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Old Posted Feb 4, 2019, 9:47 PM
milomilo milomilo is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: Calgary
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Quote:
Originally Posted by misher View Post
The below is an opinion piece by myself.

I just wanted to bring up a point of contention for most Canadians. How much of the economy do you feel should we sacrifice for the environment? Should we shut down all non renewable resource extraction?

Canada currently produces around 2% of the worlds CO2 emissions
https://www.ec.gc.ca/indicateurs-ind...sp?lang=en&n=F

Should we be throttling our economy in return for reducing this number?

If we do, what happens when other nations choose not to do the same and out compete us? Will we sacrifice our economy?

Personally I feel that Canada should be going full speed. If we try to throttle our economy in return for reducing our emissions to say 1%, it won't stop global warming because the other nations representing 98% will not stop. We could stop all emissions and global warming will still happen.

My proposal is that instead, we should push our economy and direct some of those profits towards Carbon Capture/Sequestration technology and initiatives that help to reduce the emissions of others like shipping LNG to China.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...fuel-1.4696817
According to this article, we will soon be able to reduce Carbon by "$94 US to $232 US" a ton with current technology. Imagine how this technology would improve if we stopped hindering out economy and invested all that into it. According to very rough math, assume Canada produces around 600 megatons of CO2 annually, we could capture it all for about 60 billion dollars USD at a price of $100 a ton.

Carbon sequestration technology is still in its infancy and has yet to be mass produced. Imagine if we could cut that price in half, to 30 billion dollars. Canada spends around 20ish billion USD on our debt each year. So imagine if we paid off most of our debt and instead invested it in our carbon sequestration economy. Combine that with some of the money we spend on the environment and we balance our all of Canada's emissions.

Now imagine if the rest of the world continues to pollute. How do we stop this? Well we have a booming carbon sequestration industry so of course we ask other nations to contribute to our industry, paying us to clean up their emissions.

The stronger Canada and its economy is, the more money we can invest in Carbon sequestration. What most people don't realize is, if we don't produce oil/metal/gas/wood, other nations will. And those nations don't care about the environment. Lets do it here, pollute, and then invest that money in technology.

Global warming is not a battle, its a war. The world currently has 100% while we only contribute a measly 2%. Instead of looking at fighting our 2%, lets look at how we can fight the world's 100%. The only way we can do that is by investing in technology that can solve the 100%, rather than hurting our economic growth worrying that that 2% will become 2.1%.

Carbon sequestration is the future ladies and gentlemen. Lets stop caring about our 2% and look at how we can solve the world's 100%. Because we can trust that we care about global warming, but we can't trust any other nation to take care of it. And in all honestly, 10 years in the future do we want to be a minor player that has little control over it, or a global powerhouse economy that can make a difference.
Ok, how do you pay for the carbon sequestration if it costs $100? With a $100+ carbon tax, of course. Good, done, let's do that now and stop the pointless politics. The 'technology will save us' argument still needs someone to pay for it.
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