The year 2023 was by far the warmest in human history. Climate extremes now routinely shock in their intensity, with a direct monetary cost that borders on the unfathomable. Over $3 trillion (US) in damages to infrastructure, property, agriculture, and human health have already slammed the world economy this century, owing to extreme weather. That number will likely pale in comparison to what is coming. The World Economic Forum, hardly a hotbed of environmental activists, now reports that global damage from climate change will probably cost some $1.7 trillion to $3.1 trillion (US) per year by 2050, with the lion’s share of the damage borne by the poorest countries in the world.

And yet we fiddle.

In today’s Canada, there is deception, national in scope, coming directly from the right‑wing opposition benches in Ottawa. In 2023, the populist Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre adopted “Axe the tax” as his new mantra and has shaped his federal election campaign around that hackneyed rhyme.

  • AnotherDirtyAnglo@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    The hypocrisy is what gets me… Yeah, axe the tax… But let the forests keep burning, the rain keep flooding, the heat keep broiling people and droughts starving us…

    It’s not rocket surgery… Make the thing that is bad for us more expensive, and use that money to make things that are good for us LESS expensive. I still don’t know why there isn’t a tax on gasoline and diesel and natural gas that doesn’t DIRECTLY fund public transit…