What would be super cool would be if you, or any party hoping to form government in Canada, would make it not just expensive, but ILLEGAL to pollute in Canada. You know. Regulate stuff. The way you could if you wanted to (but apparently don't). #ClimateLeadersDontBuildPipelines
— West Coast Lass (@Liv_F) September 27, 2022
The left has weird ideas about "super-cool" things. Government regulation is many things but "super-cool" surely does not make the top 3000.
You know what would be really cool? If guys like West Coast Lass didn't keep demanding that others be imprisoned for generic "offenses" such as "pollution". It's a great buzzword and I'm sure he really thought it would be a knock against Liberal criminal Steven Guilbeault, but replacing the evils of taxation with the even greater evil of criminalization is hardly a measured improvement.
What does it mean to "pollute in Canada"? You might think it a pedantic question but if you plan to "regulate stuff" you have to define the "stuff". Let's start with "pollution". What is pollution? Let's ask the website "Skeptical Science" on a lark.
Although it has some very important and beneficial effects, CO2 meets the legal and encyclopedic definitions of a "pollutant", and human CO2 emissions pose a threat to public health and welfare.
Leaving aside for a moment how sick and tired we all are of being told our lives have to become measurably worse over some nebulous "threat to public health and welfare", I'm sure Liv has no problem using this definition to declare CO2 a "pollutant", so we'll take his word for it.
Already though we can see there's a small problem. If CO2 really is pollution, that can be used to regulate literally everything you do. If Liv has trouble wrapping his head around it, there's an easy solution. We demonstrate it, by taking his demand seriously.
Just imagine a Conservative MP standing up for new super strict and tight regulations making it illegal to pollute. Wouldn't Liv jump up and down and cheer? Whoops, not so fast!
One of the big asks of a national pollution regulatory framework is that it be targeted:
The OBPS applies to facilities that meet the following criteria:
Are located in a backstop jurisdiction (a province or territory in which the federal carbon pollution pricing system applies).
Have reported 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent or more in 2014 or a subsequent year to the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.
Carry out a covered activity.
Well we can replace those cumbersome definitions with a much simpler one:
The OBPS applies to only one person: "West Coast Lass"
Much easier. (If you want something more official, just keep (1) above and delcare your house the only part of Canada not in a "backstop jurisdiction") That's right, you are the target of our new anti-pollution law. You wanted it to be ILLEGAL remember? Well now you have your chance to live in the world you want to force onto me and other people who aren't scared of running a gasoline engine for an hour or ten.
Now that we've established CO2 as a pollutant, and defined our target industry, what are the allowable amounts of CO2 we let this anti-freedom nutter consume? That's easy: everything. The moment Liv breathes, we nail his ass to the pavement Derek Chauvin style. The punishment as well cannot be a fine, oh no not a fine! That would merely make polluting expensive, and we want it ILLEGAL remember?
Jail obviously won't work either. For one thing, Liv will continue to breathe in jail and that won't help us one iota in stopping this horrible crime of polluting. For another, building and managing this facility will cause us to generate carbon as well and while sure the law gives us this legal loophole (by virtue of not being West Coast Lass) it just doesn't seem right, does it?
So the answer is simple.
You already agreed this was moral, now we're just quibbling over regulatory details...
