The unfortunate part of the climate debate in Canada is it is seemingly led by politicians, academics, environmentalists and fearful fanatics who minimize material facts, and objective realities. And disabuse themselves of data driven pragmatic thinking and solutions. For example we had an environment minister who tried to mandate a 2035 net zero grid requirement, while being anti-nuclear energy. This is an untenable and frankly insane position. The conversation around the carbon tax is bunk to the extreme. I know the economic argument - but the free market economic argument can only hold when there are viable alternatives. Show me one for drying grain or getting from Saskatoon to Winnipeg please. If a carbon tax would be effective in reducing emissions, it would have. It didn’t. However, converting Alberta’s power production from coal to NG did. And it was massive. Very little discussion or fanfare of that. This is/was true of the United States too.
I would love to have a fact and solution based discussion around this issue. But unfortunately the ones most invested in it and driving the conservation seem to be the ones most detached from reality. Until we have serious people leading this discussion. Engineers instead of ideologues - I’ll continue to put it on the back burner.
I think we could get endorsement from across the political spectrum for this.
I’m about as strongly pro-climate-action as they come and think unmitigated climate change will be a disaster. And I couldn’t stand Guilbeault and his anti-engineering, uninformed views. Yeah okay, we’re going to run an industrial civilization with no fossil fuels and no nuclear power … good luck.
Get the Dark Green back-to-nature folks far away from this debate. Let’s have a real technical conversation about what it’ll take and how we pay for it.
Honestly, so many people claim to want a "fact-based" discussion around this issue, until it comes to the facts themselves, such as the one that a carbon tax is still the most cost-effective way of reducing emissions, and we have studies to back this up: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48512-w
I'm going to posit that you don't want a "fact and solution" based discussion, because your own assertions about carbon taxes being ineffective are, ironically, bunk themselves.
But please, continue to soapbox more about how you're apparently above the ideologues.
The Nature article is well done and worth a read. However I have to be picky -- sorry, I used to do this for a living: the article does not conclude that carbon taxing is the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions. A meta-analysis of studies just of carbon pricing, it concludes these measures are on the whole effective (and more effective than often claimed) -- the BC carbon tax reduced emissions by 5.4%, the low end of the range -- but it doesn't make any comparisons between carbon pricing (tax or cap-and-trade) and other policy tools to reduce emissions. Nor does it address cost-effectiveness, which requires economic analysis. It just looks at the emissions reductions in terms of fuels burned that followed imposition of the pricing mechanism in each jurisdiction where a formal study was done. The results are all over the map because pricing is applied in different ways in different countries and, curiously, people in some countries seem willing to lower fuel consumption sharply (by social pressure?) even at relatively low prices. Others aren't.
Not addressed in the article's discussion was that carbon pricing may have motivated industries to relocate to low- or no- tax jurisdictions which would help politically with national CO2 targets but don't lead to any reduction in global emissions. Indeed to the extent that off-shoring emissions requires long-distance ocean (or air!) transportation of raw materials out and finished products home, global emissions would actually increase from such a strategy. (Emissions from international shipping and aviation are not booked to any one country. They account now for about 7% of global emissions.)
I'm not saying there isn't other research that does formal cost-effectiveness of competing policy methods. Perhaps some studies have found pricing to be the most cost-effective but this article doesn't do that. (The difficulty in CE studies of emissions is fully allocating and then predicting costs of pricing and not pricing when those costs will be incurred both in the present and far into the future. Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future.)
Highly recommend the book “Making Climate Policy Work” (2020) by Danny Cullenward and David G. Victor
Here’s o3 description of it:
• It explicitly critiques carbon pricing, especially carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems.
• Uses a political economy / public choice lens to explain why these policies fail in practice, despite being efficient in theory.
• Argues that sector-specific industrial policies, like mandates and targeted subsidies, are more likely to work because they:
• Are more durable politically
• Are easier to enforce
• Attract organized interest group support
Core argument:
Economists have overestimated the political viability of carbon pricing. Real-world policy must be messier, more industrial-policy-like, and aligned with sector-specific political coalitions.
I’m glad this study got trotted out! It includes RGGI and California which are not Consumer Carbon tax jurisdictions, nor even have an industrial Carbon tax - they have created a cap and trade system on electricity generation, which has led to massive NG adoption. Interestingly RGGI, Calif, (and Wash State) ran per capita carbon emission reductions of greater than 25% between 2014-2022. Texas and Arizona (not RGGI and without any carbon pricing scheme) reduced by roughly 14% and 13% in the same period, roughly equivalent to Ontario and BC. Also- the RGGI States, who preformed best on emissions reduction of any of the jurisdictions included, had the lowest carbon pricing coverage and cost.
So yes I will stand by my statement, and I believe the facts back it up. Carbon Taxes, such that Canada has imposed, are bunk. They are ineffective, not targeted enough, and do not allow the required nuance to cause more good than harm.
Well, I can't fault you for not adding more context at least, and I won't combat this comment.
That said, I still think your original comment casts such a huge net that it renders any substantial points you made far less pointed. E.g.; it's bonkers to assert that environmentalists, politicians, and academics all "ignore" material and objective realities. What is the climate crisis if not an issue entirely in that realm and one for which environmentalists and academics have been clambering for action?
Of course my statement is a generality. But if we look at those that have been dominating public discourse and Canadian policy alone, I don’t think it is.
I’ll point out that the supplied academic study makes my point to a degree as well. Instead of using data to drive nuance into the discussion, we get a blanket proclamation that carbon taxation works. (I know there is the usual couching etc - but this was the jist of it). This doesn’t inspire confidence.
I think we need to start with the physics and facts of what true a transition away from hydrocarbon energy looks like first, using current technology, then work backwards from there. Instead we got a proposed net zero electricity mandate of 2035, and a concurrent mandate to phase out new internal combustion light duty vehicles to the same date. WTF.
It would have been nice to hear someone from academia call this out for the complete insanity it is. Or at least provide the numbers of what both a massive transition and expansion of our electrical grid at the same time would look like.
You may be right that carbon tax works to reduce emissions. Perhaps it is because fewer people have jobs to drive to, money to heat or cool there homes. We are probably closer the the 5% reduction than the 20+% in the report. If you want to solve the problem in Canada, make electricity so cheap you'd be stupid to heat/cool your home any other way. But, of course this is all about dealing with our 2% of the world's emissions. Beggaring Canadians might lower our emissions but it it is killing our standard of living and competitiveness.
Canadian carbon taxes of any sort are nothing but a massive grift by apocalypse mongers and foolishness on the part of people accepting these taxes. Canadian carbon taxes are leading to faster and faster economic suicide. We are much off better by spending money on adaptation, if we insist that the climate apocalypse is happening.
The environmental movement is a cult. The green "charities" are just lobby groups with the same moral compass as the O&G lobbyists. They should be treated as such, weaned from the public teat, lose their status as charities and pay taxes.
Conservatives see "we" as Canada, and are opposed to imposing costs on Canadians that will have no positive outcome for Canadians, due to our tiny fraction of global carbon emissions and complete lack of global influence.
Liberals see "we" as the whole world (hence "globalist") and say things like "we" must cut emissions and therefore "we" need a carbon tax.
Both sides obfuscate, the Conservatives because they are afraid that forthright defense of Canada's interests sounds mean, and Liberals because they want to pretend that costs can all be shoved onto some group of Canadians that doesn't vote Liberal (eg Alberta or heavy industry customers, shareholders, and workers).
A rational discussion of who "we" are and the best climate policy for "us" would simplify things considerably.
This is a good point. And I think the Trudeau liberals were intensely naive about the importance of Canadian “leadership” to the emitter polities that actually matter (of which there only four: China, USA, India, and EU). Trudeau seemed to think we matter. The reality is, just like on military discussions, the big 4 don’t give a crap what we do. Canada unilaterally reducing emissions in the hopes of “moral leadership” is just sacrificing our economy for no benefit.
As I said above, I think this is where climate action really needs to look a lot more hard nosed — more like a security pact between the four major emitting polities and they dictate to everyone else what needs to be done under threat of sanctions or other threats. Really similar to the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
The UNFCCC world of kumbaya, NGO, Greta Thunberg, moral leadership, climate justice, big COP meetings with posturing leaders — it’s dead. It was already dying and Trump’s election was its final demise. A new regime will replace it, but I think we have to go through a few years of bleak lack of action on climate first.
Agreed. In fact, action by individual small countries like Canada is actually marginally harmful, because it distracts from the key question: whether the big 4 will sign up to real and enforceable action.
Isn't the real issue the lag between action and results? Worsening climate change is likley baked in for several decades regardless of action as the oceans act as heat sinks, delaying the consequences of long ago emissions. Even once emissions stabilize, the effects of climate change will likely linger for at least millennia as that is how long natural sequestration by plants and algae will take to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Remember, oil and gas deposits resulted from millions of years of biological activity. Attempting to sell climate action as mitigation is attempting to sell lies.
The best time to start was 100 years ago. The second best time is today.
Just throwing up our hands and saying “well, the worst of it won’t hit us until 2100” dooms our children. I will fight tooth and nail to counter this view and a lot of others will too.
Western civilization used to build cathedrals that weren’t done until 300 years after the death of the original generation that designed, funded, and laid the foundation stones for them. We should think of the energy transition as our version of this.
I'm not advocating inaction. Rather I'm pointing out that climate adaptation is inevitable and that investments in mitigation won't alter the cost or timeline of adaptation.
Eh, that’s not really true… Action now will definitely pay off in a reduced need for adaptation by 2100 and to a lesser extent even by 2050. It just won’t pay off *immediately* like reductions in smog or water pollution do.
I would suggest that the reason for inaction is that the net present value today of children born several generations later than the current one is zero.
At 3-5% discount rates, for sure that’s true. But using those discount rates implies perpetual economic growth for several generations. The numbers mean that it doesn’t actually make economic sense to take action today for the benefit of much richer future generations
I think there’s a very good argument to be made that under conditions of unmitigated bad climate change, that perpetual economic growth may be challenged.
No, Geoff. That’s not what a discount rate implies. It just recognizes the time value of money. A dollar today is worth more than the promise of a dollar tomorrow. Why? Because you can spend the dollar today. A dollar tomorrow might never get paid: your death, the promisor’s bankruptcy, nuclear war, so you would never get to spend it.
This is true whether the economy is growing or stagnating, or even shrinking. A dollar in your pocket today is still worth more than a promise of a dollar in the future. If the dollar won’t be paid until your grandchildren grow up and have children after you die, the promise of a dollar is not worth anything to you.
So properly discounted, lives and comfort of people themselves yet unborn aren’t worth anything to us today. We don't know that specific ones we might care about will ever even exist. Your one grandchild could become trans and that's it. (Nor are people in faraway countries living today worth anything to us, but that’s another story with similar psychology.) This isn’t a matter of moral fault or failing. It’s just the observations by economists about how real people think and make decisions. So costs and benefits expected in the future are always discounted, no matter whether you think environmental calamity will bring economic growth itself to a halt. (Hint: it never has, not for long.)
Remember Kyoto? We signed on to it precisely because of that UNFCC world, and then promptly looked at how we can avoid the carbon reductions we just signed on for; a big one was that we be credited for carbon reductions in coal-consuming countries to which we export natural gas, which we would expand. If any of this sounds familiar, it is that there is nothing new under the sun.
Climate concerns were always a luxury belief. It's just that now fewer of us can afford to hold these beliefs.
Which leads me to this:
• Canada is a dwarf when it comes to pollution, so doing anything on that front is pointless
• Cheap, abundant energy is directly correlated to progress and wealth.
• Wealth means more resources to be a good steward of the environment.
• Hamstringing developing countries by asking them to curb their emissions is asking them to sacrifice their future for what is at best a questionable solution to the pollution problem.
• Letting them go through their growth phase and eventually transition out of the most polluting energy sources, is the fastest way to reduce pollution.
• Therefore, the best course of action for Canada is to ditch all carbon pricing, build pipelines and supercharge its energy industry so we can help the rest of the world pollute less and charge a premium for our clean(er) energy.
Carbon pricing is nothing but a tax, which is inherently inefficient (hello, layers of bureaucracy), leading to all kind of negative unforeseen consequences.
The liberals' policy is akin to lining up Andre De Grasse for the World Championship in the 100-meter dash, only to slash his achilles' heel just before the race. Nobody wins in that scenario.
What was the money extorted from Canadians for the carbon tax used for other than the obvious buying of votes through some ludicrous rebate program? The whole concept is ludicrous and based more on politicians and bureaucrats needs to grab as much cash as they can from tax payers to continue to support their ideologically slanted spendthrift ways.
Public policy must be based on reality if it hopes to be effective at meeting some stated target. China is INCREASING emissions each year by more than the sum of all Canadian emissions.
If we are serious about reducing emissions, we need to focus on helping high-emitting countries, rather than feel-good measures that will have little to no effect on the problem.
Not just the poor were "made whole" though the consumer carbon-tax rebates. They didn't buy much energy to begin with. The rebates benefited urban dwellers, many comfortably off, in small apartments and condos that don't cost much to heat and cool and who don't have to drive much. (Municipal governments pick up the cost of the carbon tax on fuel for public transit.) When they fly to foreign destinations the rebates "make whole" the carbon tax on the jet fuel to get there. But the rebates mostly rewarded those with the wherewithal to make virtuous choices, not just the poor. OK, that's what a Pigovian tax does, but let's be honest about it. It rewarded behaviour that many of these people were already doing anyway (whether virtuous or just plain poor) and merely imposed an unavoidable cost on people whose energy use was more constrained by circumstances they had little short-term control over. Sure, suburbanites could eventually move into condos downtown to escape the carbon tax. But not this year. It's not a high-enough cost to motivate really drastic behaviour like that. You'd have to get gasoline to $10 a litre to make people move, and at that price you'd see industry developing very expensive "green" fuel that makes diesel from its own exhaust. Heaven forbid, drivers might even surge to electric cars, demanding the tariffs on Chinese EVs be rescinded. But before that they would vote out the government.
When Liberal voters say Canadians should "do more", they don't mean things that actually cost them money personally. They always imagine that Someone Else will pay more of the cost, like "the rich" or "corporations."
Because most of these choices to use or not use fossil fuels are already baked in as part of one's circumstances, the consumer carbon tax didn't reduce emissions. (This ineffectiveness was reported in the news media around the time of the election, contrasting with the industrial carbon tax.) It was just a redistribution scheme that made some people poorer and some people richer based on their use of fossil fuels, not according to their economic needs. That's why candidate Mark Carney was happy to eliminate it: it wasn't working for purposes claimed. It turns out that the retail consumer's demand for energy isn't very elastic: a higher price reduces demand only trivially, not enough to make a difference in emissions.
The industrial carbon tax is another matter. Unlike consumers, industry has a number of ways to reduce the carbon tax it has to pay: It can just make less of what it makes even in the face of continued brisk demand for its "polluting" products (which raises prices and lays workers off, but hey, what matters is how much it earns, not how much it costs.) It can adjust its internal processes to use less fossil fuel and more of other sources that would, but for the carbon tax, be more expensive. It can just generally be more efficient in deciding between budgeted wants and needs (which household consumers generally can't. Do I need to drive Johnny all over the province playing rep hockey?) In the extreme, industry can just leave Canada and relocate to next-door USA which doesn't impose carbon taxes and is better for business anyway. All but the last really do reduce emissions. (The last just shifts the emissions (and the jobs and the corporate tax revenue) to the other country.)
The point is that industry is in a better position to respond to the tax incentives to reduce emissions than ordinary consumers are, so an industrial carbon tax will be more efficient in reducing emissions, which is what we saw in the media stories discussing it during the election campaign. An industry that leaves oil in the ground really will reduce emissions. Duh! Who knew? I guess we'll find out if that is what Canadians mean when they say we should "do more."
I thought the author of this piece, a professional pollster, should have addressed social desirability bias. When this bias is operating, poll respondents will endorse measures that their tribe adheres to even if they individually aren’t so sure. Liberal respondents know they are supposed to want to “do more” so they say so when asked even if in their hearts they know they personally aren’t going to do anything. Conservative respondents know that it’s OK to say “Hell no! The climate refugees can drown or cook for all I care!”, so they do.
Social desirability bias is difficult to control for and should always be confronted in polling that asks questions about virtue or vice. One way is to look at revealed preferences. White flight is a good example. White people might say they want to live in a diverse neighbourhood but actually they move out when the non-white arrivals reach a tipping point. (They want to sell before property values collapse and make fools of them.).
You could look at voluntary, unbidden support for climate initiatives the same way. Everyone could reduce emissions (and save money) by driving the speed limit on highways. No need to wait for government incentives. Just ease up on the gas. Yet almost no one does. So clearly other priorities are more important than reducing emissions (and saving money.).
You could argue that many people have virtuously decided to take transit instead of driving and it’s only the “Hell no!” people who are driving (fast.). But commuter statistics don’t show a large shift to transit except in Toronto (where suburbanites who live near the GO Train and work near Union Station do use the trains.). Yet ridership on municipal local transit as a proportion of work trips continues its decades-long slide even with the climate emergency. So revealed preference shows that most people are going about business as usual waiting for....for what, exactly?
I think this all is a necessary step of facing reality that we and every other jurisdiction will have to go through. Two really hard truths at the same time:
1. The energy transition will be extremely expensive — like order of magnitude of Second World War spending but for decades straight.
2. If we don’t do it, this is going to be disastrous — a steady grinding-down of global living standards and increased instability; billions of climate refugees etc.
Each political party in Canada seems to pretend that one of the above is not true, but BOTH are. Us voters don’t want to face that, and punish our leaders when they try to act as if both are true (eg with carbon taxes, and other strong policies).
It’s the ultimate coordination problem - global in scale and centuries in time. No immediate feedback or local benefit from local sacrifices. And Canada’s contribution is of course small on a global scale (though well above our share of global population).
I’ve said in other posts that I think we’re going to enter a dark period on global climate action for a few years and then it’ll be reinvented as something much more serious. More like Reagan-Gorbachev nuclear nonproliferation discussions and less like UNFCCC voluntary-action and moral-hectoring and kumbaya.
Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to restrictions on their own nuclear forces, easy for them because it was a bilateral agreement with no externalities. They didn't impose nuclear non-proliferation on anyone. Nuclear non-proliferation goes back to the Kennedy years of the early 1960s when the Boy Scout countries agreed among themselves not to develop nuclear weapons of their own and most signed on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (They could do this because the five leaders of the blocs they were aligned with by then had nuclear deterrents. Nobody arm-twisted them, certainly not Reagan and Gorbachev. Long before their time.) Since then no country that really wants to go nuclear has been successfully deterred, unless Iran turns out to be. No country that has exploded a nuclear weapon has been punished by the international community for thumbing its nose at nuclear non-proliferation. Rather, the international "community" of self-interested schemers becomes afraid of successful nuclear nations, a fact not lost on the rulers of Iran and North Korea.
What you are envisioning I think is a grand alliance between the U.S., China, and the rest of developing industrial Asia to come together and be the world's policemen on climate. No multilateral supra-sovereign cooperation like this has ever happened. (The U.S. and the British suppressed, with naval force, the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the early 1800s as a bilateral cooperation, ditto the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.) The Reagan-Gorbachev accords are not a precedent for a multi-lateral emissions enforcement scheme. The interests of the countries of the putative alliance don't align.
So unless someone has a better plan, I’m going to continue to push for exactly this — China and USA (and India and the EU to a lesser extent) get serious about this and then play emissions cop to the rest of the world under threat of sanctions.
Who is "we"? As in "if we don't..." The "we" only includes China, India, the US and the EU (and in the not-too-distant future a number of large developing economies). If by "we" you mean Canadians, "we" are spectators.
“We” in this post above means humanity. I agree Canadians are spectators, or maybe something akin to voters — where your one vote doesn’t make a difference, only as part of a large coalition.
As I have said in other posts here, I think “we” (meaning Canadians) will eventually be told what to do, when the major polities finally face enough damage from climate change to demand more serious action. Things we (Canadians) can do to get them (China etc.) there faster will help the world and ultimately us (Canadians). I don’t think the UNFCCC and “moral leadership” did much. I don’t know what the right next step for Canada is, other than leadership on nuclear power.
I agree. Shipping natural gas seems like a good idea, too. It sure beats coal - and not only in terms of greenhouse gas. Burning coal for power generation used to be a major cause of death for the elderly and for hospital visits for infants and toddlers here in Ontario. Switching to natural gas was a big win for public health.
That’s a bit of an exaggeration. Just so you don’t think I’m biased, I’m linking to a report by a leftist advocacy organization (CAPE) that rebutted an earlier piece by the Fraser Institute. CAPE acknowledges that the health benefits from switching to gas are probable but uncertain because many other air-quality efforts were going on. Coal smoke is distributed over a very broad area and the impact on any one person’s health is something of an educated guess. I challenge your statement that coal smoke was ever a “major” cause of death even in frail elderly. The CAPE report doesn’t say that. The main reasons for switching were:
1) The Americans were phasing out coal, too
2) Our coal plants were getting old and maintenance hungry.
3) Climate change. It is easy to exaggerate the climate (and health) benefits of gas but it is still a fossil fuel and the activists will not rest until it is gone, too. Don’t think they will thank you for burning gas, or for selling it to foreign countries to “help” them get off coal. Non-European foreigners won’t buy our gas unless we can sell it and ship it to them cheaper than their own coal is. When the activists say, “Leave it in the ground”, they mean gas, too.
Canada has had carbon taxes for years, yet our emmissions have increased. That's because Canada is a large cold country. Many of us drive long distances daily because of where we chose to live. We want to keep our homes at comfortable temperatures. We will not change either of these practises no matter our feelings about climate change. For Canadians, carbon taxes are a luxury belief that we are thankfully casting aside.
The unasked question in your survey is at what of cost does Canadian support drop? I've read of surveys that suggest that Canadians will pay no more than $100/year for reducing emmissions. Perhaps that's why "axe the tax" worked for the Conservatives until Carney did axe it.
This article is legitimate analysis in itself that absolutely did not need the preachy preamble that basically amounted to "Carbon tax good, CPC bad, and Liberals slightly better". I absolutely wanted to know the results of these surveys - it answers a very important question. But it could have definitely done without passing (seemingly partisan) judgment on what approach is right or wrong about tackling climate change.
It seems to me that one fact which ought to drive the analysis is that Canada is responsible for just 1.5% of the world's emissions. All too often (including in this piece) that fact is absent from consideration. And yet, absent consideration of that fact, and other relevant data, it is impossible to assess appropriate solutions. Instead we are left with environmental fanatics screaming about net zero on one side opposed by culture warriors of the other stripe pointing to a cold snap in January as definitive proof that there is nothing to see here.
Rather than breaking the population into Liberals vs Conservatives, breaking it into those who know how much we emit versus those who don't might yield more useful information for everyone.
Come on Chris. You can do better. Ask questions with the intent to learn and you'll see the way. Conservatives don't think this is a foreign issue. Quite the opposite is true. You can fudge the questions to prove your hypothesis but don't present it as information worthy of review.
“the Liberals will want to show action at home, but not actually in the homes of their voters.”
That quote from the author at the very end of the article is a fine example of how urban Liberals are actually gaming their climate change credentials at the expense of everyone else.
Comparing that to the thorough statistics presented, there is really no differentiation between Liberal and Conservative voters except the LPC gets to claim the moral high ground by claiming to have a “climate agenda”.
The LPC climate agenda is to heap the burden upon the oil/gas industry as the low hanging fruit, nestled far away from most urban voters, tax it and then cynically rebate some of the proceeds in a income redistribution scheme. Trudeau’s last stand charade on the soon to implode carbon tax was to warn Canadians that they would be worse off financially without the rebate.
The political manipulation glosses over the fundamental need for mitigation planning and execution. Where is a national wildfire center, managing wild fire assets like controlled burn crews and water bombers?
I know that coming change is affecting Canada. Clearly though by any measurable standard, the climate changes in BC for instance are not at all caused by BC industry. It is a worldwide phenomenon and the fault — now — is from those nations who have taken or been given a free ride (so to speak) in terms of carbon production. This is exactly what Cdns know and it is a major factor in dropping of the heavy interest in “doing something” to right the climate ship. Combine that with an economy in trouble plus Trump’s asinine work and you have a drop in attention by Cdns. A big drop.
My, my. This article entirely ignored efficacy, since the article's about politics, but efficacy is important to the political discussion. What happens to the Liberal party should climate voters learn some very relevant facts? Can the Liberals sufficiently control conversations to stay in power?
It's possible that the Liberal refusal to grasp the global nature of greenhouse gas emissions actually increases the amount of greenhouse gases emitted annually. Canada, with our 1.4 and falling percentage contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, can only do so much internally. Sending our CNG to most other countries would achieve a greater reduction than the total contribution of Canada to greenhouse gas emissions! Climate change is a global problem, but do Liberal voters realize that? Second, carbon taxes cannot achieve reductions when the technologies are not ready. For example, trucking pays the carbon tax, increasing costs in the supply chains for everything, when there are no available alternatives. Third, the process for building batteries, solar and wind installations, etc is very energy intensive and there is no recycling. Does anyone factor in the greenhouse gasses required to build and retire all those batteries, windmills and solar panels? And I could go on ......
The unfortunate part of the climate debate in Canada is it is seemingly led by politicians, academics, environmentalists and fearful fanatics who minimize material facts, and objective realities. And disabuse themselves of data driven pragmatic thinking and solutions. For example we had an environment minister who tried to mandate a 2035 net zero grid requirement, while being anti-nuclear energy. This is an untenable and frankly insane position. The conversation around the carbon tax is bunk to the extreme. I know the economic argument - but the free market economic argument can only hold when there are viable alternatives. Show me one for drying grain or getting from Saskatoon to Winnipeg please. If a carbon tax would be effective in reducing emissions, it would have. It didn’t. However, converting Alberta’s power production from coal to NG did. And it was massive. Very little discussion or fanfare of that. This is/was true of the United States too.
I would love to have a fact and solution based discussion around this issue. But unfortunately the ones most invested in it and driving the conservation seem to be the ones most detached from reality. Until we have serious people leading this discussion. Engineers instead of ideologues - I’ll continue to put it on the back burner.
I think we could get endorsement from across the political spectrum for this.
I’m about as strongly pro-climate-action as they come and think unmitigated climate change will be a disaster. And I couldn’t stand Guilbeault and his anti-engineering, uninformed views. Yeah okay, we’re going to run an industrial civilization with no fossil fuels and no nuclear power … good luck.
Get the Dark Green back-to-nature folks far away from this debate. Let’s have a real technical conversation about what it’ll take and how we pay for it.
Honestly, so many people claim to want a "fact-based" discussion around this issue, until it comes to the facts themselves, such as the one that a carbon tax is still the most cost-effective way of reducing emissions, and we have studies to back this up: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48512-w
I'm going to posit that you don't want a "fact and solution" based discussion, because your own assertions about carbon taxes being ineffective are, ironically, bunk themselves.
But please, continue to soapbox more about how you're apparently above the ideologues.
The Nature article is well done and worth a read. However I have to be picky -- sorry, I used to do this for a living: the article does not conclude that carbon taxing is the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions. A meta-analysis of studies just of carbon pricing, it concludes these measures are on the whole effective (and more effective than often claimed) -- the BC carbon tax reduced emissions by 5.4%, the low end of the range -- but it doesn't make any comparisons between carbon pricing (tax or cap-and-trade) and other policy tools to reduce emissions. Nor does it address cost-effectiveness, which requires economic analysis. It just looks at the emissions reductions in terms of fuels burned that followed imposition of the pricing mechanism in each jurisdiction where a formal study was done. The results are all over the map because pricing is applied in different ways in different countries and, curiously, people in some countries seem willing to lower fuel consumption sharply (by social pressure?) even at relatively low prices. Others aren't.
Not addressed in the article's discussion was that carbon pricing may have motivated industries to relocate to low- or no- tax jurisdictions which would help politically with national CO2 targets but don't lead to any reduction in global emissions. Indeed to the extent that off-shoring emissions requires long-distance ocean (or air!) transportation of raw materials out and finished products home, global emissions would actually increase from such a strategy. (Emissions from international shipping and aviation are not booked to any one country. They account now for about 7% of global emissions.)
I'm not saying there isn't other research that does formal cost-effectiveness of competing policy methods. Perhaps some studies have found pricing to be the most cost-effective but this article doesn't do that. (The difficulty in CE studies of emissions is fully allocating and then predicting costs of pricing and not pricing when those costs will be incurred both in the present and far into the future. Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future.)
Highly recommend the book “Making Climate Policy Work” (2020) by Danny Cullenward and David G. Victor
Here’s o3 description of it:
• It explicitly critiques carbon pricing, especially carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems.
• Uses a political economy / public choice lens to explain why these policies fail in practice, despite being efficient in theory.
• Argues that sector-specific industrial policies, like mandates and targeted subsidies, are more likely to work because they:
• Are more durable politically
• Are easier to enforce
• Attract organized interest group support
Core argument:
Economists have overestimated the political viability of carbon pricing. Real-world policy must be messier, more industrial-policy-like, and aligned with sector-specific political coalitions.
I’m glad this study got trotted out! It includes RGGI and California which are not Consumer Carbon tax jurisdictions, nor even have an industrial Carbon tax - they have created a cap and trade system on electricity generation, which has led to massive NG adoption. Interestingly RGGI, Calif, (and Wash State) ran per capita carbon emission reductions of greater than 25% between 2014-2022. Texas and Arizona (not RGGI and without any carbon pricing scheme) reduced by roughly 14% and 13% in the same period, roughly equivalent to Ontario and BC. Also- the RGGI States, who preformed best on emissions reduction of any of the jurisdictions included, had the lowest carbon pricing coverage and cost.
So yes I will stand by my statement, and I believe the facts back it up. Carbon Taxes, such that Canada has imposed, are bunk. They are ineffective, not targeted enough, and do not allow the required nuance to cause more good than harm.
Well, I can't fault you for not adding more context at least, and I won't combat this comment.
That said, I still think your original comment casts such a huge net that it renders any substantial points you made far less pointed. E.g.; it's bonkers to assert that environmentalists, politicians, and academics all "ignore" material and objective realities. What is the climate crisis if not an issue entirely in that realm and one for which environmentalists and academics have been clambering for action?
Thanks for the reply Gavin.
Of course my statement is a generality. But if we look at those that have been dominating public discourse and Canadian policy alone, I don’t think it is.
I’ll point out that the supplied academic study makes my point to a degree as well. Instead of using data to drive nuance into the discussion, we get a blanket proclamation that carbon taxation works. (I know there is the usual couching etc - but this was the jist of it). This doesn’t inspire confidence.
I think we need to start with the physics and facts of what true a transition away from hydrocarbon energy looks like first, using current technology, then work backwards from there. Instead we got a proposed net zero electricity mandate of 2035, and a concurrent mandate to phase out new internal combustion light duty vehicles to the same date. WTF.
It would have been nice to hear someone from academia call this out for the complete insanity it is. Or at least provide the numbers of what both a massive transition and expansion of our electrical grid at the same time would look like.
Environmentalists and academics rely on "climate emergencies" for their funding. Not that that would affect their views.
You may be right that carbon tax works to reduce emissions. Perhaps it is because fewer people have jobs to drive to, money to heat or cool there homes. We are probably closer the the 5% reduction than the 20+% in the report. If you want to solve the problem in Canada, make electricity so cheap you'd be stupid to heat/cool your home any other way. But, of course this is all about dealing with our 2% of the world's emissions. Beggaring Canadians might lower our emissions but it it is killing our standard of living and competitiveness.
"...but the free market economic argument can only hold when there are viable alternatives."
Amen to that.
Canadian carbon taxes of any sort are nothing but a massive grift by apocalypse mongers and foolishness on the part of people accepting these taxes. Canadian carbon taxes are leading to faster and faster economic suicide. We are much off better by spending money on adaptation, if we insist that the climate apocalypse is happening.
You wrote in 3 sentences what took me 15 to elaborate. Well done.
The environmental movement is a cult. The green "charities" are just lobby groups with the same moral compass as the O&G lobbyists. They should be treated as such, weaned from the public teat, lose their status as charities and pay taxes.
The whole question here is who "we" are.
Conservatives see "we" as Canada, and are opposed to imposing costs on Canadians that will have no positive outcome for Canadians, due to our tiny fraction of global carbon emissions and complete lack of global influence.
Liberals see "we" as the whole world (hence "globalist") and say things like "we" must cut emissions and therefore "we" need a carbon tax.
Both sides obfuscate, the Conservatives because they are afraid that forthright defense of Canada's interests sounds mean, and Liberals because they want to pretend that costs can all be shoved onto some group of Canadians that doesn't vote Liberal (eg Alberta or heavy industry customers, shareholders, and workers).
A rational discussion of who "we" are and the best climate policy for "us" would simplify things considerably.
This is a good point. And I think the Trudeau liberals were intensely naive about the importance of Canadian “leadership” to the emitter polities that actually matter (of which there only four: China, USA, India, and EU). Trudeau seemed to think we matter. The reality is, just like on military discussions, the big 4 don’t give a crap what we do. Canada unilaterally reducing emissions in the hopes of “moral leadership” is just sacrificing our economy for no benefit.
As I said above, I think this is where climate action really needs to look a lot more hard nosed — more like a security pact between the four major emitting polities and they dictate to everyone else what needs to be done under threat of sanctions or other threats. Really similar to the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
The UNFCCC world of kumbaya, NGO, Greta Thunberg, moral leadership, climate justice, big COP meetings with posturing leaders — it’s dead. It was already dying and Trump’s election was its final demise. A new regime will replace it, but I think we have to go through a few years of bleak lack of action on climate first.
Agreed. In fact, action by individual small countries like Canada is actually marginally harmful, because it distracts from the key question: whether the big 4 will sign up to real and enforceable action.
Isn't the real issue the lag between action and results? Worsening climate change is likley baked in for several decades regardless of action as the oceans act as heat sinks, delaying the consequences of long ago emissions. Even once emissions stabilize, the effects of climate change will likely linger for at least millennia as that is how long natural sequestration by plants and algae will take to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Remember, oil and gas deposits resulted from millions of years of biological activity. Attempting to sell climate action as mitigation is attempting to sell lies.
The best time to start was 100 years ago. The second best time is today.
Just throwing up our hands and saying “well, the worst of it won’t hit us until 2100” dooms our children. I will fight tooth and nail to counter this view and a lot of others will too.
Western civilization used to build cathedrals that weren’t done until 300 years after the death of the original generation that designed, funded, and laid the foundation stones for them. We should think of the energy transition as our version of this.
I'm not advocating inaction. Rather I'm pointing out that climate adaptation is inevitable and that investments in mitigation won't alter the cost or timeline of adaptation.
Eh, that’s not really true… Action now will definitely pay off in a reduced need for adaptation by 2100 and to a lesser extent even by 2050. It just won’t pay off *immediately* like reductions in smog or water pollution do.
Sure... In several hundred years, outside the investment horizon. My statement that climate adaptation is absolutely correct
I would suggest that the reason for inaction is that the net present value today of children born several generations later than the current one is zero.
At 3-5% discount rates, for sure that’s true. But using those discount rates implies perpetual economic growth for several generations. The numbers mean that it doesn’t actually make economic sense to take action today for the benefit of much richer future generations
I think there’s a very good argument to be made that under conditions of unmitigated bad climate change, that perpetual economic growth may be challenged.
No, Geoff. That’s not what a discount rate implies. It just recognizes the time value of money. A dollar today is worth more than the promise of a dollar tomorrow. Why? Because you can spend the dollar today. A dollar tomorrow might never get paid: your death, the promisor’s bankruptcy, nuclear war, so you would never get to spend it.
This is true whether the economy is growing or stagnating, or even shrinking. A dollar in your pocket today is still worth more than a promise of a dollar in the future. If the dollar won’t be paid until your grandchildren grow up and have children after you die, the promise of a dollar is not worth anything to you.
So properly discounted, lives and comfort of people themselves yet unborn aren’t worth anything to us today. We don't know that specific ones we might care about will ever even exist. Your one grandchild could become trans and that's it. (Nor are people in faraway countries living today worth anything to us, but that’s another story with similar psychology.) This isn’t a matter of moral fault or failing. It’s just the observations by economists about how real people think and make decisions. So costs and benefits expected in the future are always discounted, no matter whether you think environmental calamity will bring economic growth itself to a halt. (Hint: it never has, not for long.)
Remember Kyoto? We signed on to it precisely because of that UNFCC world, and then promptly looked at how we can avoid the carbon reductions we just signed on for; a big one was that we be credited for carbon reductions in coal-consuming countries to which we export natural gas, which we would expand. If any of this sounds familiar, it is that there is nothing new under the sun.
Climate concerns were always a luxury belief. It's just that now fewer of us can afford to hold these beliefs.
Which leads me to this:
• Canada is a dwarf when it comes to pollution, so doing anything on that front is pointless
• Cheap, abundant energy is directly correlated to progress and wealth.
• Wealth means more resources to be a good steward of the environment.
• Hamstringing developing countries by asking them to curb their emissions is asking them to sacrifice their future for what is at best a questionable solution to the pollution problem.
• Letting them go through their growth phase and eventually transition out of the most polluting energy sources, is the fastest way to reduce pollution.
• Therefore, the best course of action for Canada is to ditch all carbon pricing, build pipelines and supercharge its energy industry so we can help the rest of the world pollute less and charge a premium for our clean(er) energy.
Carbon pricing is nothing but a tax, which is inherently inefficient (hello, layers of bureaucracy), leading to all kind of negative unforeseen consequences.
The liberals' policy is akin to lining up Andre De Grasse for the World Championship in the 100-meter dash, only to slash his achilles' heel just before the race. Nobody wins in that scenario.
Absolutely pristine logic, matched only by this inimitable example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rMsgmaBV8g
Do you have a proper counter-argument to make or will you stick with logical fallacies to make yourself feel superior?
An ad hominem attack isn't the own you think it is.
It was all that your comment deserved.
Oh, and an ad hominem is personal; I had nothing bad to say about you or your character. Your logic is just nonsensical, nothing personal.
What was the money extorted from Canadians for the carbon tax used for other than the obvious buying of votes through some ludicrous rebate program? The whole concept is ludicrous and based more on politicians and bureaucrats needs to grab as much cash as they can from tax payers to continue to support their ideologically slanted spendthrift ways.
It was nothing more than a redistribution scheme on top of the many others that already distort Canada's economy
"Why do you rob banks, Willie?"
"That's where they keep the money."
Public policy must be based on reality if it hopes to be effective at meeting some stated target. China is INCREASING emissions each year by more than the sum of all Canadian emissions.
If we are serious about reducing emissions, we need to focus on helping high-emitting countries, rather than feel-good measures that will have little to no effect on the problem.
Not just the poor were "made whole" though the consumer carbon-tax rebates. They didn't buy much energy to begin with. The rebates benefited urban dwellers, many comfortably off, in small apartments and condos that don't cost much to heat and cool and who don't have to drive much. (Municipal governments pick up the cost of the carbon tax on fuel for public transit.) When they fly to foreign destinations the rebates "make whole" the carbon tax on the jet fuel to get there. But the rebates mostly rewarded those with the wherewithal to make virtuous choices, not just the poor. OK, that's what a Pigovian tax does, but let's be honest about it. It rewarded behaviour that many of these people were already doing anyway (whether virtuous or just plain poor) and merely imposed an unavoidable cost on people whose energy use was more constrained by circumstances they had little short-term control over. Sure, suburbanites could eventually move into condos downtown to escape the carbon tax. But not this year. It's not a high-enough cost to motivate really drastic behaviour like that. You'd have to get gasoline to $10 a litre to make people move, and at that price you'd see industry developing very expensive "green" fuel that makes diesel from its own exhaust. Heaven forbid, drivers might even surge to electric cars, demanding the tariffs on Chinese EVs be rescinded. But before that they would vote out the government.
When Liberal voters say Canadians should "do more", they don't mean things that actually cost them money personally. They always imagine that Someone Else will pay more of the cost, like "the rich" or "corporations."
Because most of these choices to use or not use fossil fuels are already baked in as part of one's circumstances, the consumer carbon tax didn't reduce emissions. (This ineffectiveness was reported in the news media around the time of the election, contrasting with the industrial carbon tax.) It was just a redistribution scheme that made some people poorer and some people richer based on their use of fossil fuels, not according to their economic needs. That's why candidate Mark Carney was happy to eliminate it: it wasn't working for purposes claimed. It turns out that the retail consumer's demand for energy isn't very elastic: a higher price reduces demand only trivially, not enough to make a difference in emissions.
The industrial carbon tax is another matter. Unlike consumers, industry has a number of ways to reduce the carbon tax it has to pay: It can just make less of what it makes even in the face of continued brisk demand for its "polluting" products (which raises prices and lays workers off, but hey, what matters is how much it earns, not how much it costs.) It can adjust its internal processes to use less fossil fuel and more of other sources that would, but for the carbon tax, be more expensive. It can just generally be more efficient in deciding between budgeted wants and needs (which household consumers generally can't. Do I need to drive Johnny all over the province playing rep hockey?) In the extreme, industry can just leave Canada and relocate to next-door USA which doesn't impose carbon taxes and is better for business anyway. All but the last really do reduce emissions. (The last just shifts the emissions (and the jobs and the corporate tax revenue) to the other country.)
The point is that industry is in a better position to respond to the tax incentives to reduce emissions than ordinary consumers are, so an industrial carbon tax will be more efficient in reducing emissions, which is what we saw in the media stories discussing it during the election campaign. An industry that leaves oil in the ground really will reduce emissions. Duh! Who knew? I guess we'll find out if that is what Canadians mean when they say we should "do more."
Great commentary!
Thank you for that.
I thought the author of this piece, a professional pollster, should have addressed social desirability bias. When this bias is operating, poll respondents will endorse measures that their tribe adheres to even if they individually aren’t so sure. Liberal respondents know they are supposed to want to “do more” so they say so when asked even if in their hearts they know they personally aren’t going to do anything. Conservative respondents know that it’s OK to say “Hell no! The climate refugees can drown or cook for all I care!”, so they do.
Social desirability bias is difficult to control for and should always be confronted in polling that asks questions about virtue or vice. One way is to look at revealed preferences. White flight is a good example. White people might say they want to live in a diverse neighbourhood but actually they move out when the non-white arrivals reach a tipping point. (They want to sell before property values collapse and make fools of them.).
You could look at voluntary, unbidden support for climate initiatives the same way. Everyone could reduce emissions (and save money) by driving the speed limit on highways. No need to wait for government incentives. Just ease up on the gas. Yet almost no one does. So clearly other priorities are more important than reducing emissions (and saving money.).
You could argue that many people have virtuously decided to take transit instead of driving and it’s only the “Hell no!” people who are driving (fast.). But commuter statistics don’t show a large shift to transit except in Toronto (where suburbanites who live near the GO Train and work near Union Station do use the trains.). Yet ridership on municipal local transit as a proportion of work trips continues its decades-long slide even with the climate emergency. So revealed preference shows that most people are going about business as usual waiting for....for what, exactly?
I think this all is a necessary step of facing reality that we and every other jurisdiction will have to go through. Two really hard truths at the same time:
1. The energy transition will be extremely expensive — like order of magnitude of Second World War spending but for decades straight.
2. If we don’t do it, this is going to be disastrous — a steady grinding-down of global living standards and increased instability; billions of climate refugees etc.
Each political party in Canada seems to pretend that one of the above is not true, but BOTH are. Us voters don’t want to face that, and punish our leaders when they try to act as if both are true (eg with carbon taxes, and other strong policies).
It’s the ultimate coordination problem - global in scale and centuries in time. No immediate feedback or local benefit from local sacrifices. And Canada’s contribution is of course small on a global scale (though well above our share of global population).
I’ve said in other posts that I think we’re going to enter a dark period on global climate action for a few years and then it’ll be reinvented as something much more serious. More like Reagan-Gorbachev nuclear nonproliferation discussions and less like UNFCCC voluntary-action and moral-hectoring and kumbaya.
I want a Prime Minister who sees Canadians as "we". Instead we have one who doesn't.
Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to restrictions on their own nuclear forces, easy for them because it was a bilateral agreement with no externalities. They didn't impose nuclear non-proliferation on anyone. Nuclear non-proliferation goes back to the Kennedy years of the early 1960s when the Boy Scout countries agreed among themselves not to develop nuclear weapons of their own and most signed on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (They could do this because the five leaders of the blocs they were aligned with by then had nuclear deterrents. Nobody arm-twisted them, certainly not Reagan and Gorbachev. Long before their time.) Since then no country that really wants to go nuclear has been successfully deterred, unless Iran turns out to be. No country that has exploded a nuclear weapon has been punished by the international community for thumbing its nose at nuclear non-proliferation. Rather, the international "community" of self-interested schemers becomes afraid of successful nuclear nations, a fact not lost on the rulers of Iran and North Korea.
What you are envisioning I think is a grand alliance between the U.S., China, and the rest of developing industrial Asia to come together and be the world's policemen on climate. No multilateral supra-sovereign cooperation like this has ever happened. (The U.S. and the British suppressed, with naval force, the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the early 1800s as a bilateral cooperation, ditto the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.) The Reagan-Gorbachev accords are not a precedent for a multi-lateral emissions enforcement scheme. The interests of the countries of the putative alliance don't align.
I think it’s that or we’re doomed.
So unless someone has a better plan, I’m going to continue to push for exactly this — China and USA (and India and the EU to a lesser extent) get serious about this and then play emissions cop to the rest of the world under threat of sanctions.
Who is "we"? As in "if we don't..." The "we" only includes China, India, the US and the EU (and in the not-too-distant future a number of large developing economies). If by "we" you mean Canadians, "we" are spectators.
“We” in this post above means humanity. I agree Canadians are spectators, or maybe something akin to voters — where your one vote doesn’t make a difference, only as part of a large coalition.
As I have said in other posts here, I think “we” (meaning Canadians) will eventually be told what to do, when the major polities finally face enough damage from climate change to demand more serious action. Things we (Canadians) can do to get them (China etc.) there faster will help the world and ultimately us (Canadians). I don’t think the UNFCCC and “moral leadership” did much. I don’t know what the right next step for Canada is, other than leadership on nuclear power.
I agree. Shipping natural gas seems like a good idea, too. It sure beats coal - and not only in terms of greenhouse gas. Burning coal for power generation used to be a major cause of death for the elderly and for hospital visits for infants and toddlers here in Ontario. Switching to natural gas was a big win for public health.
That’s a bit of an exaggeration. Just so you don’t think I’m biased, I’m linking to a report by a leftist advocacy organization (CAPE) that rebutted an earlier piece by the Fraser Institute. CAPE acknowledges that the health benefits from switching to gas are probable but uncertain because many other air-quality efforts were going on. Coal smoke is distributed over a very broad area and the impact on any one person’s health is something of an educated guess. I challenge your statement that coal smoke was ever a “major” cause of death even in frail elderly. The CAPE report doesn’t say that. The main reasons for switching were:
1) The Americans were phasing out coal, too
2) Our coal plants were getting old and maintenance hungry.
3) Climate change. It is easy to exaggerate the climate (and health) benefits of gas but it is still a fossil fuel and the activists will not rest until it is gone, too. Don’t think they will thank you for burning gas, or for selling it to foreign countries to “help” them get off coal. Non-European foreigners won’t buy our gas unless we can sell it and ship it to them cheaper than their own coal is. When the activists say, “Leave it in the ground”, they mean gas, too.
Edit: Here's the link:
https://cape.ca/ontarios-coal-plant-phase-out-produced-many-health-and-environmental-benefits/
Canada has had carbon taxes for years, yet our emmissions have increased. That's because Canada is a large cold country. Many of us drive long distances daily because of where we chose to live. We want to keep our homes at comfortable temperatures. We will not change either of these practises no matter our feelings about climate change. For Canadians, carbon taxes are a luxury belief that we are thankfully casting aside.
The unasked question in your survey is at what of cost does Canadian support drop? I've read of surveys that suggest that Canadians will pay no more than $100/year for reducing emmissions. Perhaps that's why "axe the tax" worked for the Conservatives until Carney did axe it.
Also to note is our growing population, particularly in the last several years of immigration policy failure.
This article is legitimate analysis in itself that absolutely did not need the preachy preamble that basically amounted to "Carbon tax good, CPC bad, and Liberals slightly better". I absolutely wanted to know the results of these surveys - it answers a very important question. But it could have definitely done without passing (seemingly partisan) judgment on what approach is right or wrong about tackling climate change.
It seems to me that one fact which ought to drive the analysis is that Canada is responsible for just 1.5% of the world's emissions. All too often (including in this piece) that fact is absent from consideration. And yet, absent consideration of that fact, and other relevant data, it is impossible to assess appropriate solutions. Instead we are left with environmental fanatics screaming about net zero on one side opposed by culture warriors of the other stripe pointing to a cold snap in January as definitive proof that there is nothing to see here.
Rather than breaking the population into Liberals vs Conservatives, breaking it into those who know how much we emit versus those who don't might yield more useful information for everyone.
Come on Chris. You can do better. Ask questions with the intent to learn and you'll see the way. Conservatives don't think this is a foreign issue. Quite the opposite is true. You can fudge the questions to prove your hypothesis but don't present it as information worthy of review.
“the Liberals will want to show action at home, but not actually in the homes of their voters.”
That quote from the author at the very end of the article is a fine example of how urban Liberals are actually gaming their climate change credentials at the expense of everyone else.
Comparing that to the thorough statistics presented, there is really no differentiation between Liberal and Conservative voters except the LPC gets to claim the moral high ground by claiming to have a “climate agenda”.
The LPC climate agenda is to heap the burden upon the oil/gas industry as the low hanging fruit, nestled far away from most urban voters, tax it and then cynically rebate some of the proceeds in a income redistribution scheme. Trudeau’s last stand charade on the soon to implode carbon tax was to warn Canadians that they would be worse off financially without the rebate.
The political manipulation glosses over the fundamental need for mitigation planning and execution. Where is a national wildfire center, managing wild fire assets like controlled burn crews and water bombers?
I know that coming change is affecting Canada. Clearly though by any measurable standard, the climate changes in BC for instance are not at all caused by BC industry. It is a worldwide phenomenon and the fault — now — is from those nations who have taken or been given a free ride (so to speak) in terms of carbon production. This is exactly what Cdns know and it is a major factor in dropping of the heavy interest in “doing something” to right the climate ship. Combine that with an economy in trouble plus Trump’s asinine work and you have a drop in attention by Cdns. A big drop.
As a recent Conservative voter, I’m happy for Liberal voters to pick up the tab. Just find a way to leave me out of it.
My, my. This article entirely ignored efficacy, since the article's about politics, but efficacy is important to the political discussion. What happens to the Liberal party should climate voters learn some very relevant facts? Can the Liberals sufficiently control conversations to stay in power?
It's possible that the Liberal refusal to grasp the global nature of greenhouse gas emissions actually increases the amount of greenhouse gases emitted annually. Canada, with our 1.4 and falling percentage contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, can only do so much internally. Sending our CNG to most other countries would achieve a greater reduction than the total contribution of Canada to greenhouse gas emissions! Climate change is a global problem, but do Liberal voters realize that? Second, carbon taxes cannot achieve reductions when the technologies are not ready. For example, trucking pays the carbon tax, increasing costs in the supply chains for everything, when there are no available alternatives. Third, the process for building batteries, solar and wind installations, etc is very energy intensive and there is no recycling. Does anyone factor in the greenhouse gasses required to build and retire all those batteries, windmills and solar panels? And I could go on ......