Canada 2020 has released a policy paper by Nic Rivers that makes the case for a carbon tax in Canada.
The assistant professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, and Canada Research Chairholder in Climate and Energy Policy, admits the argument “is not novel; environmental taxes have been economists’ recommended policy approach for solving environmental problems for close to a century and carbon pricing has recently been promoted by a wide range of stakeholders as a necessary policy to address climate change.” Rather, he says, his aim is to “articulate the possibility for a carbon tax to efficiently and effectively contribute to significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.”
With the recent study by the International Energy Agency suggesting we could see a global temperature increase of between 3.6 and 5.3 ◦C unless existing policies and practices are changed, Rivers “methodically walks through why a carbon tax matters, how it is beneficial to both the environment and the economy, how it would work, as well as the various myths that have mired the policy in bureaucratic limbo.”
The full report is available at http://canada2020.ca/canada-carbon-tax/
