Stopping Climate Change Should Not Be Our Goal
Photo Credit: London Free Press 2020
by Timothy S. Johnston
Introduction
The point of this article is clearly stated in the title. But why am I saying such a thing? After all, the ten hottest years in recorded history all occurred in the last decade. We measured heat records nearly everywhere on the planet last year. We’re facing a dramatic upheaval never seen before, including extreme weather events, scorched cropland, rising waters, shrinking glaciers and icecaps, and more. So why would I suggest that stopping this trend should not be our goal?
Easy — because with our current strategy, stopping climate change is simply an impossible task. To continue on this path would be like like smashing our collective heads against a brick wall.
Canadians might be able to pour millions of dollars — or billions — into it, and mitigate it a bit. We could tax the hell out of our people through a “carbon tax,” but in the end, what’s the point exactly? We’re only one small portion of the planet. In Canada there are roughly 40 million people. Just south of us is the United States, with nearly ten times that population. But overseas, on the other side of the planet, lies the greatest culprit, pumping billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. They don’t care about climate change and global warming. They don’t care about rising waters and flooded crane facilities, flooded cities, flooded shores. We can milk our own people of their disposable income to lower our own carbon footprint, but what’s the point when other nations are burning rainforests and coal with impunity? Their aim is to improve their standard of living, the GDP, and grow wealth for their people. All are reasonable, and even necessary, goals. But if you look at the planet as if it were a single lake, to have one homeowner fighting to clean the water and another polluting without thought, makes little sense.
Can We Solve the World’s Problem? The Hypothetical Global Lake
Canada makes up 0.5% of the planet’s population. The rest of North America and Europe make up 15.5%. But the countries who are the biggest polluters make up nearly 80% of the population.
If the lake had a perimeter of 100 km, then the neighbours who are attempting to protect the water occupy 20 km of the shore. I’ve added North America (including Canada), Europe, and Oceania to arrive at that number. The rest of the shoreline — 80 kilometres! — would consist of those neighbours — or nations — who are the largest carbon emitters in the world. If we add the United States to it, as one of the largest culprits, then it would be even more.
Graph by TSJ, 2025
In the above graphic, the “non polluters” are in shades of blue, although South America is decidedly a mixed bag, especially with Brazil cutting hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest each year. “Polluters” are in shades of grey. Canada is red.
It’s pretty striking, isn’t it? Can you even see Canada?
How could we possibly keep the lake clean in that analogy?
Now let’s look at the world’s largest sources of carbon, from Visual Capitalist.
Note China at 30.9%, the US at 13.5%, and the “Rest of the World” at 21.7%. Collectively, that’s 66.1%. Canada is sitting at just 1.5% of global carbon emissions.
No, what I’m suggesting is not to tax people and lower their disposable incomes in an unwinnable fight. It’s to encourage our government to invest in industries to innovate products that might exist in a new economy, one built on climate change, allowing us to adapt and change to fit the new circumstances — and to flourish. We should allow tax credits for companies to settle within our borders and invest in green power. If it’s cheaper and more convenient to buy and operate an electric automobile, then people will buy them. If solar panels on our roofs result in an increase in a family’s disposable income, then we’ll buy them. We also need to encourage companies to conduct research and development along these lines.
When I hear “climate change” and “global warming,” I don’t think disaster. I think jobs. I think new economic sectors. I think new products, new resources, new wealth, new areas to develop and exploit. Industrialists and engineers are smart people. If our governments encourage the trend and give incentives, then consumers will follow suit simply out of economics. If they end up saving money, they’ll do it.
Climate change is inevitable. Some of it is even natural, which I wrote about here. We need to adapt, evolve, and change with the climate. Not stagnate and pour money into remediation efforts, shore walls, and watering arid deserts. Not tax our populations more and more each year. No, we need to encourage engineers to build for the new world environment.
The Carbon Tax
The purpose is simple. Releasing carbon into the atmosphere is bad. We know that. So governments assign a tax on certain products — usually petrochemical in nature — to offset the nation’s efforts to mitigate climate change and spend money either in preparation for, or recovery from, extreme weather events. Such a tax does work. There have been signs of success at lowering carbon emissions in the developed world. But a tax on a country’s citizens reduces their overall disposable income, and could actually end up hurting other areas of the economy. Why draw income from one group of the population while other sectors might suffer? It’s a classic case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, but in this case it’s a lose-lose cycle of backwards thinking.
Let’s look at the countries that currently have a carbon tax. Here’s a map from 2022 from Our World in Data, cited at the end of the article. The countries in green are paying a tax to offset their carbon footprint. Canada’s is determined on a provincial level. Many European countries have a high tax on their citizens. The comparison is obvious: the countries paying carbon taxes are not great contributors of CO2. Canada contributes 1.5% of the world’s carbon emissions while only having 0.5% of the population. The United States is a glaring example of a country that not only does not have a carbon tax, but they are also one of the greatest contributors of CO2, as seen in the chart above. However, one could say that they are embracing the very philosophy that I’m suggesting for Canada — cut the carbon tax and instead focus on industries and technologies to grow the economy. They are the world’s most powerful economy, so things are working very well there indeed. What I’m suggesting that’s different, however, is to focus on new industries that might exist in this new world environment, and not just ones to create revenue.
Incentivizing Industries in the New World Environment
Many governments will allow companies to circumvent (ignore) air or water pollution regulations to encourage companies to relocate their operations to that province or state. Texas is well known for having lower environmental standards — likely due to the state’s massive oil industry and infrastructure — to incentivize companies to locate there. Donald Trump famously reduced more than a hundred environmental regulations while he was in office in his first term. He even pulled the States out of the Paris Agreement on climate change. I assume the intent was to stimulate the economy. I don’t agree with these cases, because the negatives of such activities are clear and outweigh the economic positives:
- Increased air and water emissions; some toxins could be “forever” chemicals
- Possible downstream health issues, including but not limited to an increase in cancer, birth defects, asthma, and lower life expectancies in humans
- Environmental issues; fish and marine life defects, reduced seed germination, stunted growth in some crops
- Substandard regulations can make things worse
But the positives include:
- More jobs (and therefore an increase in taxes paid by employees to the government)
- An increase in GDP and therefore an increase in funding of other sectors like health care and education
- Improved infrastructure, including highways and utilities, which can encourage more industry in the area
So, it becomes a tradeoff for the government. On the one hand the company will pay less tax, but in the long run it could be better for the region and government as a whole. The extreme examples of increased cancers and birthrates do happen, and in those cases governments can actually put a limit on the amount of toxins released. Such limits could exist for substances like mercury, Teflon, and other harmful chemicals.
In these cases, we must remain vigilant and unwavering. There are some examples of industry releasing highly toxic chemicals right in our own backyards. In the Sarnia area in Canada, for example, (on Lake Huron), some companies are currently emitting benzene at 400 times higher than provincial guidelines. What effects is this currently having on the people who live in the region? Fifty percent of all babies born in Southern Ontario will suffer asthma in the first five years of their life. One in two. You read that correctly.
Substandard regulations are another con though, and a very large one. In Ontario, many companies are required to follow laws regarding emissions, but who precisely is measuring and watching them? The answer is the companies themselves. Yes, you read that correctly too! They are “self-monitoring” and reporting their own figures to the government. There is little to no oversight. The era of platoons of inspectors arriving to study effluent stats on any given day are long gone. One plant, located in North Bay, Ontario, was given relaxed pollution standards (in the form of a non-existent environmental assessment) just to create thirty-five jobs in the city. Another example is a plant in Mississauga using a carcinogen in its process, and yet nearby residents were unaware. These things are already happening all around us, all the time, and few people are aware.
However, my point to all of this is that if a government wants to actually take advantage of climate change instead of fighting it, then one method is to encourage innovation in areas which consumers will need in a new and changed environment. Mitigating climate change is something we are working on, but should we mitigate so much that we hurt our own economy? Especially as other world superpowers are going full throttle on industrialization without a care in the world about pollution and toxins and effluent? I ask you to recall that narrow red slice on the lake graphic at the start of this article.
New Possible Industries — A Sampler
We should encourage green industries to relocate to Ontario. We should allow them reductions in environmental standards, as oxymoronic as that sounds, because in the end it will pay off for the government. We should reduce carbon taxes for Canadians and push forward with new industries to take advantage of climate change. Jobs jobs jobs! Create jobs through green industries, and the taxes those workers pay can make up for any shortfalls reducing taxes on the companies in question caused. I want to clarify that I don’t mean industries that have “gone green” and their manufacturing processes are releasing less pollution, or are carbon neutral. What I mean are companies that want to prosper in a future where consumers make use of these products for their own peace of mind. Companies that are embracing green energy, using it, producing it, or creating products that will help consumers use less energy overall.
What kind of green industries? The list would be huge. Here’s just a sampler:
- Increasing solar panel efficiency
- Creating plastics from ocean kelp
- Increasing battery lifespan and capacity
- Wind power, including offshore wind
- Ethanol production (Biofuels)
- Hydrogen fuel cell research
- Carbon-absorbing products/species, or the capture of carbon emissions
- Investing in alternative resource location and investigation
- Energy efficient equipment, insulation, building materials, window improvements
- Thermal energy research and development
- Bioreactors to convert waste into soil and fertilizers
- Home windows coated in transparent “ink” that converts light to electricity
- Improving recycling technology
- Research and development of clean asphalt replacement materials
- eBikes and future transportation
Imagine incentivizing companies such as these and encouraging them to relocate to your region. Offer them lower taxes or pollution manufacturing exemptions and other tax breaks. Think about the result: a transformed economy for a new environment dealing with warmer temperatures, drier climates, and more violent and extreme weather.
I wrote about one of these emerging industries — using kelp to create plastic — here.
In Conclusion
The people on the other sides of the hypothetic lake aren’t applying carbon taxes. They’re expanding their energy-creation and manufacturing sectors and dumping massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. They’re concerned about their own economies and people. We can’t work alone on trying to stop climate change, because that’s an impossible task. But we can work toward new — or future — environmental conditions. I’m not calling for us to ignore environmental regulations and pollute indiscriminately. Rather, I’m suggesting we cancel carbon taxes for the sake of Canadians and stimulate an economy that is stronger, with more job creation, and geared toward adapting to climate change rather than fighting it. The end result will actually result in lower carbon emissions, and this would help mitigate climate change.
We need to start now. The alternative means disaster that we’re not prepared for. It means citizens taxed into poverty, failed economies, failed governments, rebellions, dictatorships, and eventual economic disaster and probable war to obtain new resources.
It’s not too late.
— Timothy S. Johnston, 24 February 2025
Timothy S. Johnston is the author of Science Fiction/TechnoThrillers The War Beneath, The Savage Deeps, Fatal Depth, The Shadow of War, A Blanket of Steel, The Furnace, The Freezer, and The Void, and he has won the GLOBAL THRILLER Award twice, the EPIC Award, the CYGNUS Science Fiction Award Grand Prize, as well as the CLUE Award.
Sources / Related Articles of Interest
Six Transformative New Green Energy Companies. https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2023/05/19/top-six-transformative-new-green-energy-companies/
Ontario Air Pollution Rules. https://thenarwhal.ca/ontario-air-pollution-rules/
Just 100 Companies Responsible for 71% of Global Emissions, Study Says. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change
Trump Environmental Rollback List. ttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html
Chemicals Are Forever: A New Factory Opens Near Lake Nipissing, Where Water Is Already Contaminated. https://thenarwhal.ca/pfas-factory-north-bay-ontario/
A Mississauga Factory Is Using A Known Carcinogen. Residents Had No Idea. https://thenarwhal.ca/sterigenics-mississauga-scarborough-factory/
The Top 10 Biggest Renewable Energy Companies in the World 2023. https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/top-10-biggest-renewable-energy-companies-in-the-world-2023
Canada’s Carbon Tax Explained. https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/carbon-pricing-explained/
Which Countries Have Put a Price on Carbon? https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-pricing
Visualizing All the World’s Carbon Emissions by Country. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/carbon-emissions-by-country-2022/
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Praise for Timothy S. Johnston’s A Blanket of Steel
“Fans of Clive Cussler’s NUMA Files will be delighted with Timothy S. Johnston’s undersea novels. Truman McClusky and Dirk Pitt are cut from the same adventurer’s cloth.” — Nick Cutter, author of The Deep and The Troop
“Action that ranges from close range combat to torpedo-fueled attacks. The result is a thriller that keeps moving from confrontation to confrontation … with constant danger and the vast depths of the ocean as a setting, there is always reason to keep reading.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Read the book and prepare to be blown away by one of the best writers I have ever had the pleasure to read. Timothy S. Johnston is simply amazing.” — FIVE Stars from Readers’ Favorite
“A Blanket of Steel is not simply a ‘daring do’ thriller … It’s prescient.” — Amazing Stories
“A priority selection. An action-packed story that is hard to put down. A Blanket of Steel is outstanding.” — D. Donovan, Sr. Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
“Innovative technology, Mac taking risks no one else would dare and thinking his way through to brilliant solutions … But the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been before. This is it. The countdown to the final battle … Johnston does an excellent job of keeping the tension taut as he plays with the reader’s perceptions of characters we thought we knew and trusted …” — SFcrowsnest
“Expect to be left breathless. Trust me here. Please. I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN.” — Michael Libling, author of The Serial Killer’s Son Takes A Wife and Hollywood North: A Novel in Six Reels
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A BLANKET OF STEEL is out now!
WATCH THE GRIPPING BOOK TRAILER HERE.
FOR PURCHASE OPTIONS CLICK HERE
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A Blanket of Steel from Timothy S. Johnston and Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Ltd.
Book Cover & Jacket Copy:
AN UNSTOPPABLE THREAT!
A mysterious assassin has murdered Cliff Sim, Chief Security Officer of the underwater colony, Trieste. Cliff was a mountain of a man, highly trained, and impossible to defeat in combat. And yet …
Someone brutally beat him and left his broken body in a secret Chinese facility at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
And included a calling card for Truman McClusky, Mayor of Trieste.
Taunting him.
Mac has led the underwater colonies in their fight against the world’s superpowers. Climate change has devastated the surface; nations suffer famine, drought, rebellion, rising waters, and apocalyptic coastal flooding. But now, as Mac leads the underwater colonies to freedom and independence, he’s faced with the gravest threat of his life: a Russian assassin, hellbent on killing Mac and everyone he cares for. Now Mac must uncover the identity of the killer, face him in combat, and at the same time lead people in battle against the largest underwater force ever assembled. It’s Mac’s final test, and to win the war, he must use every tool at his disposal, including the most surprising and devastating underwater weapons ever invented.
If Mac fails, all hope is lost for the future of human colonization on the ocean floors.
But the assassin could be anyone …
Watch your back, Mac.
A Blanket of Steel is the most gripping thriller yet in The Rise of Oceania.
FOR PURCHASE OPTIONS CLICK HERE
The other books in The Rise of Oceania series by Timothy S Johnston:
The War Beneath 9781771484718
The Savage Deeps 9781771485067
Fatal Depth 9781554555574
An Island of Light 9781554555819
The Shadow of War 9781554556007
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THE WAR BENEATH: FIRST PLACE 2018 GLOBAL THRILLER Action / Adventure Category Winner, 2019 Silver Falchion Award Finalist, 2018 CLUE Award Semi-Finalist, 2019 Kindle Book Awards Semi-Finalist, & 2019 CYGNUS Award Shortlister
THE SAVAGE DEEPS: FIRST PLACE 2020 CYGNUS Award Winner, 2019 GLOBAL THRILLER Awards Finalist, 2022 Kindle Book Awards Semi-Finalist; 2019 CLUE Award Shortlister
FATAL DEPTH: FIRST PLACE 2021 GLOBAL THRILLER Award Winner, 2022 Silver Falchion Award Finalist (Best Action Adventure), 2021 CYGNUS Award Semi-Finalist
Praise for THE WAR BENEATH
“If you’re looking for a techno-thriller combining Ian Fleming, Tom Clancy and John Le Carré, The War Beneath will satisfy … a ripping good yarn, a genuine page-turner.” — Amazing Stories
“One very riveting, intelligent read!” — Readers’ Favorite
“If you like novels like The Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising,
you will certainly enjoy The War Beneath.” — A Thrill A Week
“If you’re here for thrills, the book will deliver.” — The Cambridge Geek
“… an engaging world that is highly believable …” — The Future Fire
“This is a tense, gripping science fiction/thriller of which Tom Clancy might well be proud . . . When I say it is gripping, that is the simple truth.” — Ardath Mayhar
“… a thrill ride from beginning to end …” — SFcrowsnest
“… if you like Clancy and le Carré with a hint of Forsyth thrown in,
you’ll love The War Beneath.” — Colonel Jonathan P. Brazee (RET),
2017 Nebula Award & 2018 Dragon Award Finalist
“Fast-paced, good old-fashioned Cold War espionage … a great escape!” — The Minerva Reader
