It seems that I've confused "carbon emissions" with "carbon consumption" - probably because I care a little about the latter, and not at all about the former - resulting in a thoroughly sketchy claim that BC's new gas tax won't reduce carbon emissions. It's a lot harder to get out of the carbon consumption chain than the carbon emission chain.
Thanks to Sacha for only quoting the least crazy part of that post!
So, does this mean that the environmentally friendly choice at Safeway is plastic bags because it raises the price of gas? It's all so confusing these days...
That being said, I'm not going to take too much crap from anyone that extols both the economic and environmental benefits of this tax restructuring - if there's one thing that economic growth does not normally lead to, it's a reduction in carbon emissions.
See also this chart at Google's Gapminder.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Carbon Emissions vs Consumption
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2 comments:
Assuming that the tax really is revenue neutrals, not redistributive (i.e. not transferring wealth from poor to rich, urban to rural, etc.), and has no administration cost, then everyone could spend their money in exactly the some way as they previously had, as you said in your previous post. However, since carbon intensive products are now relatively more expensive than they used to be, compared to less carbon intensive products, people can substitute less intensive products for move intensive products and make some marginal improvement in their wellbeing and some marginal reduction in their carbon consumption.
In the real world, one would have to compare the gains from substitution against the losses to administration costs. Similarly, under any rational economic theory, carbon consumption will be reduced (ignoring redistributive effects). I have little doubt that if someone were to calculate the various factors, this would not provide a boost to the economy, and I expect that there will not be a significant impact on carbon consumption, but you can't make on economic argument and ignore substitution effects.
I can't tell if you are picking on my weak economic arguments, or those that I linked to. I think I'll assume the latter and go merrily on my way :-)
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