The politics of the carbon tax, largely a BC phenomenon until now, have gone national in the face of a likely October federal election. Just last week in BC, a poll revealed the NDP ahead of the Liberals for the first time in several years — within the margin of error, mind you, but significant for a party that has […]
Read moreYesterday, the Premier’s hand-picked Climate Action Team released its final report to the government. As is often the case with government, the CAT consisted of a range of “stakeholders”, although with one glaring omission: no representation from labour. The CAT has been deliberating for several months on how to meet the 2020 target of a 33% reduction in greenhouse gas […]
Read moreA year ago, I was firmly on the fence with regard to carbon taxes versus cap-and-trade systems. My internal conversation was around abstract, theoretical versions of what might happen, and at that point it was premature to consider how the two might play together as part of a hybrid system. Since that time, we now have some real models to […]
Read moreRob Rainer of the National Anti-Poverty Organization has audited the federal Liberals’ Green Shift plan for anti-poverty measures and found it lacking a comprehensive approach. I’ve excerpted below the main points in his brief, which is not on the NAPO web site and should not be taken as the voice of NAPO on the matter (the brief also has footnotes […]
Read moreA well-intentioned article in the Vancouver Sun seeks to explain carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems. A worthy objective, but the article really aims to pigeonhole various alternatives in terms of political parties. It ends up taking a far-too-simplified view that goes something like this: The debate is being played out in British Columbia, where the Liberal government and New Democratic […]
Read moreI am really glad Stephane Dion supplemented his Green Shift proposal with a call for a carbon tariff. This is utterly consistent with demands the left has been making for years, namely that the rules of globalization have to be broadened to effectively address the role of environmental, labour, and social standards in determining competitiveness and hence global trade and […]
Read moreI’m recently back from a family vacation, which consisted in driving down to Northern California and back, camping along the way. Our 1992 Corolla keeps on rolling, and in my mind it is better to keep it humming and wait it out for something electric in a few years time, than to buy a new hybrid that emits a third […]
Read moreDuncan Cameron’s comment about the role of agriculture in climate change prompted me to take a closer look at greenhouse-gas emissions from sources other than burning fossil fuels. The final column of the following table is a sectoral breakdown of row 8 from yesterday’s table. All of these emissions are exempt from the Liberal Green Shift.  Sector  Fuel Emissions  Other […]
Read moreA couple of weeks ago, Jeffrey Simpson inaccurately accused the NDP of “ignoring the fact that most emissions come from individuals.” Andrew Coyne is similarly fond of suggesting that, while half of greenhouse-gas emissions are generated by large final emitters, the other half are generated by “consumers”. Both commentators have, to varying degrees, commended the Liberals for introducing a plan that is […]
Read moreAs Andrew Jackson has written recently on this blog, the New Brunswick government is proposing a set of truly dreadful tax reforms. The proposals include: a 10% flat tax for personal income, or a two-tier rate at 9% and 12% reducing the corporate income tax from 13% down to as low as 5% a carbon tax increasing the provincial sales tax by […]
Read moreOne key feature of Dion’s carbon tax proposal – among others – is that revenues are recycled back almost exclusively to households to maintain living standards, especially at the lower income end, while still preserving incentives to save on energy consumption. That’s reasonable as far as it goes. But what about the public sector and public consumption? What is the […]
Read moreCUPE has published the June 2008 issue of the Economic Climate for Bargaining publication that I put together on a quarterly basis. Previous issues are also available through this link at our website.   In addition to regular items on national and provincial economic forecasts and analysis of recent employment, inflation and wage developments, this latest issue includes: A very brief primer on […]
Read moreThe Liberal Green Shift aims to bring federal taxes on all fossil fuels up to $40 per ton of carbon emissions, in line with the existing federal tax on gasoline. The Handbook provides a detailed costing of the $15.4 billion in accompanying tax cuts, tax credits and contingency funds, but no breakdown of the $15.3 billion in new carbon-tax revenues (page […]
Read moreYesterday, the BC government released its updated Climate Action Plan. A glossy affair, it nonetheless puts text to all of the myriad actions the BC government is taking on climate. Looking at it all, it is hard to say they are just “greenwashing”, though personally I would like to see even more aggressive action now. But as the government, they […]
Read moreThe front page banner headline from the Vancouver Sun: B.C. prefers NDP’s Carbon tax plan: Tax industrial polluters, not consumers, 82% tell pollster It is painful to keep reading because the poll in question is based on inaccurate information about how the carbon tax actually works. Industrial polluters are subject to the tax to the extent that they burn fossil […]
Read moreThe BC NDP’s environment critic, Shane Simpson, wrote me to tell me why he disagrees with the BC carbon tax. With his permission, I quote: The more I learn the more clear it becomes what a regressive and inept tax it is and why it needs to be opposed as vigorously as possible. It hurts public services – burnaby schools […]
Read moreThe CCPA released today a really important contribution to our understanding of climate change and inequality. The study focuses on Bill Rees’ concept of the ecological footprint, which is not exactly the same as greenhouse gas emissions, but highly correlated. Some key findings: The richest 10% of Canadian households create an ecological footprint of 12.4 hectares per capita – nearly […]
Read moreThe 2008 OECD Survey of Canada incorporates a long and surprisingly critical overview of developments in the energy sector, with a major focus on the tar sands. (Chapter 4). It is, in many respects, far closer to the views of the Pembina Institute and the Parkland Institute in Alberta than to those of the Alberta and federal governments, and even […]
Read moreThere is a lot of the colour green all over Dion’s Green Shift plan. But after reading it, the greenery appears almost as superficial as the green shift caps that Liberal MPs wore awkwardly with their business suits at the launch yesterday. Dion’s plan is really a proposal for a tax shifting budget and doesn’t contain any new proposals to […]
Read moreAfter weeks of speculation, Stephane Dion has tabled the Liberals’ carbon tax plan, dubbed The Green Shift. The plan seems heavily influenced by both BC’s carbon tax and the Mintz/Olewiler plan released in April. Tax revenues, which reach $15 billion by year four, are fully recycled into PIT and CIT cuts plus some low income measures. The tax starts at […]
Read moreMarc Lee’s most excellent paper to the PEF session on carbon pricing at the CEA meetings in Vancouver got me thinking. (That whole session was awesome, by the way — including Lars Osberg’s provocative analysis that the vast majority of Canadians, whose real consumption has not grown in recent years, have already met their personal Kyoto targets. It’s only the […]
Read moreThere is a certain elegance and appeal of personal carbon quotas. Like democracy they are inherently equalizing. A challenge for carbon taxes is that they may allow the wealthy to buy their way our of change, when it is the most affluent who have the largest carbon footprints (a CCPA study is coming out next week on this topic). And […]
Read moreThrough the following op-ed in Thursday’s Toronto Star, the United Steelworkers’ Canadian Director makes the case for a carbon tariff. It is now widely accepted that the struggle against global warming will involve placing a price on carbon emissions.  An equivalent tariff would prevent corporations from evading this price by relocating their carbon-intensive activities to countries that choose not to price […]
Read moreI have equivocated on carbon taxes vs cap-and-trade on this very blog. But more recently I’ve been leaning towards carbon tax – with the caveats that distribution be addressed and that carbon taxes be part of a suite of other policy measures. That is, carbon taxes are only part of the solution, so I am somewhere between the skeptics who […]
Read moreIn his rabble.ca column, Duncan Cameron raises some concerns about carbon taxes: When Liberal leader, Stéphane Dion, floated the carbon tax idea in Toronto recently, Layton responded that such a tax would cause severe problems for poor and low income Canadians. May and Suzuki both support a carbon tax, and think its impact on the poor can be remedied through […]
Read moreAt a meeting I was at the morning, Green Party deputy leader Adrienne Carr made a familiar refrain that a carbon tax is needed to help solve our transportation woes by making driving more expensive. I generally support a carbon tax, as long as the revenues are recycled in a manner that ensures that overall income inequality is not worsened […]
Read moreIn policy terms I have been concerned about regressive impacts of a carbon tax, and was pleased to see that BC’s carbon tax is being partly recycled into refundable tax credits for low-income families. But the $10 per tonne carbon tax starting in July is rather small (2.4 cents per litre), and in spite of a tripling of the rate […]
Read moreIn a Vancouver Sun article, Miro Cernetig wonders whether the BC government is slowing down climate change actions because of business push-back. There is no doubt some truth to this, but reading the full article reveals something different entirely. The real issue is the state of the Western Climate Initiative, a cap-and-trade system that focused on the western part of […]
Read moreIn a new report released today for Sustainable Prosperity (a new research institute), Jack Mintz and Nancy Olewiler pitch a federal carbon tax constructed by broadening the base of the federal excise tax (which currently raises over $5 billion per year based on a tax of 10 cents per litre of gas and 4 cents per liter of diesel) to […]
Read moreI’m deep into figuring out what the new BC carbon tax means for different income groups. But stumped by some anomalous results from the modeling, I took a detour and ended looking at my own output of GHGs. Living in hydro-power-rich BC, our electricity is almost entirely GHG-free, and in the rest of the home it is a natural gas […]
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