Canada’s current carbon tax system is unpopular and not as effective as it should be. A progressive carbon tax system would help.

The carbon tax is a so-called steering tax. Its goal is to change people’s behaviour, not to raise revenue for the government. However, the current version of the carbon tax in place in Canada and many other countries does not change people’s behaviour as effectively as it could and should. To see why, we consider two frequently ignored facts.

First, rich people emit considerably more than the average person. Studies on socioenvironmental inequality estimate that the top 10 per cent of emitters are responsible for about 50 per cent of individual carbon emissions. Think of private jets, which emit up to 4.5 tons of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) per hour. That is three times as much as the average human on the planet can emit per year if we want to meet our climate targets.

Second, someone in the top 10 per cent of incomes in Canada, that is someone who in 2022 made more than $106,300 after tax, will not even bat an eye at the current carbon price of $80 per tCO2e, let alone change their consumption habits. For context, $80 per tCO2e translates into under 18 cents per litre of gasoline at the pump.

Put simply, by its very nature a flat carbon tax that ignores socioenvironmental inequality and charges everyone the same is both unequal and ineffective climate policy. A progressive carbon tax would change that.

When communities have a common goal, it matters for members of the community to feel that everyone is pulling their weight to achieve that goal. Today’s carbon tax fails this test. The burden of adjustment in terms of reducing emissions falls squarely on low-income Canadians, whereas the wealthy just shrug it off and pay the tax. Moreover, the fact that some portion of today’s income and wealth inequalities are perceived as unjust to begin with adds insult to injury.

  • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
    31·
    4 days ago

    Carbon tax to incentivise using less gasoline yet Ontario just made bike lanes illegal.

    The carbon tax is almost useless without viable alternatives to carbon based fuels. Just build the electrified transit and make it possible for people to exist without a car. We’ve had solutions for decades, we need to stop profits from interfering with these solutions.

    Transit is also good for density, something that could help alleviate the housing crisis nearly every city is facing.

    • streetfestivalOPEnglish
      16·
      4 days ago

      Your points are very much in line with the author of the article.

      It’s supposed to be a steering tax. It should be progressive (i.e., if you’re wealthier you pay more) and the focus should be on steering the behaviours of the rich and of industry, not Joe Canadian

      We should be looking at (disincentivizing) plane trips, cruise ship trips, gas plants, etc - not fixating on the price at the gas pumps. We have PP and other bad actors to thank for that malicious association

      • 7rokhym
        3·
        3 days ago

        All people hear is that the carbon tax is about making it too expensive to go on vacation and to visit their family. As soon as you mention cruise ships and flights, total shut down, all other words past that point, they hear nothing.

        Meanwhile, our leaders fly private jets to international events to discuss greenhouse gas emissions to announce that meat is bad, eat bugs, then fly around to their personal Hawaiian compound (Zuckerberg), commute daily across multiple states to their life saving job (Starbucks). And this is after years of why we need to cut back energy use and wash laundry at 2am to save the grid (or planet, or whatever), but now for AI we need hundreds of nuclear power plants so the same people can throw these voters out of work so that the companies can squeeze out a few more points of profit margin to trigger big bonus payouts for their brilliant leadership.

        Of course people are voting for the opposite, which is the picture being painted by PP. And it is working. So forget about cruise ships, cars, economy air travel. Unless we actually deal with the extreme hypocrisy, we all all sunk.

      • Someone
        6·
        4 days ago

        We should be looking at (disincentivizing) plane trips, cruise ship trips, gas plants, etc - not fixating on the price at the gas pumps.

        And therein lies the problem. Disincentivizing the bad vs. incentivizing the alternatives. A couple bucks here and there make a lot of difference to lower income people. A small tax adds up quick and quickly feels like a punishment for not being able to afford the alternatives (EV, moving within biking distance, taking public transportation, taking a train, owning a house where you can choose what energy to use/make efficiency improvements).

        As a side note, cruise ships are the odd one out as they’re strictly a luxury and no alternative is needed, however they’re specifically exempt from both the carbon tax and regular fuel taxes. Interesting.

  • RustyEarthfire@lemmy.worldEnglish
    111·
    4 days ago

    A progressive individual tax would be far more complicated, as you would have to assign, track and audit individual use. And that doesn’t even get into secondary uses (e.g. manufacture and transport of goods).

    The flat rebate makes the tax progressive. Typical people pay $0 net tax, or even come out ahead, while heavy polluters pay almost the full tax. Just raising the tax will effectively make it progressive.

  • sbv@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    10·
    4 days ago

    The editorial ignores the history of the carbon tax in Canada:

    Misinformation about rebates as well as an (often poorly justified) general sentiment against any form of taxation certainly plays a role.

    1. The Liberals fucked up when they implemented it and called it a tax, instead of a rebate.

    2. The Liberals fucked up when they gave out rebates by calling them ECC benefits (IIRC). They didn’t fix that until last year. Many people receiving the rebate didn’t know what it was.

    3. Trudeau fucked up when he decided to exempt fUeL OiL for his Atlantic caucus. That reopened the carbon tax debate and gave critics ammunition.

    (I’m skipping other minor fuckups for the sake of brevity)

    Let’s not pretend that the Liberals would have produced a better policy or done a better job at implementing it. We can all think of a couple of other files that they’ve also fucked up.

    Having said that, I’m all for an undefined GHG tax on wealthy Canadians and corporations. The problem is what the Liberals discovered: doing it right is hard, and winning the PR battle is even harder.

  • ShareMySims@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3·
    4 days ago

    You can’t fix something that is working exactly as intended, nor should you pin your hopes on any measure enacted by the capitalist state to save you from the harms of capitalism, because it never will.