It seems to me it just makes people pay more tax and doesn’t actually help climate change. I researched the Canadian carbon tax btw
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That’s exactly what it’s for, to just add another tax to the public.
Does anyone actually know what percentage humans contribute to Annual Global emissions? It’s less than 4% of all annual global emissions (oceanic being the biggest contributor to emissions):
>our output of 29 gigatons of CO2 is tiny compared to the 750 gigatons moving through the carbon cycle each year
[https://skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm](https://skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm)
Kind of funny how Greta just ‘disappeared’ after the Canadian elections, and even funnier how she focused on a Country that contributes to less than 2.5% of annual human Emissions, and majority of that is from our forests:
>**Canada emits** roughly 700 megatonnes of **CO2** each year
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/canada-forests-carbon-sink-or-source-1.5011490](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/canada-forests-carbon-sink-or-source-1.5011490)
Amazingly Canada pays Carbon taxes for contributing to less than 0.09% of the global Emissions ‘slow clap’.
When you have ‘climate change deniers’ they don’t deny that the world is entering into a state of climate change (The worlds gone through 6 major climate disasters btw) they are denying the human element of it. Saying “10k Scientists signed a study” or “the facts are there, and your stupid if you don’t believe it” is not an argument, climate change deniers don’t believe that humans contributed solely to the environmental changes, and that the world will and is continuing to enter natural climate cycles. It’s a easy way to tax people (as we see in this case) without people getting angry.
Even if Canada was to produce ZERO emissions it still wouldn’t solve anything.
**Edit**: to the people who are going to vote me down, at least have the balls to tell me how I’m wrong, because all I’ve done is given facts.
I’m assuming this is a troll post (really? you couldn’t figure this one out on your own?) but just in case:
It incentivizes cleaner choices by assigning an extra cost to the unclean ones. In other words, it makes polluting expensive, which makes non-polluting alternatives cheaper by comparison.
By making other places seem more feasible to do business, industries leave Canada or can’t expand and it gives the illusion we are reducing emissions while actually just sending business to the US and killing our economy in the process.
Do you believe that costs affect business and consumer behaviour?
If yes, then you agree in principle that a carbon tax can work.
Obviously in areas where carbon intensive fuels are necessary for daily life this has less of an effect, and also poor implementation of policy can also reduce effectiveness.
The theory is that some industry is much better suited for lower emissions, it is easier for a windmill to be clean than a coal fired power plant. It is easier for me to drive a fuel efficient car than it is for Wal Mart to drive a fuel efficient tractor trailer. While that may be the overall goal for Wal Mart, it isn’t as practical for Wal Mart as it is for me.
So if I am electrical car manufacturer X and I get a certain amount of carbon credits, I can sell them to Ford. Ford can then do business as usual with an incentive to not pay that tax anymore by long-term investments in cleaner vehicles. Meanwhile, my business (the electric car manufacturer) gets more money in my pocket to continue my investments. Eventually Ford starts producing clean cars (like me), they don’t have to pay the tax, I compete fairly with them, and cars (one of the largest sources of air pollution) are much cleaner. This isn’t just cars, agriculture is awful for both air and ground water pollution. Factory farms are already hurting family farms and the environment, so charge them out the wazoo for polluting by providing credits to family farms who use more environmentally friendly processes. They need the help anyway, and they aren’t really the problem so why should they have to deal with regulation aimed at factory farming?
The point isn’t to destroy an industry, in fact it is purposely designed such that businesses can stay in business while they adjust. Just think, if Republicans are vehemently against it than it probably benefits the common man and, as it is known in academic circles, the economy of the commons. They hate that for some reason.
www.caclimateinvestments.ca.gov
In California, part of the cap and trade dollars fund specific programs as grants if a project is eligible. Most of these are administered by or in partnership with state agencies which then track GHG reduction using methodology tools.
Well it’s economics.
Pollution in the air is dubbed a *negative externality.* That meaning that the production, or the use, of fossil fuels damages a 3rd party. That 3rd party being *us* seeing as we’re breathing in that polluted air. A negative externality is only present in the face of overproduction or overconsumption. In this case, they’ve initiated a tax on those firms, and on people, to compensate for that overabundance of carbon. An effective tax in the face of a negative externality should incentivize firms and people to produce *less* of what *specifically* is being taxed, the increased cost of producing more with fossil fuels will prevent firms from producing more (this tax seems to be aimed more towards firms, which is businesses), which should decrease carbon levels, the government hopes that the supply curve of fossil fuels shifts to the left. *Which means less.*
Generally speaking, there are only so many carbon goods you can buy with $100. If the cost of those carbon goods goes up, then you can buy fewer of them. This means that fewer are produced which reduces the amount of carbon emitted. It’s not that there is less carbon emitted per item produced, but there are less items produced overall because each one is more expensive to produce due to the tax.
if you have a limited pot of money (say $100) and you can only spend it on two items (bread and alcohol) and the price of alcohol is increased by a special “don’t drink too much tax”, the theory says that a rational consumer will likely be spending less on alcohol.
It make solution that emit less carbon more competitive. For example, let say that your product cost 500$ to produce and create some carbon emission. You could switch to a method that produce less carbon, but that would cost 520$ to produce it. Now if your carbon taxe is 35$ and by using the new method you can drop that to 12$, then the old method actually cost you 535$, while the new method would cost you 532$ which is cheaper and incentive you to switch to the method that cost less carbon.
Of course this work overtime, it doesn’t reduce carbon the moment you create that tax, it just slowly change the way people do business and consumer buy product.
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