Global Referendum on CARBON TAX would give plurality to Deniers

Michael Marshall

I do not believe, in any way, that climate deniers (aka 'skeptics') are limited to a tiny minority of flat earth believers and cranks.

Whenever a seriously effective carbon tax is raised, at elections or in legislatures ,we see the wheels quickly come off the bus of the majority of us who do not deny that climate change will seriously damage society within our own lifetimes.

A plurality of us quickly forms up to oppose even weak carbon taxing and the idea of serious carbon taxing sufficient to halt and reverse global warming, finds no traction at all.

Since there still is a mania about the Titanic sinking in the air about my hometown of Halifax as I write this post, let me use a metaphor from past ocean liner disasters.

If we really truly believed that the lifebelt of a sharp tax on our extravagant lifestyle was the only hope for being alive 30 years from now, we would be rioting trying to get at the ship's stores of them.

But we are not - instead we are busy rioting in an attempt to avoid being made to put to them on.

Deep down ,most of us still believe Newtonian science's glossy promise that given enough time, money and mental effort, human science can solve any problem thrown at it.

None of us, not even WILD ROSE premier-elect Danielle Smith, denies that past human science has thrown up some serious environmental and social problems right now .

(I believe even Exxon executives would admit this ----- privately.)

What most of us deny is that it will take a global solidarity of will without precedent in history, to do something, in time, about our biggest current problem.

That is the fact that we are pumping way too much CO2 into the atmosphere.

We still believe that Newtonian science, two body science, linear, rational, mechanical science , can quickly and painlessly invent a technical solution.

It can't.

It won't.

Three body science, post modern science, commensalistic science, says only by accepting limits (in this case upon our burning of carbon-based fuels) can we pull out of this fatal Phaetonian dive.

The Deniers are not just MURDERERS AMONG US, they are a majority among us, a majority of us.....