Editor's note: Tom Harris is the executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC)
Despite the federal Conservatives repeatedly asking the Trudeau Liberal government how much their plans for pricing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will cost, the true cost is still a closely guarded secret. Some numbers have surfaced, however. The Parliamentary Budget Officer’s Report stated that a federal ‘carbon tax’ alone will suck $10 billion out of Canada’s economy in 2022.
And what do we get for this investment?
Environment and Climate Change Canada estimates that by 2022 the adoption of so called carbon taxes and pricing (i.e., emissions trading) regimes, if done in all provinces and territories, will reduce national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80 to 90 million tonnes below the levels that would otherwise apply. Patrick Michaels, director of the center for the Study of Science at The Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based public policy research organization, explained that, using the model employed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a 90 million tonne per year reduction will result in between 0.001 and 0.002 degrees celsius less global warming than would otherwise occur, depending on the assumed sensitivity of the atmosphere to changes in GHG.
Can’t the government find better uses of $10 billion than altering our planet’s temperature by thousandths of a degree?
