The carbon path not taken

Alternatives Journal, August, 2009 by Bill Henderson

The four climate change articles and postings in your Carbon Dialogues [alternativesjoumal.ca/carbondialogues] continue to wrong-foot Alternatives' readers about the path to needed emission reductions. Examining differing ways of pricing carbon keeps us investigating ways of shoe-horning climate change mitigation within continuing political and economic business as usual, where even ineffectual mitigation is not possible. Two decades of failed mitigation, of failure of both carbon taxes and cap-and-trade, the arguments of those who would urge us to at least examine other mitigation paths, plus the well-understood examples of the failure of economic instruments that dominated fisheries and forestry management in Canada, should have us looking at alternative paths. Instead we are continuing to waste precious time.

--Bill Henderson

Gibsons, BC