Carbon report’s bloody portent

Kevin Libin, NP:

Those 200 protesters who disrupted Question Period this week demanding the government pass Bill C-311 — setting strict targets for reducing carbon emissions — showed how dearly some people will pay to slash Canada’s carbon footprint. Six protesters were arrested; one later showed up on television with blood around his nose claiming he’d been brutalized by Parliamentary guards. “My face was smashed on the floor,” Jeh Custer told a CBC audience, insisting he would not give up pressuring the government to commit to aggressive emission-reduction goals.

With the arrival yesterday of a report funded by TD Bank, prepared by the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute, and based on economic models by M.K. Jaccard and Associates, calculating for the first time the economic impact of government climate-change policies, the rest of us are left to decide how willing we are to have our own noses bloodied in the name of atmospheric justice.

For it leaves no doubt: in meeting the government’s plan to cut greenhouse gases by 20% from 2006 levels in the next decade, there will be blood.

It portends, TD’s chief economist told reporters, “the biggest fiscal shock in Canadian history.” The study shows “it can be done,” as long as we’re prepared for hard-line restrictions, including steep carbon taxes and the banning of any new buildings, homes, appliances and vehicles not meeting strict environmental standards.

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