Dear Editor,
Todd MacKay of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) supports Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall in his warning to the federal government not to impose a national tax on carbon (“Carbon tax won’t work,” The Reminder, Aug. 5).
The CTF claims that a carbon tax won’t work to reduce greenhouse gases and gives as an example BC’s tax on carbon.
However, what obviously doesn’t work is what has been tried to date globally, which is setting targets and using a system called “cap and trade with offsets” to try and meet those targets. Obviously if fossil fuels continue to be the cheapest form of energy, they will be used.
Economists agree the best way to transition from fossil fuels to non-carbon energies, such as wind, solar and nuclear, is to put a price on carbon. This price should be large enough to send a message to the markets that the government is serious about leaving fossil fuels in the ground, and it should eventually mean fossil fuels are more expensive than these other forms of energy.
There are several reasons the BC tax is not working, one being that the province put a freeze on the tax in 2011. To be effective, this has to be a steadily
rising tax.
Another reason is that the tax does not apply to all carbon emissions. For instance, it only applies to about 66 per cent of industrial emissions.
Another problem is that although it is revenue neutral, it achieves this neutrality through murky tax cuts instead of simply returning the money to all BC citizens.
A better way to price carbon is a system called “fee and dividend.” In this system, a steadily rising fee is put on all carbon at the source, such as the mine, wellhead or port of entry. The money raised is then returned to the citizens in equal monthly cheques.
In this way, carbon will be priced out of the market without making governments bigger. People will be willing to pay the extra expense knowing that all the money raised returns to them.
Climate scientists are starting to use such words as catastrophic and urgent when talking about climate change. Doing nothing doesn’t seem to be an option.
If Canada is to do its part to maintain the climate we evolved in, the federal government needs to heed the threat of catastrophic climate change, more than any threat from Premier Brad Wall, and put a national price on carbon.
Skip Martin
Flin Flon
