More Madness from the Harperites, This Time about Stocking Carbon

Jeffrey Simpson set out more arguments for conservation of energy, not continued production in his Globe and Mail column Tuesday. The Prime Minister has been hopping around the country, making announcements of, among other things, projects to stock greenhouse gases in various ways. According to Simpson, the latest plans will cost $1.6 billion in taxpayers’ money, or or "about $220 for a family of four."

“What do we get for that sum?," he continues. "We get, at best, a reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions of 2.1 million tonnes.”

This means, he says, a carbon reduction of maybe 2 per cent. “On a cost-benefit basis, these carbon-capture and storage projects are madness...They are wildly expensive for the small amount of carbon they will (might?) prevent from entering the atmosphere. They are most definitely not a substitute for a serious climate-change policy that, however structured, must put a price on carbon emissions by those who produce them – either upstream emitters such as industrial concerns and/or downstream consumers.”

But we all know that these announcements, like those funny cheques Conservative MPs have been handing out, are as much about rewarding the Conservative party’s friends as they are about actually doing something. Harper is not serious about climate change or greenhouse gas emissions or anything else that goes counter to his deeply reactionary, head-in-the-sand ideas.

Sigh.

I’m not sad that Ignatieff has stopped talking about taking down the government, but somehow the forces of light in this country have got to find a way to get rid of Stephen Harper and his crew who do not represent the values of the majority of the country.