this article makes no mention of positive solutions to help build new generating capacity. that's the important point, after all. otherwise, it's just a price increase to offset the tax. surely, the ndp don't think the market will take care of it?

it's becoming increasingly clear to me that the ndp at both the federal and provincial level don't seem to seriously want to reduce emissions, they just want to tax the oil industry and use it to fund programs. that means more emissions = more taxes, and ultimately puts them on the side of the industry. that made sense up to about 1980, and still lingers on in countries like venezuela. but, we need to be moving forwards out of this "tax oil to redistribute wealth" mentality and into generating clean production.

they're free to prove me wrong. i'd appreciate it, actually. but, it's pretty obvious what they're doing...

i guess, in some sense, harper set this up. you create a petro-state, you generate socialists that want to use it as a poverty-reduction scheme. and, again - that was a great idea a few generations ago, until we learned the cost of it. but, what that means is that they're presenting a plan to take control of the petro-state rather than a plan to dismantle it. and, that's not the right plan.

when the liberals were playing with this, they brought in the idea of a tax shift that would balance out in income tax cuts, so that the state wasn't seeing an increase in revenue. that's important. because if you want to decrease emissions, the absolute WORST thing you can do is tie emissions to revenues. then, the state is working against it's own interests.

the important part is new generation. you need that first. then you can start talking about punitive measures. the other approach - that punitive measures will stimulate market shifts to renewables - is the kind of naive market theory that one expects the ndp to reject. that won't happen. what will happen is increases in price, as emitters adjust to the new taxes. and, even a deregulated energy market (which i doubt exists in alberta...) would then need to react to new demand at lower prices.

it's backwards. but it's backwards in the way you would expect a neo-liberal to approach it, not the way you would expect a "recovering socialist" to approach it.

i warned alberta to be ready to be shattered. it seems like it's still the end of history, for at least the next election cycle.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/09/27/unreleased-government-funded-report-suggests-50-carbon-price-in-alberta/