Carbon Corner: The Carbon Pollution Shell Game

Carbon Corner: The Carbon Pollution Shell Game

Date PublishedDecember 23, 2016
CompanyOilfield HUB
Article AuthorKevin Turko
Article TypeDecember 2016 Issue
CategoryArticles, Carbon Corner
Tags, , , ,
HUB SEARCHOilfieldHUB
PULSE Interactive

Carbon Corner: The Carbon Pollution Shell Game

We’re as Mad as Hell and We’re Not Going to Take This Anymore!

When we visited our mailboxes in the last month or so, we all received the latest pitch from our NDP government and their well-paid thought-mafia covering the latest round of propaganda literature ‘For A Better Tomorrow’. In my view, a very well done ‘green coloured’ pamphlet (go figure!) espousing on the virtues and future good fortunes under the tender loving care of the Alberta Climate Leadership Plan. I was compelled to snap a picture of the ashy front cover and share it with all my customers and business associates across the United States. All of my gloating ‘No Carbon Tax’ friends suggested I should move to the United States to replace all of those Trump haters who unwittingly and sarcastically threatened to move to Canada. They’re not moving north and I’m staying put to help fight the Carbon Tax battle here in Canada. Axe the Tax!

Carbon Corner: Social License – Shenanigans, I Call

Carbon Corner: The Carbon Pollution Shell Game

If this wasn’t enough, our holiday season commercial line-up is regularly interrupted and sprinkled with an ever so glitzy and pretentious ad campaign on the very same subject. It seems the government’s spin doctors feel we all have to be subjected to their high-priced marketing engine to get each and every Albertan on-board with the new carbon levy. It will be haunting our homes and businesses in 2017 and beyond, while also further depleting our scarcely thin wallets and purses this coming January. They’ve made it much scarier now that it’s carbon pollution vs. plain old carbon dioxide.

To quote the Alberta Government website, “Over the next 5 years, the levy is expected to raise $9.6 billion, all of which will be reinvested in the economy and rebated to Albertans.” Raise, give me a break! Carbon levy, who’s fooling who? Have you ever heard of a levy payer? I believe the long standing and accepted term is ‘taxpayer’. That’s all of us folks! So the NDP is going ahead with their ill-conceived plans to tax every Albertan and every company in Alberta $9.6 billion dollars over the next 5 years. That is such a phenomenal amount of money to take out of the Alberta economy it is beyond most people’s comprehension. Certainly well beyond my own!

Carbon Corner: Social License – Shenanigans, I Call

Carbon Corner: The Carbon Pollution Shell Game

Carbon Corner: The Carbon Pollution Shell Game

But let’s try! I drive a 2007 Nissan Murano. I would love to buy a new SUV sometime soon, despite the rhetoric that I should get used to having less and using public transportation in our utopian green economy. Shame on me! I just did a search, and a new 2017 Nissan Murano lists at approximately $45,000. So the $9.6 billion in carbon taxes over the next 5 years equates roughly to 213,000 Nissan Murano SUVs. Somewhat of an unlucky number don’t you think! If that doesn’t grab your attention, if you lined up these SUVs bumper to bumper they would stretch 1,045 kilometers. But we only need 754 kilometers to get to Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan and home of Premier Brad Wall. The last bastion of hope for a carbon tax free province in Canada. Perhaps I will just move there? Nope! I have to stay in Alberta to help spread Premier Wall’s opposition to the carbon tax and his “just say no” movement westward. We can do it!

Carbon Corner: The Carbon Pollution Shell Game

The carbon levy is the key tool
that will pay for the transition to
a more diversified economy.Over the
next 5 years, the levy is expected to
raise $9.6 billion, all of which
will be reinvested in the economy and rebated to Albertans.

But let’s take a look at this $9.6 billion number a little more closely to see if we can make any sense of their climate change agenda, or as I and the majority of my fellow Albertan’s like to call it, our very own ‘made in Alberta’ sales tax. Our inaugural, and dare I say premier sales tax, thrown at us by the Premier of Alberta, Rachel Notley, and her crew of NDP eco-activists. Bolstered and supported by a somewhat strange bed fellow and political opponent, our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He too has his loyal crew of Liberal environmental doomsayers and do-gooders. All of which, both federally and provincially, have bellied up to the bar to get their greedy government spending hands on their fair share of the new and wonderful world of carbon taxes. Oh what a world it will be! At least for them.

Sorry, back to the numbers. $3.4 billion of the $9.6 billion or 35.4% is going to be paid back to households, businesses and communities to help us

all adjust to the new carbon tax. Let’s grow the Alberta government even further, and at what cost to us taxpayers? So in the infamous words of Premier Brad Wall, why bother to collect it, if you are just going to turn around and pay it right back! Another $3.4 billion, again 35.4% of the $9.6 billion will be doled out to large scale renewable energy, bioenergy and technology firms and/or schemes by politicians and bureaucrats who likely have only worked in the public sector for most of their careers. We can all sleep well at night and be perfectly comfortable that there will be no hidden agendas or political payback with these payments to be sure! And lastly, $2.8 billion, the remaining chump change from the $9.6 billion will be invested in green infrastructure and to create Energy Efficiency Alberta, another new provincial agency to support energy efficiency programs and services for homes and businesses. More payouts, with total transparency and accountability. Right?

The carbon tax is just a huge shell game wrapped in environmental emotion as the NDP taketh with one hand and giveth with the other. But to whom?

The carbon tax is just a huge shell game wrapped in environmental emotion as the NDP taketh with one hand and giveth with the other. But to whom?

Sold yet? If not, I’ve got an old Nissan Murano I can sell you. Looks like I’m taking the bus at least until 2018 or 2019! Hint, hint! I know which way I am voting next time, how about you?

Kevin Turko
President
Oilfield HUB Inc.
kevin.turko@oilfieldhub.com
403.537.6561

Carbon Corner: The Carbon Pollution Shell Game

 

 

 

 

 

Originally published in the 

December 2016 Issue of Oilfield PULSE