you're all polluters

you're all polluters

Yes, you. You with all your breathing. And your little dog, too. Yes, you are a nasty polluter, spewing toxic chemicals every time you breathe, forcing eeeeevil carbon dioxide on our environment.

Ridiculous you say? Tell that to the Canadian government. In order to meet the Kyoto protocol, the feds have decided to classify CO2 as a toxic chemical. Here's what Ezra Levant has to say about it:

"... on July 16, the federal government announced its intention to classify carbon dioxide as a "toxic chemical" under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

According to the Act, a toxic chemical is defined as "an immediate or long-term harmful effect on the environment," or "a danger to the environment on which life depends" or "a danger in Canada to human life or health". To call carbon dioxide any of these things is to lie. Carbon dioxide is essential not only to plant life, but it's the gas that humans -- and animals -- exhale when we breathe.

Carbon dioxide is not a toxic chemical in science or in common sense, so what's going on? In the same official notice, the explanation was provided: It's the way Ottawa plans to get jurisdiction over the oil patch to implement their Kyoto taxes."

Ottawa does not have jurisdiction over the Alberta oil patch (constitutionally, natural resource development is the responsibility of individual provinces). Therefore, the feds had to declare CO2 toxic in order to gain jurisdiction over it, and in order to tax CO2 production. The oil patch produces a lot of CO2, in part by burning natural gas to extract oil from the tar sands. It amounts to about 45 megatonnes of carbon dioxide for that process annually. At a penalty of $200 million per megatonne, that is 9 billion dollars to be sucked out of the Alberta economy on top of the 9 to 12 billion that is already stolen from Albertans every year by the federal government.

Oh and by the way, the Ontario auto industry is exempt from this carbon-tax grab.

Just a little math to put this into perspective: an average human being breathes at a rate of about 15-18 breaths a minute at rest, exchanging about 500 mL of air with each breath. The exhaled air is about 3.6% CO2. The density of carbon dioxide gas is 0.001977 grams per millilitre. And there are 1440 minutes in a day. 18 x 500 x 0.036 x 0.001977 x 1440 = 922.4 grams of CO2 produced every day by every person (if they are at rest the whole time; if they are performing vigorous exercise the numbers are higher). Multiply that by 365.25 to get a person's annual CO2 production, and you get 336.9 kg per person per year. If the carbon tax were to be applied evenly, then every person in Canada would owe $200 per 1000kg, or about $67.40 per person per year, for the privelege of breathing.

There are 5 million people in the greater Toronto area. Under this scheme, if it were to be applied evenly across the country rather than just targeting Alberta's oil patch, Torontonians would have to pay $337 million annually in order to be allowed to breathe. Pets are extra. And those automotive production plants are WAY extra. And all the cars they drive, as they burn gasoline and produce CO2, those are extra too.

Oh but since it only applies to big, bad Alberta, it's ok, right? 9 billion dollars divided among 3 million Albertans is $3000 per Albertan per year. And for what? Back to Ezra:

"... the Kyoto Protocol's own scientific panel predicts even if every country in the world were to fully implement the treaty, it would only make 0.2C difference by the year 2100. That's less than the natural annual variation of the world's climate."

Think about what an additional tax of $3000 per person per year would mean for your family, on top of your existing federal, provincial, and municipal taxes. Suppose you have a family of four: would you be happy about paying $12000 more every year, to pay for something that you know up front to be useless? And Ontarians wonder why Albertans are so angry.

Technorati Tags: Politics, Canada, environmentalism, Kyoto