In partnership with Climate Change Newmarket-Aurora, NewmarketToday brings you a regular series of columns aimed at creating awareness and engaging our community to take action on climate change.
When considering what can be done to decrease the amount of carbon emissions into the atmosphere and therefore reduce global warming and its adverse effects, many people ask what they can do personally in their lives to help.
Changing individual habits is most welcome, and we at Climate Action Newmarket-Aurora provide many links on our website with such information. At the bottom of this column, we will provide an example. But to have a greater impact, public policy is the area to focus on.
At this point, many people will start looking elsewhere in NewmarketToday for something to read. Discussing public policy does not always inspire people to action, but let us see if this phrase captures your attention: ‘Axe the tax.’ This slogan being used by one of the federal opposition parties seems to inspire some people and, in doing so, undermines a public policy that can be misunderstood but is an effective tool to reduce carbon emissions and address global warming.
Increasing a price on carbon emissions, like increasing a price on anything, focuses attention on that item and makes people look at ways to reduce the effect of that increase. This is a basic rule of economics, and many small-C conservative economists and commentators agree putting a price on carbon will incentivize consumers to make adjustments to reduce their carbon emissions. This is done by reducing a person’s production of carbon emissions, by driving less or getting an electric or hybrid vehicle, not using gas for heating at home, and purchasing a heat pump. Anything that reduces your use of carbon-emitting fuels will decrease the amount of carbon ‘tax’ you pay.
Now, a person may respond by saying, ‘Yes, but I cannot eliminate my usage of fossil-fuel products. Therefore, I am paying more.’ To address this issue, the current federal government carbon levy program actually funnels the money from the levy back to all taxpaying citizens. If you file your taxes every year, you will receive four payments per year from the federal government to compensate. Most taxpayers get more back than they paid, and the more you reduce your fossil-fuel use, the more that return is a bonus. (Economists on carbon pricing.)
This is what public policy is all about — creating an action that will have a positive effect (reducing carbon emissions) that hopefully has a net benefit for most of the population. Public policy can get complicated, and this policy has drawn some criticism, especially regarding contributing to inflation. But both the Bank of Canada and Parliamentary Budget Office (a non-partisan budget oversight body) have stated the carbon levy has had a minimal impact on overall inflation, especially during the high inflationary times of last year.
As well, the federal government allowed provinces to opt out if they had their own carbon-pricing structure in place. Quebec and British Columbia both did and are not included in the carbon levy. Ontario did have a carbon-pricing structure, a carbon cap-and-trade system in conjunction with Quebec and California, but it was cancelled in 2018, when a new provincial government was elected.
What does all this mean for us? Clearly, public policy is a complicated matter that has overlapping jurisdictions — federal, provincial, municipal — but in this case, a widely accepted practice of carbon pricing has been implemented to reduce global warming with monetary returns to Canadians. It is making a difference and it is having a minimal effect on individuals’ ability to live their lives.
The difference may not be seen immediately, but it is part of a broader set of initiatives by most levels of government in Canada to protect the future environment of our children and grandchildren. ‘Axe the tax’ is a simplistic slogan for a complicated process designed to avert a global disaster.
Canadians are experiencing the effects of global warming — massive forest fires, more frequent flooding, thawing permafrost in the North. We must dig deeper than slogans to understand what we can do, by advocating for good public policy and individual acts to reduce fossil-fuel use and preserve the planet for future generations.
Here is a great site with information on what each of us can do to help the environment: Living Green.
Inspired by the international organization Project Drawdown, Climate Action Newmarket-Aurora seeks to engage citizens, institutions, and policymakers in actionable and measurable solutions to stop catastrophic climate change as quickly, safely and equitably as possible. You can contact them at [email protected], and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.
