this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
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The Carbon Tax Is Good for Canadians. Why Axe It? (thewalrus.ca)
submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
36 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The year 2023 was by far the warmest in human history. Climate extremes now routinely shock in their intensity, with a direct monetary cost that borders on the unfathomable. Over $3 trillion (US) in damages to infrastructure, property, agriculture, and human health have already slammed the world economy this century, owing to extreme weather. That number will likely pale in comparison to what is coming. The World Economic Forum, hardly a hotbed of environmental activists, now reports that global damage from climate change will probably cost some $1.7 trillion to $3.1 trillion (US) per year by 2050, with the lion’s share of the damage borne by the poorest countries in the world.

And yet we fiddle.

In today’s Canada, there is deception, national in scope, coming directly from the right‑wing opposition benches in Ottawa. In 2023, the populist Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre adopted “Axe the tax” as his new mantra and has shaped his federal election campaign around that hackneyed rhyme.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The first federal carbon tax was enacted in 2018, but a few provinces had started (and sometimes ended) their own versions as early as 2007.

The wikipedia page is pretty thorough. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Canada

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

On December 11, 2008, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson said that a carbon tax is preferable to a cap-and-trade program which "inevitably introduces unnecessary cost and complexity". A carbon tax is "a more direct, more transparent and more effective approach". Tillerson added that he hoped that the revenues from a carbon tax would be used to lower other taxes so as to be revenue neutral.[13]

Wtf, how is this possible? If your carbon tax doesn't convince your biggest polluters to divest from fossil fuels, you're doing it wrong.

The whole point is that it is not revenue neutral

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

The biggest polluters just pass the cost onto their customers by raising prices.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

And their customers (e.g. manufacturers, transportation providers) factor in both those price hikes and the carbon taxes that they themselves need to pay, and pass those costs on to their customers, and so forth until finally end consumers are paying for several rounds of carbon tax that's priced into more expensive goods and services.

In many cases, there's nowhere for market forces to displace the inefficiency, so things just get more expensive without changing supply chains much.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

That's fine. It encourages everyone to stop carbon

The point of the carbon tax is to stop carbon.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

But it doesnt work. Grocery stores raise their prices to cover the carbon tax on deliveries, and the consumers pay more. Its not like we can choose to buy only bananas that were delivered by an electric truck.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

If it costs you $30 to buy a banana delivered by fossil fuels and $1 to buy a banana that was delivered by sail boat, which would you buy?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I have neither option option. All bananas are delivered to my landlocked town via the same truck.

Bananas are probably a bad example because they are so perishable. They have to be transported in a very controlled environment. Theres no way youre getting bananas from Guatamala to Canada via sailboat and still having them be saleable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

How do you think you got bananas before oil?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Did we...?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I did a bit of googling. Turns out there were refrigerated sailing vessels in the late 1800s.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I mean, you can also dehydrate them. There's loads of ways to preserve bananas.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Uhh I dunno if there's any salvaging that hypothetical, lol... But if bananas start costing $1 each, we're in trouble.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Things that arent local and are produced with unfair labor must go up in price when those systemic issues are resolved.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

No...it let's the large companies continue to pollute while passing the penalty off to those who can't afford to move the needle even slightly. This needed protections against this before the tax was levied but good fuckin luck getting legislation against Canada's ogliarchs that actually effect their bottom line