Also: A call to end to fossil fuel industry subsidies
in The Globe last week, by Christopher Ragan and Andrew Potter of McGill’s Max Bell School of Public Policy, got the attention of a lot of people in my world.for the federal government to invest heavily in a “green recovery” plan that would use stimulus spending to try to breathe life back into the economy in the short term and reduce Canada’s GHG emissions in the long run.
The authors’ proposed alternative – treating the current pandemic and concurrent collapse in oil prices as an “excellent opportunity to substantially increase the federal carbon tax,” rather than trying to pick climate change winners through government spending – alsoBut the article struck me as example of the sort of ideological puritanism that can get in the way of realistic and comprehensive strategies to transition to a lower-emissions economy in time to compete with other countries doing...
As a matter of politics, it’s hard to imagine any government deciding to immediately “double or triple" a carbon price in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And that’s just the consumer-facing fuel tax, which sees most of the money returned to taxpayers. Presumably, the government would also have to dramatically increase the output-based carbon price for large industry, which doesn’t have the same rebate system. Ottawa would then be accused of imposing huge costs on businesses already on the brink of failure.
And as a matter of policy, treating carbon pricing as a cure-all for the climate would leave all sorts of gaps in an emissions-reduction strategy, which is why that mentality has lost momentum even among many self-branded clean capitalists in recent years.Each week, The Globe will profile a young person making a difference in Canada. This week we’re highlighting the work of Julia Barnes, an activist who makes films about the ocean.My name is Julia Barnes.
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