Since 2011, Citizens' Climate Lobby Canada has been an active organization in Canada's Climate Action Network (CAN-Rac).  CAN-Rac Canada is a coalition of 100 organizations from the country that care about how a changing climate affects people, plants and wildlife.  They work to advance solutions to managing our carbon pollution through sustainable and equitable development.  

Read their media release here.  It includes a statement from CCL Canada.

 
In 2018, Canada will establish a floor price on carbon pollution of $10/tonne, rising to $50/tonne by 2022.  The federal government will provide a carbon pricing system for provinces and territories that do not adopt their own systems.  For the carbon price to reduce emissions significantly, it must continue to rise past 2022 and reach at least $150/tonne by 2030.  A simple projection by CCL Canada members shows this could increase the cost of living throughout most of the 2030's to approximately $2,000 per person per year.

There are already rumblings of a populist tax revolt over the cost of cap and trade in Ontario, estimated to be about $140 per person per year.  Imagine the outcry at $2,000.  The clear lesson is that high carbon prices will impose unacceptable costs on consumers.  CCL has always proposed offsetting these carbon pricing costs with dividends to households, i.e. being revenue neutral.

However, others have opposed revenue neutrality.  They want the government to invest the revenue in various ways to help the transformation to a low-carbon economy.  They ask, "where else will the investment money come from?"   The simple answer is that higher fossil fuel costs will spur the investment needed for this transformation much more efficiently than would government spending.  Read more here. 

 
Ten years ago, I know where I was when I heard the conclusions of the fourth Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on February 16, 2007.  I was in my living room.  It was lunch time.  I was seven months pregnant and forty years old.  The news came on CBC Radio.  This is what I heard, "If humanity continues to stay on the same path of greenhouse gas production ,the planet is going to be a very difficult place to live on forty years from now."

I was so frightened that my knees shook and became so wobbly that I could not stand up.  What would life be like for my unborn daughter when she was forty years old?  Time stood still.

Extremely fearful thoughts of mass migrations of humans brought on by shortages of water and food as a result of climate change.  I saw all the women's rights gained in my lifetime dissolve.  In that moment I made a commitment to my unborn daughter I was not going to let her world fall apart.  Read the full blog here.