See, I have to disagree with both Garg and Frimm now.
Mitigating and curbing climate change doesn’t have to be the panacea for the left. In fact I believe the only answer to the climate change problem is more effective and efficient free markets. More government control would be profoundly bad for the environment and for people in general.
You guys are both making this fundamental assumption that legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is going to change the foundations of our society as we know it. It certainly doesn’t have to and I sure hope it doesn’t.
I hate to harp on it, but the carbon tax in BC is a great example, we reduced greenhouse gas emissions, lowered income taxes and taxes on small businesses and no-one even really noticed. (Garg included). This is the model we should follow.
A carbon tax is, at it’s core, an extremely free-market oriented solution because greenhouse gas emissions represent a market failure where agents are allowed to impose negative externalities on other members of society without cost. We have laws in markets and in domestic society to prevent this from happening elsewhere but because greenhouse gasses and their negative effects are new, we haven’t come up with legislation yet to correct this market failure.
It’s not a leftist conspiracy, as much as Garg and Frimm seem to want it to be, (for opposite reasons of course). Or at least it doesn’t have to be.
The truth is, anyone with a genuine commitment to free market capitalism should support a carbon tax wholeheartedly.