A carbon tax is like the Chili’s gift card of environmental policy: the absolute bare minimum in order to appear as though you’ve done something. In the case of Canada, given that the tax needs to be implemented by the provinces, it’s like sending your little brother out to get that gift card.
So naturally Scott Moe doesn’t like it. It’s especially important for him not to like it because his party is supposed to be anti-tax as a rule – don’t ask anyone who has recently purchased a used car about how effective they are on that front – and because a big chunk of his support base would be negatively affected by such a tax. It’s like buying a Chili’s gift card for people who don’t even live near a Chili’s.
It was inevitable that this would become a big debate, and it’s good that it has. Whether or not we wind up with a carbon tax, it has to be clear that this isn’t really a solution in the long run. Whether or not it helps, it’s not going to save the world. There have to be other solutions if you’re going to actually make a substantial difference in the country’s contributions to climate change.
But it often feels like we’re a bit stuck on this carbon tax, unable to move on. One wonders if there are more effective ways of encouraging people to cut down on their personal carbon footprint, let alone the more important step of encouraging large corporations – who, by their very nature, are going to be emitting many more emissions than the man on the street – to take steps to make their operations more carbon neutral.
On the personal level, instead of tax, what about incentives? This used to be a regular feature in Saskatchewan, encouraging people to replace old, inefficient appliances and home fittings. Give annual incentives to people who buy fuel efficient cars, give perks when you upgrade to use less energy. Encourage companies to get certified as carbon neutral so they have a selling point on their products.
That will only make a small drop in the bucket however, and the real difficulty is outside of Canada. In a lot of cases, being dirty is cheaper. Some corporations just find the country with the worst regulation enforcement and Canada can’t do anything about it anyway. International shipping is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and neatly skirts the issue by being outside of Canada most of the time.
Finding a way to handle this problem while simultaneously keeping pace with the nation’s various trade agreements will be very difficult, and perhaps this is why nobody talks about it. This is an international problem, and in order to deal with it, there has to be an international solution, which might involve making countries with lax environmental regulations very angry. The carbon tax isn’t going to save the world, but any idea that can isn’t being discussed.
