World-renowned primatologist and climate activist Jane Goodall says a carbon price system like the one Canada has introduced is not a silver bullet to solve the pressing threat of climate change.
Goodall told CBC News this week during a stop in Ottawa on his cross-Canada tour that the jury is out on whether imposing a consumer price on emissions will meaningfully improve climate conditions in the long term. Told.
Goodall, who just turned 90, said carbon taxes can seem punitive to consumers and climate action can seem like an expensive chore.
She also said she was concerned that the fight against climate change was becoming “politicized and people are not listening.” This is a problem because the urgency of the crisis demands an all-out response.
He also said that an industrial carbon tax would likely not impose a significant financial burden on large energy companies, which could continue to pay the levy and continue drilling and extracting resources that harm the environment. Stated.
“The climate tax issue certainly has some impact, such as providing funding to curb climate change, but it does not get to the root causes, such as fossil fuel emissions and methane emissions from the planet. It’s industrial agriculture,” she said. “In that sense, I don’t support it.”
Goodall said a carbon tax is “not a bad thing at all” but that “the big oil and gas companies pay the tax and make huge profits by continuing to emit and extract and so on. So it’s not the solution. ” he said. . ”
He said a more effective response would be to aggressively reduce fossil fuel extraction and use in Canada and around the world.
“We need to curb it everywhere. I have a lot of faith in the young people. They are starting to understand and it can influence their parents who may be in the oil business ” Goodall said.
“Some of the more responsible oil and gas companies are investing more and more in renewable energy and should be putting more money into renewable energy so we don’t need fossil fuels.”
Canada has a dual carbon pricing system. The first part is a consumer-focused tax that would make oil, natural gas, and propane more expensive to encourage people to choose cleaner, greener alternatives.
Canada’s carbon tax is set to rise again on April 1st, and many Canadians have questions about how it will work and how much it will cost. CBC’s David Thurton breaks down policies, pricing and rebates.
The tax is collected by Ottawa and rebated to consumers quarterly based on family size and location.
The idea is that the further households move away from consuming fossil fuels, the more they will benefit from federal rebates.
There is also a second industry component, a “volume-based pricing system,” which targets large emitters and charges them different prices depending on their carbon pollution.
The program has come under criticism from some environmental groups who say prices are applied unevenly and allow some companies to emit large amounts of carbon for free.
However, industrial prices are also said to be the more effective of the two taxes.
Which is more effective: a carbon pricing policy or a consumption tax?
Ann independent analysis A report released late last month by the Canadian Climate Institute shows that industrial carbon pricing has three times the impact on greenhouse gas emissions as a sales tax.
According to the report, carbon pricing (both consumer and industrial versions) is projected to reduce emissions by up to 50% by 2030.
The Liberal government has put a carbon tax at the center of its climate plan.
Meanwhile, the Conservative Party, led by leader Pierre Poièvre, is campaigning to abolish taxes and expand natural gas production to offset emissions-intensive fuels such as coal.
Goodall is somewhat skeptical of carbon taxes and emissions pricing systems, but said the world needs to work together to increase investment in technology to help fight climate change.
“We have these great minds, and we don’t use them enough and we don’t think about them holistically enough,” she said.
However, she added that she was concerned about the current production volume of electric vehicles, which mainly rely on lithium batteries.
She welcomed EVs as a concept, but said she was concerned that the global race for lithium mining was destroying some parts of the natural environment.
“Currently, vast areas are being destroyed by lithium mining,” she says. “It hurts the natural world.”
Lithium mining prospect sparks outrage, pointing to Serbia From local activistsMr Goodall said rushing to exploit the world’s lithium sources risked destroying a “pristine environment” and sparking a backlash.
He also said the process of mining and refining lithium requires “a lot of water,” which is “difficult in places where there isn’t a lot of fresh water.”
“To me, that’s one of the big problems with electric cars,” Goodall said. “It appears that there are other ways to procure batteries than lithium, and we need to develop them.”
Goodall was in Ottawa on Wednesday to be congratulated by the Senate.
Progressive Saskatchewan Sen. Marty Klein is sponsoring a bill named after Goodall that would effectively ban breeding great apes and elephants in Canada, citing his “legendary discoveries” regarding chimpanzees. , praised British primatologist and conservationist Goodall for his continued work to protect nature and the environment. .
Despite her advanced age, Ms. Goodall is on the road about 300 days a year, meeting mostly with young people and, despite much of the “despair and depression” spread by the media about environmental issues, what she calls We encourage them to continue their efforts to combat climate change. .
“Her message is more urgent than ever when it comes to tackling the climate crisis, biodiversity and animal welfare,” Klein said.
Klein’s bill builds on an earlier Senate bill that would limit the harvest of whales and dolphins. The bill languished in Congress for years before being withdrawn.
The government then introduced its own legislation, S-15. Goodall is an enthusiastic supporter of the bill, which, if passed, would ban new elephant and ape ownership in Canada unless certain conditions are met.
The Jane Goodall Institute Canada, the local branch of her global charity, focuses on biodiversity loss and has a program to rehabilitate orphaned chimpanzees in Africa, for example, but climate change We are also actively working on issues.
“The climate crisis is here. Forests are burning, oceans are rising. Climate change is no longer a threat of the future. If you’re reading this, you’re among the It’s alive. The main problem is carbon.”
Some conservative-minded politicians argue that Canada’s emissions are relatively low, that the country is responsible for only 1.5% of global emissions, and that they are not willing to actively reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Some argue that reducing global emissions by reducing global emissions actually depends on large emitters like China, India and the United States. Meaningful change.
Goodall said this argument is problematic.
“Canada can set a good example. There may be many other small countries that feel the same way, saying, ‘We can’t make a difference, so why bother?'” We all need to realize that it takes all of us to make change happen,” she said.
Goodall said the international community’s half-hearted response to climate change was leading to “apathy”, especially among young people.
A recent Canadian poll shows that some Gen Z and Millennial voters think climate action is: lower priority than older votersas the cost of living, the economy, housing, and healthcare become more urgent.
Goodall said there was hope after the 2015 Paris climate negotiations, when the world pledged to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, but action was lacking in some jurisdictions. Ta.
“If governments had actually done what they promised, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in today,” she said.
