BC Carbon Tax: Just Right?
This is worth reading: BC enegy guru Mark Jaccard argues in The Tyee that the province's new carbon tax hits a sweet spot. Not to hard, not too soft, but just right.
Apparently, the tax has been attacked from both the left (doesn't do enough to curb emissions, too hard on consumers) and from the right (hurts businesses, so high that it'll spur runaway inflation).
The fact that it's taking heat from both sides means nothing, of course. Sometimes, the critiques from one side or the other are simply wrong -- so policymakes simply can't gauge whether they've achieved a balanced policy based solely on the tally of hate mail that lands in their inbox.
But in this case, Jaccard makes some pretty compelling arguments that BC's recently announced carbon tax is just about as good as it gets in a democracy: not too fast, yet far-sighted enough to prompt genuine emissions reductions over the long term; effective, without creating the sort of economic disruptions that stir political opposition; and perhaps most importantly, more fair to low-income folks than the carbon taxes that have been levied in Scandinavia and the UK.
Read it for yourself, though. I'm sure that the debate over BC's carbon tax is far from over, and in the meantime, I think it's good to get some exposure to the different perspectives on the debate -- since I'm sure that the same arguments and talking points will be deployed in other jurisdictions that decide to follow BC's lead.
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