BACK TO THE TAX FUTURE.

Dear George P. Shultz and James A. Baker III,

It’s probably not often you hear from Canadian taxpayers, since you’re both heavyweights of previous Republican presidential administrations, having both served as secretaries of State and the Treasury. But perhaps you’ll be interested in this particular message. Because it comes from … the future.

Here in Canada we are way ahead of you on the ideas you recently began promoting under the guise of “A Conservative Answer to Climate Change,” which appeared both in a report you co-authored with the Climate Leadership Council and in a Wall Street Journal op- ed. You must know from the movies that when visitors from the future come back with a message, their news is rarely good. So let’s get right to it: This “conservative answer to climate change” is a trap. Kill it now, before you end up making the same mistakes Canadians did.

Your “four- pillar” strategy for a market- friendly “insurance policy” against catastrophic climate change is no different from what carbon-tax promoters have peddled north of the border for years: There’s the “gradually increasing carbon tax,” rising from US$40 a tonne, framed as the “most cost-effective way to reduce emissions” by discouraging fuel use.

That’s followed by a “carbon dividend,” as the second pillar, to make the tax revenue- neutral so it “would benefit working families rather than bloat government spending.” Your third pillar is a border adjustment to prevent leakage to untaxed jurisdictions and so exporters aren’t rendered uncompetitive. And finally you offer the most depressingly familiar “pillar” of all: Because emissions would now be curtailed using “conservative principles of free markets and limited government,” you foresee all other climate rules and regulations being repealed, everywhere, across the land.

It must have sounded so elegant and persuasive when the Climate Leadership Council signed you up to back it, perhaps even suggesting it might even win over the new president. We saw a similar group to that council emerge here in Canada a couple of years ago: the Ecofiscal Commission (although, so you don’t misunderstand, no government actually commissioned it; its carbon- tax boosters commissioned themselves, with the support of several green- minded endowment funds). It, too, was able to win over erstwhile conservatives by persuading them that this particular tax was market- friendly. Their embrace of such “conservative” carbon taxes hasn’t proved all that popular with conservatives.

Ecofiscal Canada is headed by a Montreal economist, Chris Ragan, who like you thinks carbon taxes “the best, least cost, most cost-effective policy,” one “that harnesses the power of markets to achieve least-cost pollution reduction.” The revenues from any carbon tax, the commissioners told us, “can then be ‘recycled’ back into the economy in order to drive further economic benefits,” such as through harmless “revenue neutral” cuts to more general taxes.

Because “revenue neutral” could mean whatever politicians chose it to mean, here’s what actually happened. When Alberta’s premier Rachel Notley ambushed Albertans with a carbon tax (she hadn’t mentioned any tax during her election campaign) she assured them it would be completely “revenue neutral.”

What she really meant was that revenues would be spent subsidizing green power, public transit, and grants to select homeowners and businesses. There are no tax cuts. No universal dividends.

It’s the same story in other big provinces. In Ontario and Quebec, where carbon taxes using cap- and- trade schemes are in place or will soon be, the revenues are all going one place only: more spending, and not even necessarily on anything remotely related to environmental priorities. That “bloat” you claimed would not happen is exactly what happens when governments get their hands on a new source of taxpayer money. This is America’s future, unless you stop your plan soon.

It’s still far from clear, by the way, that a revenue-neutral carbon tax would even reduce emissions. In British Columbia, the one jurisdiction that comes closest to offsetting carbon prices with tax cuts ( although only by two- thirds, as Jack M. Mintz notes elsewhere in FP Comment today), gasoline sales have not responded as you might expect. After the B.C. tax was introduced in 2008, gasoline sales per capita rose slightly, then fell, and then in 2011 began to rise again. Gross gasoline sales in 2015, the latest available, are the highest by volume yet. ( There are also indications that a portion of the Lower Mainland’s emissions have simply moved just over the border as northbound truckers and drivers fill up on cheaper gas in Washington State before they cross into B.C.)

Still, you might be wondering how much better the business environment is in Canada now that all these carbon taxes have made it possible for governments to repeal the thicket of rules, regulations, subsidies, fees and other market-disfiguring emission-control policies. Except, that never happened either. In addition to carbon taxes, provinces and now a federal carbon- tax policy are still forcing coal plants to close, just like in the American Clear Power Plan you think your plan will render obsolete, forcing consumers to buy higher- cost energy. B.C. taxpayers are paying $ 8 billion for their new “green” Site C hydro project. The Alberta government has put limits on how much oil the province’s oilsands can produce. Ontario taxpayers, already saddled by renewable contracts with some of the highest energy costs in North America, are now being forced to cover $14,000 in rebates for every wealthy Tesla buyer.

Not a single one of Canada’s carbon- tax plans ever fulfilled the promise of maintaining “free markets and limited government.” So-called “green jobs” are not replacing those lost to anti- fossil- fuel policies. The future of American carbon taxes has arrived, in Canada, and it’s bigger government, distorted markets, slower growth and competitiveness, and burdensome taxes and energy costs for consumers and businesses. Take it from those living in the future you foresee, Mr. Shultz and Mr. Baker: Carbon taxes are no conservative answer to climate change. They will only lead to everything conservative Republicans like you would detest.