Carbon tax should not be revenue-neutral

Re: “Dream of revenue-neutral carbon tax over,” comment, Oct. 22.

The commentary conflates the political issue of revenue-neutrality with the momentous question of pricing carbon pollution. The writer’s true message is: “However governments decide to price carbon … it’s just another efficiency-reducing, growth-stifling, wallet-shrinking tax.”

Is there no end to the self-rationalizations and distortions of polluters asked to pay for their pollution? Here charging for pollution is branded as taxation, not polluter-pay. This is wrong.

The focus should be on accounting for the damage caused by emitting free-ridinggreenhouse gases. The costs include a seri- ous threat to the stability of human civiliza- tion, an inefficient economy, personal sickness, ecological stress and possibly sudden ecological collapse.

The damage will get worse, much worse, if not urgently addressed.

Economists argue that an underpriced resource will be overused. Society at large will pay for the negative effects — in dollars, but also in health and physical distress. They predict that this overuse, when all costs are accounted for, is truly ”efficiency-reducing, growth-stifling, wallet shrinking.”

Market forces are powerful. False price signals are sent if pollution pricing is not part of a society’s cost structure.

Fortunately, we have a broadly supported carbon-pollution charge in B.C. As we go forward, our society will be safer and our economy more competitive as compared to those that have followed the siren song of monstrous carbon inefficiency. Gerald Walter Retired professor of economics University of Victoria