Will carbon tax cut impact the environment?

Booth explained that since the industrial carbon tax is still in place, the impact the consumer has will not be nearly as significant compared to if the industrial carbon tax was removed alongside it.

“Industry has done a good job of making us feel guilty about our contributions. We do need to be aware of our contributions, but a lot of it is what industry does, and this encourages them to be better players. After all, I can only buy carbon neutral things if somebody produces it, and the way that it is produced is both by demand and if it’s simply most cost effective for them to produce more carbon reduced materials for me to buy,” Booth said.

While the individual’s impact isn’t as big as the an industry, Booth does stress the importance of remaining green where you can. Even though that impact is miniscule compared to an entire industry, it can still make a positive difference.

“We do know that carbon emissions actually are leading to global climate change. We see it in British Columbia, we’ve certainly seen it in the forest fires that we’ve had, it’s one of the big contributors, of course, as well as odd weather patterns, increasing drought, things like that,” she said.

“It’s undeniable that we have a changing climate. Things are getting warmer, we’re getting less snow. 33% of all the carbon that’s in the atmosphere is from humans,” added James Steidle, who ran for the BC Green Party in the most recent provincial election.

Steidle, like Booth, also believes that removing the consumer carbon tax won’t have a significant detrimental impact on the environment, as he believes the carbon tax did not synergize well with bigger picture ideas to create a greener society.

“The problem with the carbon tax is that it wasn’t really avoidable for people, so you’re paying this carbon tax at the pump and meanwhile, we’re being locked into these urban design decisions at a bigger level that forces us to drive around everywhere,” Steidle said.

“In many ways, what the carbon tax was was essentially a sin tax, such as an extra tax on cigarettes to kind of discourage you from doing things. I think the intent from a consumer point of view was to say: ‘drive less, it will be cheaper, because you won’t be paying as much carbon tax on the gas.’ But whether people did that or whether they just kept driving the same amount and complaining about it bitterly is really questionable. They have no real studies to demonstrate that people change their behavior in response to it, but probably just complained,” Booth added.

Saying the carbon tax “penalized the little guy and didn’t go after the bigger structure of our society,” Steidle believes if the government were to find approaches to create a more environmentally friendly community, it would take a lot more than a tax that for many, were unavoidable.

“Look at food processing, for example, of dairy in the north. We don’t have a local dairy processing plant. If the carbon tax was going to be effective, it would encourage local processing of milk, would encourage more of a localized economy, let’s build stuff locally, let’s consume local things, and the carbon tax couldn’t actually help do that,” Steidle said.

“The money that was being raised from the carbon tax, why don’t we use that to encourage lower carbon economies? And it didn’t really feel like we were doing that either, so I think fundamentally it was an issue of trust, and the voters and the taxpaying public wanted to see the connection between that carbon tax and actual meaningful climate progress,” he continued.

The consumer carbon tax is set to be removed on April 1, 2025.

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by Tommy Osborne

Will carbon tax cut impact the environment?

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