No amount of carbon tax is going to prevent wildfires in Jasper, flooding in Toronto or natural disasters in any other part of the country.
That’s why it’s absurd for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals to claim that, if you don’t support their carbon tax, then you just want the planet to burn.
Whatever one thinks of the federal carbon tax, it’s a “mitigation” policy, intended to decrease the use of fossil fuel energy over time.
Mitigating the impact of climate change by reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions is a long-term strategy that will require a sustained global effort to reduce emissions over many decades to reduce average global temperatures.
It is not a policy to reduce the negative impacts of severe weather today.
Nothing Canada does on its own in terms of mitigation will reduce the impact of severe weather in Canada, because Canada’s emissions are too small to have a material impact on climate change.
It’s a global problem requiring a global solution.
Where federal, provincial and municipal governments can have a positive impact on the lives of Canadians today is in adapting to climate change. This makes sense, whether the root cause of severe weather is natural or human-induced climate change.
Adaptation means everything from ensuring roads, bridges, tunnels, public transit and water and sanitary sewers are in a state of good repair and thus more resilient to severe weather, to proper management of forests to reduce their vulnerability to wildfires.
It also means competent planning — for example not building new commercial, retail, or residential communities in areas prone to flooding or wildfires.
Where these things have already happened, it means doing everything possible to reduce the risk and minimize the damage caused by natural catastrophes, through everything from enhanced flood control measures to increased firefighting capacity.
But it also means recognizing that, when cities and towns are close to large bodies of water or forests, there will always be a risk of natural disaster.
Finally, blaming all natural disasters on “climate change” as an excuse for government failures to protect people as much as possible from the negative impacts of severe weather through adaptation is a political cop-out.