Will Ontario’s latest budget reduce greenhouse gases?
It is difficult to square Doug Ford’s recent statement that Ontario would lead Canada, even North America, in reducing greenhouse gases (GHG), with the measures announced by his government in the recent budget: let alone with their opposition to the carbon tax.
Funds have been cut from tree planting programs, and anti-red-tape measures may weaken environmental assessments and species protections amongst other things. The overall Environment Ministry budget is to be cut by 17%, not including the programs that were to be funded by the former government’s Cap and Trade program (arguably a more bureaucratically burdensome form of carbon tax than that the federal government has imposed). Shades of Walkerton, perhaps.
Nevertheless, the Premier is insistent that “A carbon tax is not the only way to fight Climate Change.” The new budget does include pricing on industrial emitters. However, its target for greenhouse gases (GHG) reduction is only one third that of the previous government.
Let’s compare cutting greenhouse gases to trying to reduce smoking, which has been quite effective, with smokers reduced to 17% of the adult population from over 50%. To do that, we used every tool available:
- Regulation: controls on advertising and display, controls on packaging, controls on where it is legal to consume tobacco
- Education: government-paid advertising programs to inform people of health risks to themselves and of their smoke to others and offered cessation programs
- Tax (price on smoking): the price of cigarettes as a percentage of income is way up so there is a financial incentive not to smoke—the savings are such that non-smokers have meaningfully more disposable income
- Moral suasion: the effect of the education was to make smokers into social pariahs. It might be still OK to smoke a cigar on a golf course, but being addicted to cigarettes is now socially stigmatized.
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