provinces lose the right to implement their own tax (The end result of this lawsuit) the federal Carbon tax may destroy the oil industry. The Alberta Carbon tax has some reasonable accommodation of the oil industry.

I'm confused, are we talking about the current case that was filed by Saskatchewan, because that case is about the federal government implementing a Federal Carbon tax selectively province by province.


If Saskatchewan wins that it means that provinces that don't implement a carbon tax can't have one imposed on them by the Federal Government.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I don't know when the judgement is supposed to come back on if the Federal Government has a right to impose a carbon tax, but it hasn't been thrown out yet.

The federal government has the right to impose a carbon tax. No one argues otherwise.

The major argument is giving provinces the ability to come up with their own carbon tax approved by the federal government and not a universally applied one.

The secondary argument is the reason for the tax, it may not be allowed because of it's revenue-neutral argument, ironically what most people like (or maybe dislike least is better wording) most about the federal carbon tax (i.e. ones given to provinces who didn't come up with their own).

But if the Liberals decided to scrap this current version of the carbon tax, implement one for $50 dollars per tonne for every province that goes straight to the tax revenues tomorrow, there's no argument to be made, everyone agrees that is in the federal government's ability.

So really, they are suing the federal government because they decided to give them some control, it's one of the most grandstanding lawsuits you'll find.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

If Saskatchewan wins that it means that provinces that don't implement a carbon tax can't have one imposed on them by the Federal Government.

No, it means that the Liberals will just have to give every province the same tax.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I'm confused, are we talking about the current case that was filed by Saskatchewan, because that case is about the federal government implementing a Federal Carbon tax selectively province by province.


If Saskatchewan wins that it means that provinces that don't implement a carbon tax can't have one imposed on them by the Federal Government.

My assumption is that the federal government will likely just implement a Carbon Tax across all jurisdictions if they lose the lawsuit. The way they did it now was to give provinces flexibility not to ceed their taxation powers.

[monkeyman]

And if we’re lucky, the Liberals won’t be in a position to unilaterally impose one by the time the court case is through.
Why shoot ourselves in the face now over the prospect of someone else doing so later? If nothing else, Notley should have pursued both paths, but I guess she reserves her legal battles for fights with her own province and canceled balancing pool contacts. Maybe the BC law firm she hired was too busy to take on additional work?

[GGG]

Investor stability.

In the same way a royalty review causes uncertainty removing the Carbon Tax in the absense of agreement with the feds not to impose one will create significant uncertainty. Until the lawsuits are settled and it is clear that they do not have the authority or are choosing not to apply a Carbon tax ours should stay the same.

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by GGG

My assumption is that the federal government will likely just implement a Carbon Tax across all jurisdictions if they lose the lawsuit. The way they did it now was to give provinces flexibility not to ceed their taxation powers.

I don't think it will be that easy. Provinces like Quebec and BC aren't going to take that lightly. If Sask wins there will be a long while before they figure out what to do IMO

[monkeyman]

Is there any less uncertainty? The feds could still impose a unilateral carbon tax.

[1qqaaz]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

This is a pathetic attitude. It is like saying you don't care if a dog ####s on your lawn, because your neighbours lawn has #### on it already.

Lawns are private, not shared. Earth is shared, not private.

I think a better analogy would be peeing in a public swimming pool.
Can't we all just agree to stop peeing in swimming pools?

Canada's part of the pool is pretty empty. You have 6% of the pool, and only produce 2% of the pee. Only 0.5% of the people in the pool are Canadian.

Should we care that 0.5% of the population is producing 2% of the pee and poop? Probably, because that's pretty embarrassing.

[Oling_Roachinen]

I too have a hard time reconciling the fact that it really doesn't matter what Canada does while India and China are doing what they are. But at the same time, if you're letting countries with terrible policy dictate our own, that seems to be a bad idea.

Just imagine if Canada had massive scale child labour and people we're fighting to get it removed, the equivalent argument would be:

"It doesn't matter if Canada bans child labour, there will still be millions of children in China, we might as well benefit from it."

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by 1qqaaz

Lawns are private, not shared. Earth is shared, not private.

I think a better analogy would be peeing in a public swimming pool.
Can't we all just agree to stop peeing in swimming pools?

Canada's part of the pool is pretty empty. You have 6% of the pool, and only produce 2% of the pee. Only 0.5% of the people in the pool are Canadian.

Should we care that 0.5% of the population is producing 2% of the pee and poop? Probably, because that's pretty embarrassing.

I mean sure if you ignore all other factors like size climate etc etc.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

Its more like a baby peeing in a pool while 3 or 4 hippos do the same.

This is a red herring.

This issue at hand,
Is climate change a problem that should be taken seriously?

The answer provided,
The US isn't taking it seriously so what does it matter.


I'm not saying it is any easy problem to deal with. But this did not answer the original question, when faced with a problem that requires collective action, refusing to do your part because you do not trust others to do their part is doomed to failure.

If you want to say the economy is more important to you that is a credible argument. I think you should expect the vast majority of people will build a hybrid model of caring about the environment to an extent, and caring about the economy to an extend. The real conversation to be had is about exactly how far on the spectrum each of us land, or perhaps the false dichotomy in that spectrum.

[stampsx2]

Ucp just short of a majority in the cp poll.

[Izzle]

Originally Posted by #-3

This is a red herring.

This issue at hand,
Is climate change a problem that should be taken seriously?

The answer provided,
The US isn't taking it seriously so what does it matter.


I'm not saying it is any easy problem to deal with. But this did not answer the original question, when faced with a problem that requires collective action, refusing to do your part because you do not trust others to do their part is doomed to failure.

If you want to say the economy is more important to you that is a credible argument. I think you should expect the vast majority of people will build a hybrid model of caring about the environment to an extent, and caring about the economy to an extend. The real conversation to be had is about exactly how far on the spectrum each of us land, or perhaps the false dichotomy in that spectrum.

What it boils down to is, do you want future generations to deal with an economic burden or an environmental burden.

If it is the former, then likely you're going to vote for left leaning policies and if it is the latter, you're probably going to go for right leaning policies. Future generations will pay one way or another, IMO.

[puckedoff]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

I too have a hard time reconciling the fact that it really doesn't matter what Canada does while India and China are doing what they are. But at the same time, if you're letting countries with terrible policy dictate our own, that seems to be a bad idea.

Just imagine if Canada had massive scale child labour and people we're fighting to get it removed, the equivalent argument would be:

"It doesn't matter if Canada bans child labour, there will still be millions of children in China, we might as well benefit from it."

This is also a bad analagy, if Canada had child labour and wanted to ban it, we could actually accomplish that by banning child labour. The goal is acheivable based on actions of Canada.

The phenomenon here is global, Canada can ban emissions outright but that does nothing to stop climate change.

What we should be doing is working to improve our economy, so that we can build dams/flood mitigation/carbon capture systems / greenhouses etc once climate change occurs.

Look at the data, climate change is happening. The biggest man-made contributors will continue to pollute, we will not be able to stop before the 'point of no return'. Shutting down Canadian economies may give us warm fuzzy feelings but it does nothing to deal with the actual impacts of climate change, which is what the real issue will be.