Parnian Esmaeilishayeh (12) | STAFF REPORTER
The carbon tax has been the Canadian government’s solution to a complex worldwide issue: climate change. However, is this solution really the key to solving global warming?
Climate change is a long-term shift in temperature and weather patterns. In June 2007, to combat the rising temperatures caused by our carbon emissions, the Canadian government provided a solution called a carbon tax. A carbon tax puts an additional fee on purchasing fossil fuels or products with high carbon emissions, making high-emission products and activities more costly.
At first glance, this seems like a promising solution. However, the carbon tax has not proved effective as we are still experiencing an increase in temperatures above what we had anticipated. This increase is shown in the table below from the Government of Canada website:
Many reasons could explain why the carbon tax has been ineffective. These reasons could include insufficient pricing, disproportionate impact, and lack of affordable greenhouse alternatives.
Currently, the carbon tax is charged at $80 per tonne of CO2 equivalent. This can be roughly translated to 14.3 cents per litre of gasoline. If the average person uses 1.9 to 3.8 litres of gasoline per day, that only results in an extra 54.34 cents, which is negligible for most people, especially for something like gas, which is seen as a necessity. Therefore, the average person can easily overlook this cost. To them, a price cheaper than their morning coffee is outweighed by having to go to work and make money.
However, it could be argued that even though it is a small cost, it adds up and can still be significant to people experiencing more limited finances. That means that carbon tax has a disproportionate impact, affecting low-income households more. Even so, higher-income families contribute more to carbon emissions due to greater consumption of goods and more frequent use of private vehicles. Overall, this burdens lower-income households while not limiting the higher-income families.
In addition to the perception of the cost, greener alternatives to fossil fuels are expensive and rare. There is a lack of greener options in comparison to unsustainable alternatives. Even with the few green alternatives, they are much more expensive than the non-green alternatives, making the transition to sustainable, cleaner technologies more costly and impossible to achieve, especially for lower-income families.
While the carbon tax is a direct solution to climate change and could be arguably effective, we have yet to see significant reductions in carbon emissions and the equivalent charging of main carbon emitters. Although it is a step forward, many more approaches are required to provide a solution to our intensifying climate issue.
Works Cited
OIL, ALBERTA. “A Brief History of the Canadian Carbon Tax – Canadian Energy News, Top Headlines, Commentaries, Features & Events.” EnergyNow, https://energynow.ca/2016/12/brief-history-canadian-carbon-tax/. Accessed 11 November 2024.
“Temperature change in Canada.” Canada.ca, 25 July 2024, https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/environmental-indicators/temperature-change.html. Accessed 11 November 2024.
“What Is Climate Change?” NASA Science, https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/what-is-climate-change/. Accessed 11 November 2024.
