A beginner’s guide to global warming
Cutting through the carbon jargon jungle
Carbon pricing is no joke...
Some things you can do right now
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Carbon pricing is no joke...

But it’s a topic sure to put anyone to sleep, so we thought we’d start you off with a guffaw. Check out these cartoons on the topic, choose your favorite and your vote. (Use the title of on the top of each cartoon to name your fave.) If you think you can stay awake, following is a little education:

Some of us work hard to gentle our impact on the planet. What about those that don’t participate voluntarily? We already have laws to discourage people from letting their dogs poop wherever they please, do we need something similar to get people to curb their greenhouse gas emissions?

Say you’re renovating your house and you have a mess of garbage to get rid of, too much for the city trucks to pick up, so you pile it in your vehicle and drive over to the landfill. In BC’s Lower Mainland (apologies to the rest of the country for this locally-slanted illustration…) you, your car and your garbage all go onto a giant scale at a transfer station. After you dump the waste (into a foul-smelling pit, not recommended for the queasy), you and your vehicle are reweighed and you pay for the difference - your garbage. It can cost upwards of $90 per ton to take waste to a Canadian landfill.

We all pay for solid waste disposal (municipal taxes fund your door-to-door garbage collection wherever you live), but cars and industries spew exhaust day and night without limits. We’re driving our cars, buying up products in plastic containers, burning fossil fuels, chopping down forests, releasing CO2 (and other pollutants!) into the air, all at no cost. Something is wrong with this picture. Should we allow our planet’s atmosphere to be used as a free dumping ground?

Just about this time last year, David Suzuki crossed the country asking Canadians how you, given the power of a Prime Minister, would protect the environment and a lot of responders put it bluntly (on camera!): make the polluters pay.

Consider yourself heard. The David Suzuki Foundation report Pricing Carbon: Saving Green looks at the mess we humans have gotten ourselves into and poses some concrete fiscal solutions.

Putting a price on carbon has already reduced greenhouse gas emissions in other countries with strong economies. If they can do it, so can we.

Next >> Some things you can do right now

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