Re: 鈥淧ay for your own transportation choice,鈥� letter, April 30.
I鈥檇 like to thank the writer for his letter, which strongly, though inadvertently, supported a much-increased gasoline tax. (Tongue firmly in cheek here.)
This came with his statement about free pubic transport: 鈥淲hatever mode of transportation that people choose to use 鈥� they should expect to pay for their choice.鈥�
It is an accepted scientific fact that if we as a species do not markedly reduce our emissions of carbon fixed by plants hundreds of millions of years ago and fossilized, we as a society will be faced with immense costs (to the tune of hundreds of trillions of today鈥檚 dollars) to try to maintain our society in the face of climate change.
I will not be alive at the end of this century, but my/our descendants will and I believe we boomers should look beyond our own selfish interests.
The tiny (about four-cents-a-litre or about 2.5 per cent) carbon tax will not come anywhere close to helping, except that it should, for thinking people, help motivate us to consider alternative forms of transport.
If I can help make that choice easier by shifting some of my tax dollars toward that end, I鈥檒l be happy, and will be able to look the younger generations in the eye and say: 鈥淲e screwed up for the first 60 years of my life, but we鈥檝e done all we can to fix it.鈥�
Peter Lake
Duncan
