Fordian Folly

The United Nations has told all of us that we have little time to mitigate the effects of climate change. Doug Ford, however, is on a national roadshow, railing against a carbon tax. How does one explain that cognitive dissonance? Martin Regg Cohn writes:

Climate change has become climate disruption at the precise time that political disruption is upon us. Unless we limit global warming by a further half-a-degree Celsius beyond current targets, we face incalculable human dislocation to homes, livelihoods and lives.

Responding to the future peril by establishing a high price on carbon requires the kind of economic mettle and political will that has “no documented historic precedent,” the UN report notes dryly. Don’t we know it.

The fight against climate change was the first casualty of Ontario’s “change” election on June 7, when Ford proudly announced the demise of the cap-and-trade system that put a price on carbon to “cap” and discourage greenhouse gas emissions. Now, Ford’s government has budgeted more than $30 million for a court battle against a future federal carbon tax (from which we would have been exempted with cap and trade).

It is a truism of our political times that it is easier to tear something down than to build it up. It’s also more profitable to campaign as a tax-fighter than a climate-saver.

Ford, unfortunately, was not gifted with much cognitive ability. The obvious sign of that is his tunnel vision. He's sees a tax and he wants to tear it down -- even if it was beginning to move things in the right direction:

The UN study — released last Sunday while Ford’s anti-carbon road show was in full swing with stops in Regina, Calgary, and Etobicoke — was preceded by an equally alarming report by Ontario’s own non-partisan environmental commissioner, Dianne Saxe, last month. It is a depressing account of how the province made steady progress with cap and trade before Ford pulled the plug after winning power.

“Despite flaws, these were good policies that worked,” she notes. Now, they have been “swept away, with nothing in their place” because the Ford government’s suggested replacement “lacks most of the features of a good climate law.”

When historians write about our times, surely they will be taxed to explain how and why we turned over the reigns of government to the Monumentally Stupid.

Image: The Ottawa Citizen