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4 August, 2001
Paying the global costs of automobiles

I once shared a house with people who smoked. At 5:45 a.m. they would get out of bed and light up a smoke. The fumes would circulate through the ventilation system and pour down upon me as I slept. Inevitably, I would wake up coughing, sporting a nice early-morning headache.

Since it was my housemates who smoked, it would have been nice if they had paid for an electric air purifier. But, as logic has it, the people who do not smoke are, obviously, the people who care about the state of the air they breathe, and the people who do smoke are the people who are unconcerned about it. So I was forced to cover the heating vents in my suite and buy and use an electric space heater and an electric air purifier, driving up the power bill of the house. It was not worth it, so I moved somewhere else.

It makes sense that people who are causing pollution should pay the costs of that pollution. Those who are not responsible for the creation of any specific detractor from a shared space should not be punished for the creation of that negative element.

Recently, a study for Transport Canada commissioned by the Research and Traffic Group based in Ottawa suggested that travelers should bear the full cost of the effects that their actions have on the environment and the society they are in. Troubles created by motorists include collisions, traffic jams, noise, pollution, and global climate change.

These problems are made by people who put their own "need" for convenience before the health and well-being of others, in their city and across the planet, so it is logical that, since consideration of others is of low priority for them at the outset, they would be unwilling to ease the costs that others must pay for these problems. Many people walk, use public transit, or ride bicycles simply in order to ease their own financial burden and to reduce their negative impact on other human beings. Some people simply have lifestyles that don't require much transport at all.

That these people must pay taxes which are spent on road maintenance, fuel subsidies, and transport regulation is absurd. That these people must pay, and continue to breathe unclean air is offensive and wrong. Yet Tories were elected in New Brunswick in 1999 mostly because of their vow to dismantle the road toll system in that province.

With the amount of information, education, and awareness present in today's Canada, unwillingness to accept a pay-as-you-drive system cannot be seen as anything but greed and selfishness. Nobody can claim ignorance about the disastrous effects of mass combustion on our planet, and, regardless, ignorance is not reason.

Today's uneducated Canadians perhaps do not know that in imperial Europe, many people were victims of unfair economies and of unbearable pollution. They came here to create a new world where one got what one paid for, no more, no less. They came for a clean slate, a chance to start again without repeating the mistakes of old Europe. Yet we deforest the land, soil the water, pollute the air, and celebrate a system which steals from the carless poor to give to rich car owners.

Drivers should pay more and income taxes should be cut, thus rewarding non-drivers for not wearing out roads and polluting. Other countries have successfully implemented anti-car strategies to their benefit. Looks like education is not so bad after all.

Finally, yes, I own a car, and yes, I favour higher car-use taxes to fight pollution and improve mass transit.

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