The Tao of the Carbon Tax

Written by Justin Hartfield | 18 May 2008

The Tao of the Carbox Tax

On the harmonious balance between man and nature

By Justin Hartfield

In the most literal sense possible- without the environment, human beings wouldn't exist. They couldn’t. In the same way that a coin must have both a heads and a tails, or a front must have an accompanying back, or a buyer must have a seller. One doesn’t exist without the other.

They are dependent on the one another for survival but on a deeper level, they exist for each other and because of each other. In fact, they are not two at all, but one.

“We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French philosopher and Jesuit priest

 

Yet, despite this irreducible and profound relationship, we humans disregard this most fundamental rule of the universe and view ourselves as clearly distinct from that of nature. Most humans view nature as something scary and unpredictable. Nature is an entity that’s essentially sinful and needs taming in order to be useful for human endeavors.

But the very same energy that was contained in the original big bag is the created both man and nature (or more actually nature/man). We are fundamentally nature and nature is fundamentally us. Its like Mr. Sinatra so wisely opined, "you can't have one without the other." We can’t conquer it, because we are it.

"All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth,
befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life;
he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web,
he does to himself."
-Chief Seattle

So its easy to realize that the damage we've inflicted on Mother Nature is equivalent to suicide, or at the very least self-flagellation. Man cannot conquer nature just like he cannot bite his own teeth. The noun is the verb and vice-versa. I hope I’ve made this point perfectly clear. The day man 'triumphs' over nature is the day the human race ceases to exist. The gains in industry and comfort are worthless if they come at the expense of our own existence.

Its time to break out of the 19th century idea that the world is a mechanism and that nature moves in predetermined ways with perfect exactness and predictable results. This is the old Newtonian model of the universe that told us all matter behaves like a million billiard balls colliding with one another. Fortunately, thanks to people like Einstein and Edward Witten, we know the universe is much more interesting than that.

The Newtonian model is a distinctly separatist world-view and is not in line with reality. Man is not created into the world but rather is grown out of it. The former view, popular among avant-guard thinkers of the 19th century is now commonplace today. But the later is more true to what is actually the human condition. We grew out from the original energy of the Big Bang, just like the fish, plants, insects, rocks and everything else.

Thanks to developments in quantum physics, we know that the world seems to move in an organic pattern, subject to unknown variables and forces scientists are just beginning to understand. Nature, or at least the forces governing nature, seem to have an intelligence behind them. This is in stark contrast to the "blind nature" proposed by the pioneering scientists and philosophers of the 19th century. Could it be that nature is openly and consciously revolting against herself?

In the name of 'humanism' or more likely ignorance, many people outright deny the fact that the climate is changing rapidly and that this change can only be caused by the rise in human industry. There is no sensible person who believes that cutting down half the world’s trees in a span of a couple decades would have a negligible effect on the environment.

So most sensible people rightly believe that we need to at least try to implement something to reverse the harm humans are doing the environment (themselves), all the while trying to avoid a deeper economic recession.

After much analysis, this organization thinks we've discovered a viable solution that will appeal to both the holistic, whakco environmental people like me and the prickly business suited people we are trying to influence. Its called the Carbon Tax. Read our three step Carbon Tax proposal here and watch the Pay Your Air Share video here.

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