That’s. That’s the whole point. Things costing their true value.
Business exist to make money (even non profits need to make enough money from either sales or donations to cover operating costs). If something costs them more, it’s going to cost their customers more. This way negative externalities aren’t swept away to become an unmanageable problem in the future. The true cost of consumption is reflected in the price we pay.
What you’re describing as a bad thing is really the system working for good, as it was intended.
Unfortunately they are correct as the carbon tax in Canada is indeed a racket. It’s only on consumer consumption.
- oil exports, our largest source of emissions, are exempt
- agriculture and forestry, the next largest, also exempt
- shipping and rail, oh look, exempt
- heavy industry can buy phoney carbon credits for $5/ton instead of paying the $65/ton tax. Some of these are for forests that have already burned down
- oh yeah the greatest emission source last year, dwarfing all others, 80% of our total emissions came from the massive forest fires for which our policy is just to LET THEM BURN
So the only people who carry the burden of the Canadian carbon tax are the ordinary taxpayers. But hey, the optics are good! Looks very progressive. Despite the fact that Canadian consumer consumption is the definition of a drop in the bucket that is global emissions.
If Canada wanted to make a difference they would nationalize the grid, build nuclear and renewables. Or forget it all for now and just put out the damn fires!
Edit: I forgot one more, as imports are not taxed, the carbon tax actually encourages the import of goods made with coal power in China, over goods made with hydropower in Canada!
Do you have a source of your wildfires cause 80% of our carbon emissions?
Only thing I could find was about 25% which is much different then the number you showed.
I believe it was a CBC article last fall that mentioned it, talking about the massive rise in acres burned from previous years. But I can’t directly give you a link at this time unfortunately, am on mobile and can’t find it either.
