OILBERTA TO FOILBERTA TO SOILBERTA: HOW LOGICAL IS RACHEL NOTLEY, REALLY?

This morning, in the roar of the "Magic Bullet," as I watched the solids of my high-powered protein shake meld with the liquids, spurring an association with the melting Antarctica ice sheet, I listened to Jeff Rubin talk about the bursting carbon bubble on your show and wondered, “How logical is Rachel Notley, really?” As Rubin insisted we need a national carbon tax; detailed why the Alberta oilsands are increasingly economically unviable and called Ontario’s plunge into cap and trade a farce, I was buoyed to the sound of “the carbon bubble is bursting and fossil fuels are not where smart investors are putting their money.” 

We volunteers at Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada—covering some sixty constituencies in all but one province and the northern regions in this big land of ours—have been promoting the most logical form of a “carbon tax” — an upstream (at the carboniferous material’s source), revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend for some five years, meeting with energy, environmental and finance departments policy directors and MPs, extolling the sense of this fairest, simplest and least expensive way to put a price on pollution while protecting the lowest income households and sparing the middle class. In fact, as it is touted by economists, climatologists and other scientists throughout North America and beyond, the time has come for national leaders to embrace and put it in place.

Let’s hope the evolution of “Oilberta” to “Foilberta” (from Notley’s surprise takeover) will turn into Soilberta, if Rubin’s forecast that farmland is the future’s engine of growth and the rationale that this prairie expanse has it in spades, digs in! If Notley’s purported logic prevails, she will not follow the “disappointing “bleed” of Ontario and Quebec’s cap and trade machinations or the laggard left-behind lethargies in provinces that aren’t forecasting pollution pricing at all. When Notley decides to consult with minds like Rubin’s and grassroots resources like Citizens Climate Lobby, a diversified and sane engine of growth could very well start up Canada’s recovery period in climate change legislation and be the trigger that sets off wildfires of investment into sustainable farming and clean energy technology in Alberta and across the country. We could say to the world at the Paris Climate Summit this winter, “We're back with a wholly “Grailberta. We’ve finally found it in the common sense intelligence of one leader, Rachel Notley, consulting many economically-in-touch-with-reality leaders on the more secure road to responsible action on global warming in Canada and carbon emission reductions in the world.  It starts with a carbon fee and dividend and the buck starts here!"  

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