Challenges

April 12, 2017

Carbon Tax

Just a note before you read this, I wrote this for my English class (like Stella) so please don’t copy it or anything. 




Julia Ortiz 
ELA 3-01
Mr. Northey
Monday, March-27-17
Carbon Tax
            Did you know that according to NASA, 2016 was the third year in a row to have high record-setting surface temperatures?  I’m sure that it’s no surprise to you all that climate change is a big problem for our generation and the ones to come. As the planet’s temperature increases so do the sea levels leading to natural disasters and eventually landmasses being submerged under water. How do we stop this from happening? Well, there is a long list of things we can do to stop global warming, but I’m mainly going to be focusing on adopting a worldwide carbon tax. 
Before I begin talking about how implementing a carbon tax could help fix the issue, I’m first quickly going to explain what it is. It’s simply a tax put on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated from burning fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas. A number of countries, including Canada, have carried out a carbon tax, but it really must be adopted faster and worldwide to make a difference. 
Now that I’ve briefly clarified what the tax is, I’m going to talk about what kind of differences it would make if the world started charging a hefty amount for fossil fuels. 
First, more people would start using other forms transportation because it would be much cheaper than buying gas. This would take a lot of cars off the road and would start lowering carbon emissions. Then, there would be an immense growth in demand for electric vehicles. Although they are very expensive now, companies would definitely lower the price because of the increased demand. Third, the world would make a shift to renewable energy, because again it would be much less expensive than using fossil fuels. According tolandartgenerator.org it would take 510,000 km2 of land to power the earth using solar energy. This might sound like a lot but it’s only 0.05% of the unpopulated area of the Saharan desert. All of this would create no need to mine, drill or dig up the earth’s soil anymore. 
This whole domino effect to finally reach the outcome of stabilizing our climate wouldn’t be the only great thing to happen. There would be no more oil spills affecting aquatic life, no more air pollution to affect our health and the P.H of our rain would neutralize. I could go on forever, but the main point is that nature is connected and doing one thing leads to many others.
To conclude, our society really must make an important shift to renewable energy by implementing a carbon tax to provide a future for not only the next generations but also for all the other living beings on our planet.
       
       















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