David Suzuki is a world-renowned scientist, broadcaster, activist, co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation and author of more than 30 books on ecology (written with files from senior editor Ian Hanington).
Faced with rising rent payments, housing prices, interest rates and fuel costs, many people have little time for more complex but still pressing issues like climate change. Others seize on the affordability crisis to attack common sense climate measures, such as carbon pricing.
Economists say carbon pricing is the most effective way to reduce climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions. It can also help with affordability. Putting a price on the pollution that causes climate change (and other costly problems) encourages everyone to reduce emissions, by cutting back on damaging activities or shifting to cleaner, less expensive technologies — or both.
Corporations such as oil companies shouldn’t be allowed to use air, water and land as free dumping zones. That’s why other measures are also needed, including a limit on oil and gas industry emissions and windfall taxes on excessive profits.
Along with a three-year pause on the carbon levy on home heating oil, the federal government is offering incentives to install heat pumps. It should make those and retrofits free for lower-income households.
Regardless of whether or not the federal pause is warranted, Big Oil and its supporters have seized on carbon pricing to instill fear over home heating and transportation affordability.
Carbon pricing plans such as Canada’s are “revenue-neutral,” with money returned to the provinces where it’s collected. Ninety per cent of revenues are returned to households through rebate programs, with the remaining 10 per cent put into programs to help institutions, such as schools, businesses and municipalities, reduce their emissions. Most middle- and low-income households receive more back in rebates than they pay for carbon pricing, misleadingly called “carbon taxes.”
A report from Canada’s parliamentary budget officer shows that even as the levy increases to $170 a tonne in 2030, rebates grow, and 80 per cent of families come out better off.
Climate disruption itself is increasing the cost of living, as it affects everything from agriculture to infrastructure. The Canadian Climate Institute estimates that climate change and responding to more extreme and frequent weather events costs about $720 per person a year, expected to rise to between $1,900 and $2,300 annually by 2050.
Canada should stay the course on carbon pricing so this important tool can keep doing good. Those calling for its elimination are playing on the public’s economic fears to support the deadly, dying fossil fuel industry. We’re in a climate emergency. Getting rid of necessary measures is the opposite of what’s needed.