The year 2023 was by far the warmest in human history. Climate extremes now routinely shock in their intensity, with a direct monetary cost that borders on the unfathomable. Over $3 trillion (US) in damages to infrastructure, property, agriculture, and human health have already slammed the world economy this century, owing to extreme weather. That number will likely pale in comparison to what is coming. The World Economic Forum, hardly a hotbed of environmental activists, now reports that global damage from climate change will probably cost some $1.7 trillion to $3.1 trillion (US) per year by 2050, with the lion’s share of the damage borne by the poorest countries in the world.
And yet we fiddle.
In today’s Canada, there is deception, national in scope, coming directly from the right‑wing opposition benches in Ottawa. In 2023, the populist Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre adopted “Axe the tax” as his new mantra and has shaped his federal election campaign around that hackneyed rhyme.
This is super frustrating to me.
It’s a great solution to a real problem, it works with our market economy, it works for canadians, and now we’re seeing it’s reducing emissions. You can’t leave the free market to manage externalities, if you could they wouldn’t be externalities.
I’m doubly frustrated the NDP are now taking this line and saying it puts the onus on the little guy. We could improve dispersement schedules so the little guy is less impacted, but as the article states, the little guy is coming out a head on the backs of the big polluters.
ETA: I enjoyed this article, it felt like good quality journalism to me. The Walrus doesn’t write the style I prefer to read, but I do appreciate their reporting.
The hypocrisy is what gets me… Yeah, axe the tax… But let the forests keep burning, the rain keep flooding, the heat keep broiling people and droughts starving us…
It’s not rocket surgery… Make the thing that is bad for us more expensive, and use that money to make things that are good for us LESS expensive. I still don’t know why there isn’t a tax on gasoline and diesel and natural gas that doesn’t DIRECTLY fund public transit…
In Vancouver 18.5 cents per litre goes to transit.
I wish that happened in Winnipeg. Problem is our NDP gov’t is currently trying to clean up the deficit hell-hole the Cons left us with.
the environmental effects stop being externalities eventually.