The author is an astronomer, scientific communicator and professor of science education at UQAM.
Back in the days when our distant hunter-gatherer ancestors roamed the savannah in small family groups in search of their next meal, the question of waste management did not really arise. Humans used to throw their table scraps and other droppings here and there, then walk away without looking back. Human groups were so few in number and the interval between two passages in the same place so long that the waste had ample time to return to nature and disappear before we regained our feet in it.
Then came the invention of agriculture, which sedentarized human populations and led to a significant population increase, in addition to creating villages and the first cities. In this new context, where humans literally spent their entire lives in one place, waste management required a whole new approach and new infrastructures. Who would have thought that one day we would have to build latrines and dispose of table scraps, which now attracted vermin into homes?
Rivers and streams, on whose banks humans have always loved to settle and live, have provided an easy solution to these problems, that of sewerage. But over the centuries and through epidemics, this has appeared to be a false good idea, because the sewer of one quickly becomes the source of drinking water for the other … Same thing for waste, which we have long abandoned in the streets and alleys, until humans were tired of living in the stench and filth. Collecting waste and taking it elsewhere, what a genius idea!
Waste in the atmosphere
Today, we pay taxes so that towns and villages collect our waste, sort it, recover it or make it into compost. We also pay taxes so that the municipalities provide us with drinking water and manage the wastewater that we generate, before it returns to the natural environment. We also pay taxes so that our governments create laws and enforce them, to prevent everyone from disposing of their waste as they see fit. We can rail against taxes, we doubt that anyone who wants to go back on these issues.
Every time we start the gasoline engine of our car or our 4X4, every time we have a package or a meal delivered by means of a gasoline vehicle, we are releasing a waste, CO, into the atmosphere.2, which accumulates there and warms the climate. And that’s without counting heavy industries (cement, steel, etc.), the transport of goods and the production of electricity by thermal means on which several countries, notably China, rely and from which we all benefit to varying degrees, Near or far.
CO2 is an insidious waste, because, unlike the sofa or the old tire abandoned by the roadside, it is odorless, colorless and invisible. However, its concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere has only increased since the start of the industrial age. The scientific consensus is clear: the anthropogenic increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is causing global climate change, the effects of which we are only just beginning to feel. The future of the planet is not at stake, far from it; the Earth will cope very well with our absence, if it comes to that. But it is all of humanity that is putting itself in danger by suffocating in its own waste.
Individuals and businesses are taxed for the management of the waste they generate; taxes are required to legislate and ensure that everyone collaborates without cheating. They will not come to convince us that the CO2, which is after all nothing other than the waste of the combustion of fossil fuels released into the atmosphere, should not also be taxed in order to finance its reduction, its possible capture and its abandonment, to move on to sources of energy that do not contribute to global warming.
“Another tax that will kill jobs! We will shout. Well yes, it is now agreed that whoever generates waste has to pay to dispose of it. It’s common sense for our table scraps, old appliances and wastewater; why should it be any different for the carbon we casually throw into the atmosphere? Don’t want to pay a carbon tax? Simply emit less! As for jobs, what a lack of daring! What a short sight! Can we imagine the projects that will have to be undertaken soon to accelerate the transition to green energies and decarbonize our economies? It seems to me that there will be work for everyone, right?