Denmark has had a Carbon Tax for around 18 years and while the tax generates some 700 million euros a year, has not been as successful at reducing carbon emissions as hoped. Denmark has the same level of carbon emission it had in 1990 and people are querying why the taxing of carbon has not produced a better result.
Industry in Denmark has been blamed for absorbing most of the gains achieved by the individual. But is industry all bad? Some industries like mining are essential to life as we now know it. I just don't fancy cutting my steak with a stone blade, not to mention all the cutting and dicing by butchers and abattoirs before it reaches my metal frying pan.
Then I took a look at what I do in a day, from driving a car, using public transport or riding a bike to work; think about it, a bike is made in a factory from metal and plastic, not as green as thought. I sit in front of a computer for an hour or two, the hot cups of coffee, breakfast, lunch, food cold or cooked not to mention delivery to the shop I buy the food from. I'm not even halfway though my day and I realise that I am alarmingly dependant on carbon emitting industry, and that just simply taxing industry may not be enough.
So what can be done to reduce carbon without making life overwhelmingly expensive for the individual? Could we find other ways to reduce carbon? Perhaps the classic low tech tree planting, don't scoff, they do absorb carbon. To the drastic action of closing down all coal fired electricity, world wide, the inconvenience of this action is mind boggling, just think of where the electricity that is in the lines comes from, and just because you subscribe to green energy does not mean that is what you get.
And then, the quandary that the Amazon rain forest as we know it, that magical carbon absorbing region of trees and vegetation, may only be 500 years old, is in archaeological circles, gaining increasing acceptance. I thought the rain forest had been there for as long as the planet earth set course around the sun. I may have been mislead, just proves that what you think is correct, might not be the case.
Then we need to work out why the oceans aren't absorbing as much carbon as they use to, this alone would increase carbon in the atmosphere. Is low absorption rate just a cycle in the life of oceans or is there something amiss, or have we fixed the problem and what we are seeing is the tale end of the cycle that caused the ozone hole.
Even the mammoths extinction has been blamed on climate change induced by humans. I just can't cope with the concept that hunters with bows, arrows and stone axes wiped out the mammoths. Prehistoric cultures used every last piece of the animal, and so far, I have not found an explanation produced by climate scientists for the snap frozen mammoths that are still found in the Russian permafrost. If man is responsible for the extinction how come so many beasts were frozen? It seems to me that climate change got the mammoth not man. The question should be, what caused the climate to swing so disastrously to cold? Not the easy assumption, that a man walk passed and the climate changed.
Is a carbon tax the right way to deal with the rising carbon levels? Or should we be encouraging wind and solar for starters, weaning ourselves off electricity derived from burning coal rather than quick sudden withdrawal, at the same time expanding bio fuels, carbon eating bacteria, microbes and algae research for our future energy requirements.
The future will be decided by politicians, who they listen to, who they believe is right, that a carbon tax might be more than an individuals finances can cope with, I fear, is not high on the agenda. I question if we may have crossed the line of no return already, there is some evidence to say that climate is different. If we have crossed the line, what ever we do, will not be enough, the only thing that seems to be guaranteed is change, like it or not.
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