So, are carbon taxes actually working in Canada?

Here's an interesting article on the effectiveness of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes. Some are arguing that the days of carbon taxes are over, mainly because people (read "Conservatives") don't like paying taxes (even if they receive a rebate to make it income-neutral). Even some progressives are seeing the writing on the wall and starting to look into alternatives. Even Mark Carney is saying that the carbon tax has "served a purpose up until now".

What the article shows is that, yes, carbon taxes and cap-and-trade are effective, but maybe not as effective as we once thought. Canada's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions HAVE fallen since 2005, but only by about 0.4% a year. We need them to fall by about 4.5% a year to achieve our targets by 2030, about ten times the current rate.

Drilling down, British Columbia was the first jurisdiction in Canada to establish a carbon tax (2008). As the graph below shows, its GHG emissions did indeed fall for a while, but then started to increase again (with a dip for the pandemic) and, by 2022, they were only about 1% lower than when the carbon tax was started 14 years earlier.

Quebec introduced its cap-and-trade program in 2013. It too saw a light reduction in GHG emissions for a few years (see graph below) before they started to climb again, dipping during the pandemic, to end 2022 just 1.25% lower than in 2013.

Ontario only had a cap-and-trade system for a year or so in 2017 before Doug Ford closed it down, and the federal carbon tax only took effect in 2019, just before the pandemic. What the graph below shows, though, is that Ontario's GHG emissions have been steadily decreasing since 2005 (shutting down its coal plants helped with that), and the cap-and-trade and carbon tax have made little to no difference. Between 2005 and 2019, Ontario's GHG emissions fell by 19%, but since 2019 they have gone up slightly (except for a slight dip during the pandemic).

All in all, this is not particularly impressive, it has to be said. So, what does the article suggest to up our game? Given that  the rich contribute much more to our GHGs than the poor, the author proposes a much more progressive income-tested carbon tax, along with regulatory changes and increased incentives to switch to renewable energy. 

Hmm. I guess I'm on board with that, in principke at least. Just how do we push such a scheme through, though, during the current backlash against all things environmental, and when we are staring down the barrel of four years of "axe-the-tax" Conservative rule in Canada? That's not so clear.