MEDIA RELEASE: CITIZENS GROUP TO URGE THEIR MPPs TO HIKE ONTARIO’S CARBON PRICE UPWARD

CITIZENS GROUP TO URGE THEIR MPPs TO HIKE ONTARIO’S CARBON PRICE UPWARD

FOR IMMEDIATE MEDIA RELEASE  March 20, 2017
Media Contact: Cathy Orlando, cathy@citizensclimatelobby.org , 705-929-4043

Sudbury,  ON: Citizens’ Climate Lobby Ontario members are going back to Queen’s Park for the third time with an appreciation for carbon pricing in Ontario on Monday, March 27 and Tuesday, March 28, 2017. They plan to lobby Ontario’s provincial parliamentarians to keep hiking the carbon price past 2022 and ensure that Ontario’s carbon pricing policy will easily lend itself to national and international coordination.

Since September 2010, Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) members have been lobbying their federal and provincial parliamentarians for carbon fee and dividend: an upstream, national and incrementally rising revenue neutral carbon tax where 100 percent of the revenue collected by the government is returned to citizens on an equitable basis in a cheque.

A 2014 U.S. study by Regional Economic Models, Inc. examined the impact of a steadily rising fee on carbon with revenue returned to households in the United States. Among other findings, the study shows that, after 20 years, a fee on carbon dioxide rising $10 per ton each year would reduce greenhouse gas emissions 52 percent while adding 2.8 million jobs to the economy.

Canada finally has an overarching national carbon pricing policy. However, we are currently in a carbon pricing quagmire, albeit pointed in the right direction with positive momentum. Frankly, Canada’s current carbon price of $50 per tonne by 2022 won’t be enough to meet Canada’s goal of reducing emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. As well, this goal is woefully inadequate.  If every country adopted Canada’s targets, this would not keep warming below 2^oC, let alone the 1.5^oC nations promised to pursue in Paris.

Serious commitments to address the climate crisis nationally have only just begun in earnest in the last year and half. The writing is on the wall: the trend to clean energy is now irreversible.  As it stands Canada is struggling to catch up in recapturing its share of clean energy business globally and is facing a possible $10 barrel of oil in just ten years’ time. The need for strong leadership in clean energy development has never been more urgent.

“We need a market signal to create the necessary shift to a low carbon economy. It is 100% possible for Canada to have 100% of our energy coming from clean sources by 2050 while at the same time save consumers money and create jobs.  Specifically, a carbon price of at least $150 per tonne is needed.  To get to that price, we cannot burden the taxpayers,”  says Cathy Orlando, Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada’s National Director. “The politicians need our help to create the political will for a nationally coordinated, transparent and incrementally rising price on carbon pollution.”

CO2 is rising faster now than in other time in human history.  Ultimately Ontario, Canada, and the world needs:

• A carbon price of at least $150 tonne by 2030.
• Unprecedented cooperation between the federal government, provinces, and territories.
• Border tax adjustments to level the playing field with countries that don’t have equivalent carbon prices.
• For long-term viability, the carbon pricing policy has to be void of inducing cynism and must be as bullet-proof as possible against populist attacks. There has to be a broad-spectrum of political will for the carbon pricing policy.
• Most importantly, the carbon pricing must protect the poor and middle class.

Prior to their lobbying efforts,  volunteers will receive education and training. The keynote speaker is Nancy Palardy, Senior Manager Climate Change at the office of the Ontario Environment Commissioner. She will present the cap and trade details from The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario’s Report on Climate Change (2016).

Registration for the conference closes Friday, March 25, 2017. For more information please go here: https://cclca.wpengine.com/upward-and-onward-carbon-pricing-conference-and-lobby-day-citizens-climate-lobby-ontario/

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