Be part of the solution

Re: From Nobel to ignoble carbon taxes, Terence Corcoran, Oct. 31

Terence Corcoran’s recent opinion piece on the federal government’s initiative to implement minimal standards of carbon pricing across Canada boils down a simple conclusion: The global effort to implement carbon pricing is inadequate and Canada cannot cut global emissions on its own so why bother.

Climate economist and Nobel laureate William Nordhaus is a strong proponent of carbon pricing. Prof. Nordhaus points out that widespread rollout of national and international carbonpricing mechanisms along with tariffs and other pressures imposed on non-compliant countries is required to successfully mitigate climate change.

Arguments against carbon pricing as the most cost efficient and effective driver of emissions reduction are without merit. A study from Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission concludes that a pure regulatory approach in the absence of carbon pricing would come at a cost of 3.8 per cent of GDP when compared to an effective climate action plan based on carbon pricing. This study goes on to conclude that the efficiencies of carbon pricing are such that net costs are marginal over the short-term mitigation period extending to 2027 regardless of the method of revenue recycling back to the economy.

Mr. Corcoran encouraged readers to “look it up” to see if B.C.’s carbon tax has been effective in cutting emissions and fossil fuel use. Let’s do this. Using Statistics Canada data, comparing 2005 (Canada’s baseline year for Paris pledges) with the latest 2016 data, in B.C., per person net gasoline sales have dropped by 10 per cent and total emissions were cut by five per cent. In Saskatchewan, over the same period in the absence of carbon pricing, per-person net gasoline sales increased by 16 per cent and emissions went up 11 per cent.

Carbon pricing initiatives are in place in 46 national and 25 subnational regions and these initiatives cover 20 per cent of global emissions. There is a long way to go to arrive at Prof. Nordhaus’s solution of global carbon markets. As a Canadian my preference is to be part of the solution, not the problem.

David D. Maenz, Saskatoon, author of The Price of Carbon