Hoskin would visit nearly a dozen different Canadian homes, moving about Ontario and Quebec before arriving in the "more cultured, more civilised" Vancouver. He became a Canadian citizen and continued to create books, each one more absurd than the last. Rampa allegedly flew as an air ambulance pilot in World War II, evaded capture and torture, and fled a prison camp near Hiroshima on the day the bomb was dropped. In Vancouver, Hoskin stayed in a West End hotel. According to his secretary's self-published memoir, he liked the waterfront vistas but found Vancouver difficult to navigate. He couldn't recreate The Third Eye's success; it had been difficult to find a home that could accommodate his cats, and health difficulties required the use of a wheelchair in an inhospitable metropolis. Hoskin became more reclusive as his writings expanded to include aliens, prophecies about future conflicts, and previously unreported escapades of Christ. Hoskin moved again, this ti...
Setting a price on carbon emissions was previously the cornerstone of the federal government's climate policy. Today, it's anything but.In its most recent budget, for example, the federal government outlines its climate priorities and the means it would employ to achieve them. Surprisingly, pollution pricing is rarely discussed. And when they do, they usually allude to the system that major industrial emitters confront rather than the one that individual Canadians face1.The government appears to be swiftly shifting away from market-based measures to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in favor of more focused initiatives such as hydrogen project subsidies, carbon capture and storage, and sustainable power generation. Budget 2023 may include the equivalent of $70 billion in tax-funded incentives over ten years.It is also enforcing harsher rules on gasoline suppliers and automobile sales. And there's more to come. The administration appears to be about to unveil the most dramatic break from efficient climate policy yet: an emissions cap for the oil and gas sector.This is a really awful concept.First, greenhouse gas emissions have the same impact on our climate independent of sector or place of origin. One tonne is the same as another.Imposing higher burdens on some activities but not others raises the cost of reducing emissions over what is necessary. Why spend $100 to avoid a tonne in one activity when you can avoid a similar tonne for $50 elsewhere? As a result, a cap would require emissions reductions at potentially high costs.
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meeting our environmental objectives effectively should be a top concern. That means that broad-based and uniform incentives to reduce emissions are generally preferable, simply because the government has no idea what or where low-cost emissions reduction opportunities exist. Creating an incentive that we all confront equally places such decisions in the hands of individuals and organizations, who frequently know what the cheapest options are.Second, a cap risks undermining the government's own argument for placing a price on carbon in the first place. If we can reduce emissions without a tax, some may argue that one is unnecessary. Such arguments are already gaining traction in response to the recent subsidy-heavy US climate bill2.And a cap effectively urges Canadians to assign blame upstream, reinforcing the mistaken belief that some emissions are more harmful than others. That contradicts the basic basis for carbon pricing, which may erode public support.A cap on oil and gas emissions could potentially damage the government's legal case for pricing carbon in provinces that do not want to, according to University of Alberta professor Andrew Leach, who recently testified before a House of Commons Committee. The government's argument focused on the constancy of prices across Canada. A cap on oil and gas emissions detracts significantly from this.
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to meet our carbon reduction targets.According to the latest federal government modeling, Canada is now on track to meet our initial Paris objective of 30% below 2005 levels by 2030.
It is true that the administration has just shifted the goalposts and is now aiming for 40-45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, which—putting aside the prudence of shifting our targets before ever reaching one—may necessitate a more restrictive approach.To be honest, particular emissions targets like this may be a misguided goal, and they are extremely difficult for a tiny open economy like Canada to accomplish. GDP growth, population increase, energy costs, and so on all have significant implications for future emissions. The difference between the government's stated low-growth and high-growth forecasts for 2030 is almost 50 million tonnes, which is greater than the present emissions of the entire electricity industry.Aside from that, we may reduce emissions even further and seek to meet these more ambitious objectives by enhancing existing policies rather than implementing new and more expensive ones.
Quebec, for example, is a laggard in terms of certain .jpg)
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climate legislation. In that province, the most recent results of the carbon permit auction inside their cap-and-trade system yielded prices less than half of the $65 per tonne price that prevails elsewhere. Before inefficiently increasing expenses in specific targeted industries, we may ensure that those who are falling behind are caught up.I know that policymakers are (or should be) concerned with more than just avoiding economic costs. Neither party truly endorses market-based approaches. And Canadians may prefer to keep prices hidden, even if it means paying more overall.Pricing emissions does not always make economic sense. Regulations to reduce methane emissions—which, surprisingly, may be the most significant near-term driver of emissions reductions in the oil and gas sector—are relatively low-cost and sometimes difficult to price.
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