Re: No escaping the wrath of climate change (Our View, Nov. 14)
Having read your latest opinion piece I admit to serious reservations.
First, terminology. The first phrase is not carbon tax it’s a carbon dioxide emissions tax. The other phrase is climate change. For purposes of your article, the correct phrase is catastrophic anthropogenic global climate change.
The differences are important. The carbon dioxide emissions tax is a tax on assumed carbon dioxide emissions from all human caused activities. The other is a sloppy shorthand that implies everything with carbon is taxed.
Climate change is a natural process of the movement of large ocean currents, volcanic eruption, movement of the jetstream and nearly innumerable other environmental factors.
Catastrophic anthropogenic global climate change is the hypothesis that carbon dioxide emissions from human caused activities are a “fine tuning knob” that solely and independently control global climate.
There’s a great deal of debate to the causes and effects of human impact on our environment.
If the media insist on proselytizing about catastrophic anthropogenic global climate change, it would do well to use the correct terms and avoid using sloppy shorthand that merely obfuscates the issue.
There are real problems that humans are causing that we can and must improve: pollution of our air, water and soil.
There’s a great deal of hyperbole about goals, but absolutely no mention of penalties if nations don’t meet those goals in the Paris Climate Accord.
The only section that has any definition is section 9. In that section, great detail is given to specifying exactly how many hundreds of millions of dollars developed nations are to give to the UN for distribution to assist under developed nations to address climate change.
When PCBs were impacting the ozone layer near immediate action for a global ban took place. This included severe penalties and involves ongoing monitoring. The current hypothesis regarding climate change resolves in no such decisive action.
Lofty goals, impassioned speeches, fancy graphs and media presentations do not a conclusive argument make.
Jason Kitt
Sooke
