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Originally Posted by MoViN.tArGeT
uke shouldn't you want the carbon tax to take money from Canadians? I don't get why you spend all your time defending that it is making Canadians money. If the carbon tax is net neutral or negative how does it help climate change? If they are gonna do it they should at least do it right and that involves taxing people and not pretending to tax people. anyway the real question is if its doing anything and obviously its not its too small scale. So I guess its your end goal to increase it until it does?
The point is to create an incentive to convert from a high-carbon usage lifestyle to a low carbon usage lifestyle. The average can return all the money to the people so this isn't funding government operations, but for all the decisions people make (should I buy a gas guzzling truck or a small EV? Should I live far from work or close to work? Should I buy a 3000sq gas heated home in the burbs? Should I fly multiple times a year?), there is now a big incentive to choose the low carbon option. Under the carbon tax while it is more or less neutral on average, it hurts high carbon rich people and helps low carbon poor people.
In an ideal world the economic consequences (not fiscal) of doing that would be zero. But of course any type of market intervention in a capital market comes with some level of economic inefficiencies. So it is a really really good thing that the PBO reported that the economic costs to the GDP from the carbon tax are HALF what was previously reported. It means we get that great incentive to change behaviours without really crippling economic consequences. And that is measuring "apples to nothing", against a plan of doing absolutely nothing on climate change.
Now the current plan cuts 13 megatonnes a year going up to 2030. That's an important plank in a comprehensive plan to lower canada's emissions and if you scrap the tax you have to find some other (probably much more expensive) way to replace those cuts. Yes, it does need to increase a little every year tightening the screws and right now it rises every year to 2030, presumably we keep going after that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MoViN.tArGeT
anyway half my family lost their job from a pulp plant that's closing . I do worry if its related
No, the carbon tax is nowhere near the top issue to BC's softwood lumber challenges. #1 are american tarrifs.