by Christopher Twardawa
In the July 11 edition of this paper, there was an article titled “Carbon tax will damage the economy”. Well duh, every tax damages the economy. It’s called the “Carbon tax”, not “Economic stimuli”. Suggesting that the carbon tax will damage the economy is like suggesting that driving your car will cause wear and tear to its tires – they go hand in hand.
Yes, the carbon tax will cause damage to the economy, get over it. The real issue is that global consensus to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) was reached in 2015. It is called the Paris Agreement and globally, net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. So, how are we going to achieve this target which, very admittedly, is one of the greatest challenges humankind has faced?
Like so many others arguing against the carbon tax including the Leader of the official opposition in Ottawa, last edition’s article made no case for an alternative measure to curb carbon emissions. Let me do that for them as such alternatives are so easy to come up with. For instance, we could ban half of Canadian drivers of internal combustion engine vehicles to drive on even days of the month and ban the other half to drive on odd days of the month. We could ban half of Canadians from heating their homes with natural gas, oil, propane or wood for the first half of winter and ban the other half of Canadians of the same for the second half winter. Such measures would be difficult to implement, non-realistic and cause an uproar. Simply put, leaders can implement coercive measures or market-based measures. Given that we are blessed to be living in a free and democratic society, market-based measures such as the carbon pricing work best.
In the last edition of this paper, the article stated that Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre said the “carbon tax is not going to eliminate a single forest fire, a single drought, a single heat wave.” That might be true, for today, but globally, if carbon reduction measures were implemented 40 years ago, perhaps today there would be fewer of these climate extremes. There are many misconceptions regarding carbon pricing but luckily, earlier this year, economists from across Canada wrote an open letter on carbon pricing and pointed out five elements of what the evidence shows:
1) Not only does carbon pricing reduce emissions, but it does so at a lower cost than other approaches.
2) Canadian carbon pricing has a negligible impact on overall inflation.
3) The price-and-rebate approach provides an incentive to reduce carbon emissions (due to the price), while maintaining most households’ overall purchasing power (due to the rebate).
4) Canada’s carbon-pricing scheme is designed to help businesses reduce emissions at low cost, while competing in the emerging low-carbon global economy.
5) Canada could abandon carbon pricing and still hit our climate targets by using other types of regulations and subsidies—but it would be much more costly to do so.
Amongst others, Canadian farmers are affected by GHG emission reduction and carbon pricing in many ways. Whether it be due to fertilizer usage, crop-drying expenses or fuel expenses, costs will increase and yields might decrease. This will have an effect on the price of food and as citizens of planet Earth, we may need to change our eating behaviours as the cost of some food will increase. As aforementioned, reducing our emissions is one of the greatest challenges humankind has faced.
As a Conservative who deeply cares about our environment and economy, I believe that we should tax the bad and promote the good. Carbon is a bad and the real problem with the carbon tax is that it is not priced highly enough.
