Carbon tax won’t stop global warming

Re: A climate of uncertainty, Oct. 5.

You are right: the real issue is “will it work?” My answer is no.

The exiguous carbon tax in British Columbia is given far more credit than it merits. Price elasticity is one area in economics where a wealth of evidence is available.

In the short term, consumers find gasoline so useful that they more or less ignore the price, and in the long run it takes a doubling in price to reduce consumption by 50 per cent.

In the years leading to the introduction of the carbon tax in B.C. (starting at 2.2¢/L, levelling off at 6.7¢/L), the market price at the pump varied in any 12-month period by at least 25¢/L. Immediately following its introduction, the market dwarfed the tax in a dramatic tumble of about 60¢/L and subsequently has continued to oscillate.

B.C.’s carbon tax cannot have had any significant effect on consumers through the long-established notion that when a price changes, consumption will move in the opposite direction.

The science of global warming informs us that consumption of fossil fuels will have to be reduced in short order by at least 80 per cent to meet the Paris Accord target.

So the problem is that our preoccupation with just one economic instrument — a price on carbon — creates a false sense of confidence that nothing else needs to be done. In a parliamentary democracy, it is unlikely to deliver the required result.

John Hollins, Ottawa