this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
153 points (98.1% liked)

Canada

7230 readers
833 users here now

What's going on Canada?

Related Communities

๐Ÿ Meta

๐Ÿ—บ๏ธ Provinces / Territories

๐Ÿ™๏ธ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.

๐Ÿ’ SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer

๐Ÿ’ป Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.

๐Ÿ’ต Finance, Shopping, Sales

๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ Politics

๐Ÿ Social / Culture

Rules

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
153
The Carbon Tax Is Good for Canadians. Why Axe It? (thewalrus.ca)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
40 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 lionโ€™s share of the damage borne by the poorest countries in the world.

And yet we fiddle.

In todayโ€™s Canada, there is deception, national in scope, coming directly from the rightโ€‘wing opposition benches in Ottawa. In 2023, the populist Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre adopted โ€œAxe the taxโ€ as his new mantra and has shaped his federal election campaign around that hackneyed rhyme.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 2 months 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

[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

That's fine. It encourages everyone to stop carbon

The point of the carbon tax is to stop carbon.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (2 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months 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?

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How do you think you got bananas before oil?

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Did we...?

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's why you get a big fat rebate in your chequing account every 3 months. It's meant to offset the rising costs of goods such that end consumers who don't pollute a ton themselves are in fact not carrying the burden.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Fat? Not enough to offset the increased cost of ... everything. As I said, the biggest polluters just increase their prices and the rest of us pay. There's no incentive for the big dogs to improve, and the rest of us dont have alternatives.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Sure, that happens in the short term. But it also incentivizes the biggest polluters to reduce polluting as there is now a cost associated with polluting. Maybe a competitor is able to come in with a greener process and thereby undercut the competition. This is like, capitalism 101. It boggles my mind that people can argue that a carbon tax doesn't work.

Also... News flash: the world is fucked and the cost of everything is going to rise no matter what. It's time to get uncomfortable

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

If there's one thing you can count on, it's the greed of corporations. That means they will try to cut costs every means possible in order to maximise profit. If going green saves them a dime, they will do it. This isn't a hard concept to understand.

Will they reduce prices rather than pocket the change? Probably not.. But y'all are acting like the carbon tax is meant to reduce prices??? It's meant to save the fucking planet.