Skip to content

Consider fee and dividend

Consider fee and dividend Re: Pasloski blasts Trudeau's climate change commitment (The News, Feb. 13) Bravo for Justin Trudeau starting off an adult conversation. He is correct to be calling for carbon pricing. Mark Jaccard is also correct when he says t

Re: Pasloski blasts Trudeau’s climate change commitment (The News, Feb. 13)

Bravo for Justin Trudeau starting off an adult conversation. He is correct to be calling for carbon pricing.

Mark Jaccard is also correct when he says that 100 leading climate-energy economists in the world would, in terms of the economy, all say that, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a price on carbon is the best way.

Carbon fee and dividend is the best mechanism to reduce emissions and support a shift to a clean-energy economy. It’s revenue-neutral and would see all fees on fossil fuels, based on their CO2 content, returned equally to Yukon households.

This would protect the poor and middle class from rising energy costs, with 66 per cent breaking even or having more money in their pockets. It is a simpler carbon-pricing mechanism than B.C.‘s revenue-neutral carbon tax, yet, only two years after they introduced it, B.C.‘s clean technology industry sales grew by 48 per cent while emissions dropped by 17 per cent.

Right now, whenever OPEC decide they want to damage our economy, they simply reduce the price of oil. And with so much of Canada’s economy being tied to oil sands, they now become unproductive. At their whim, OPEC can treat our economy as a yo-yo.

We think we are getting cheap oil, while Canadian industries are being ruined, resulting in us losing jobs. It’s a no-win situation.

Politicians who are unwilling to support an adult conversation on carbon pricing, most specifically fee and dividend, are either lying or have a gross lack of understanding of economics. In short, they are a liability to progress.

Sharon Howarth

Toronto