Public support for carbon tax waning quickly
Public support for carbon tax waning quickly
In what is widely seen as a strategic blunder, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pausing the carbon price on home heating oil has kicked off backlash from coast to coast, with new polling revealing collapsing support for his signature climate policy.
And kids don't want to eat their vegetables or go to bed on time... Sometimes people need to be encouraged to do the thing they don't want to do, but is only in their best interest.
The stupidest part of this whole thing is now easy it would be to set up in a way that people could accept...
Levy a small carbon tax, nation wide, on all energy, for all users. The carbon tax goes into a fund, which is re-distributed to encourage the right behaviour:
- Improve / expand public transit
- Fund energy-efficiency retrofits
- Subsidize green power initiatives
- Rebates on zero-emission transport like electric bikes, and compact electric cars
- Retrain existing oil & gas industry workers to install/maintain electric infrastructure
- Cash for Clunkers to get polluting vehicles off the road
- Build new, ultra-energy efficient homes based on an improved building code
- Tax rebates to everyone in the lowest tax brackets.
Please, steal this idea.
And kids don't want to eat their vegetables or go to bed on time... Sometimes people need to be encouraged to do the thing they don't want to do, but is only in their best interest.
I work as a public servant and I say this like once a week. The general public acts like a spoiled child who wants to eat candy for dinner. The public do not care that candy isn't nutritious, they do not care that they will rot their teeth out if they eat out for every meal, they do not care that it will give them an upset stomach. They know what's best for them and candy is what's best.
That and they think that if their siblings eats vegetables they then don't have to eat them themselves, so they prefer to force someone else to eat them in their place.
But it's already financially beneficial to the majority! That's what's most frustrating to me!
Of those who say they receive more than they pay, support for the carbon price reaches 79 per cent. Among those who believe they spend more than they get back, the results are flipped: 82 per cent oppose the tax.
Got it. So people who don't understand the policy don't support it, and people who do support it do. That tracks.
Fix the messaging and the problem is solved. This isn't rocket surgery, but for some reason both the NDP and Liberals are piss poor at messaging (to wit: the Alberta UCP going on an advertising spree about their assinine Alberta pension plan idea while the silence from the opposition has been deafening).
And those people who don't support it because they pay more in carbon tax are the ones who need their behaviour to change... So, it works.
We can't tax our way out of climate change. We can't just put a tax on gasoline without creating viable alternatives to driving in our cities. We need bike lanes, walkable neighbourhoods and functional public transit.
It's the least painful, most economically efficient way to encourage those things and other transitions. When it comes to transportation, higher gas prices have historically resulted in a market for more fuel efficiency (and inflation-adjusted low gas prices have lead to oversizing of vehicles). Unlike the 70s, this time, the carbon tax is brought in slowly and smoothly over many years to encourage conservation (including the things you mention), drive demand for more fuel efficiency, and in the long term, encourage the electrification of the remaining fleet.
The vast majority of Canadians want the government to do something serious about climate change, but they don't know what that thing is. Economists said a carbon tax and rebate was the most efficient, but public support isn't driven by economic papers, but by propaganda machines. It's just too easy to blame the carbon tax for everyone's problems. It's the perfect boogeyman for inflation. Heavy handed regulation of industrial emitters would probably be the most supported by the public, but it would have a terrible impact on Canadian industry, and actually be limited in it's effectiveness, as most of Canada's emissions would still be "free."
The market shouldn't be focused on fuel efficiency but on total energy efficiency. Constantly pushing cars to be more effecient is still significantly less effecient than well built transit and active transport like walking. Our cities are built based on sprawl and strict zoning, consuming more land and requiring more resources to build roads and infrastructure. Existing spaces in downtowns or old retail sit vacant for years while new developments continue outside of town.
The government can reduce carbon emissions by encouraging people to use less carbon during their daily commutes by building effecient cities. Denser housing and commercial units are also more themerally effecient. This could actually reduce the amount of carbon generated from transportstion and heating rather than collect money from the carbon generated.
Change starts from the bottom up, people.
Almost like they should prepare and build those public services before applying tax. Applying a tax with no alternative is just a greed tax.
Find out what the carbon tax goes to.
I don't understand why they don't use carbon tax revenues to fund public transit, electric car rebates, and other noticeable benefits. Instead, I pay carbon tax to heat my house, on my fuel and I still have to pay $20 a day in transit.
Instead, it's a black hole of who knows where it goes. This is the Canadian way of solving problems though. More taxes and no accountability until it bites us in the ass.
I'm just going to edit to add:
Electric cars aren't great in Canada. Distances are often too far and cold weather really restricts batteries. We will always need some type of fuel.
Same with home heating. Heat pumps don't work in very cold weather. We will still need to burn fuel.
In both cases we are paying carbon tax when we really have choice of "cleaner" alternatives.
Instead, it's a black hole of who knows where it goes.
It goes into those cheques they mail out every few months, that they somehow completely failed to label "carbon tax rebate" cheques.
Oh fuck off
My mother does 35000km a year and she did it with a Nissan Leaf (250km range) until we moved far enough that she decided to get an i3 with the generator (180km electric + gas generator) so she can do it without having to charge the few times a year she'll come visit, 95% of the time she doesn't need gas at all and she only charges at home. Before getting the i3 she was renting a gas car once a year to visit our family just because of one stretch where she wasn't sure the charging station would work. The Canadian average yearly mileage is less than half of that, it's just excuses to not change to something new even if it's better.
Not even going to touch on how wrong you are about the carbon tax because others have already covered that.
Edit: Heat pumps work at temperature under -25 and you can use other types of electric heaters for the days that go under that, no need to use fuel.
The federal carbon tax doesn't go into a black hole its rebated back to taxpayers.
Atlantic Canada only got limited access to natural gas in the last fifteen years. Most homes are heated by electricity or fuel oil, both more expensive than NG. After the oil shocks of the 70s, governments incentivized switching to electricity. Over 60% of houses in NB are heated that way, mostly by baseboard heaters. Baseboards are roughly 100% efficient, while heat pumps are 2 to 3 times that.
Air to air heat pumps work down to about -20C, after that the heating coils will kick in. That's when heat pumps gets more expensive, on par with baseboards.
Base rwd Model 3 has a range of 430kms. With a 20% drop, you're still at 345kms in really cold weather. Even in Toronto, 75% of driving commutes are less than 25kms, and it's the worst case scenario.
One thing people like to ignore, average house sizes have doubled since the 1960s (1200sq ft to 2400sq ft) even as families became smaller than ever. Add in stupid fashions like 10ft ceilings, and heating costs are going to go nowhere but up.
Ford analysed billions of km from their professional users to determine the range necessary on a full battery on the e-transit, they then increased that number by a good margin just in case.
200km. That's the number they came up with after analysing the habits of people who use their vehicle daily for work and people who take their car to travel 15km to and from work complain that electric cars don't have enough range with 300km+ available! Heck, you save so much on maintenance and gas that you can just rent a gas car when absolutely required!
It's not a black hole. It's nearly completely paid back to Canadians evenly such that most Canadians get more back.
What's also neat is that every single province could do exactly what you're suggesting. All the federal government mandated was a price on carbon, each province could implement whatever system they wanted.
Like everything these days, our worst problems are at the provincial levels, and people don't seem to understand or realize that.
I know you had a lot of unbacked up claims in your comment, but I wanted to remind you that most people get money back from the carbon rebate then they paid in.
Yeah because it's just pinning the issue on regular people who have no control over climate change
The carbon pricing redistributes the earnings back to people.
This then does let people have an impact on climate change by influencing them to choose products that produce less carbon and therefore appear to cost less.
The genius is that the price difference is artificial, if on average people in the province choose the more expensive option, they will make back the difference quarterly.
As is the system only really penalizes people who consistently choose the more carbon inefficient options and do it a lot.