Right in the centre - Let’s think this through

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Published on Thursday, May 10, 2018

By Ken Waddell

Neepawa Banner & Press

I just read this morning that the Manitoba trucking industry isn’t happy with the Manitoba version of a carbon tax. I can’t imagine that they would be.

It’s also reported that some companies are planning to register their trucks in other provinces that are planning a lower tax. If they can do that, they certainly will do so. It only makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is that any government, federal or provincial would impose a carbon tax at all.

The supporters of a carbon tax make the case that vehicles and industries emit carbon into the atmosphere. Carbon somehow traps the heat from the sun and the whole earth is warming up. There are hundreds of studies that claim the earth is warming and many studies that say it is staying about the same or is cooling. 

The earth has warmed and cooled forever and what causes the cycle is a matter of opinion. It is good that scientists try to figure out the cycles and their causes. I just don’t believe the causes have been determined yet. If one decided last Monday that the earth was getting warmer it was a plausible proposal. If one decided in April, it was questionable.

Regardless of whether the earth is warming or cooling, the cause is a matter of debate. Should it be determined that the earth is warming up, and let’s say that carbon emissions are the cause, how much of the carbon emissions are man-made? How much comes from natural causes, from everything from rotting dead trees to volcanoes? Manitoba has two or three major carbon emitters, such as Koch in Brandon, but there are millions of acres of dead trees laying around, thousands of acres of swamp land.

I don’t believe the world is actually warming up significantly. For every study that says it is, there is a study that says it isn’t. However, if the world is actually heating up, are man-made activities the cause? Is there actually more carbon being produced now than when every home, apartment and factory was powered by wood or coal?

I say the jury is still out on whether the world is warming up and whether human-made carbon is the cause. 

What I do know is that media, many academics and almost all politicians have merrily marched down the warming path, that warming is bad and that human activity is the culprit. I am still unconvinced, but so many people are convinced that we have been swept into the government’s answer to every problem and that is raise taxes.

Never mind if the facts are inconclusive, never mind if global warming is real or actually caused by human activity, by God, we are going to have a new tax that will straighten our whole world right out. Like that has worked so well in the past.

And we are going to have electric cars and trucks, regardless of the cost and regardless of how much it will cost to produce the electricity, regardless of whether the electricity is powered by coal, gas, wind, water or nuclear.

Thankfully, we have elections every so often so people can change governments once in a while.

We may not have a global warming issue, we may just have a lack of thinking issue.