Several months ago my province British Columbia initiated a carbon tax on fuel of about 8 cents per gallon and to make it revenue neutral gave each of us back $100 to make it revenue neutral. I like the concept, exept that it is chickenshit.
That carbon tax needs to reflect fuel costs that resemble the damn near 50% increase in gas costs that we eperienced over the past year which clearly had an impact on consumption as the price has now somewhat plummeted.
France, 260 liters pc and 1.62 relative price
Germany, 403 liters pc and 1.49 relative price
Canada, 1204 liters pc and 0.95 relative price
USA, 1635 liters pc and 0.77 relative price
Wow! Isn’t this the real answer to reducing carbon emmissions in the transportation sector? Anyone else got a realistic plan to reduce CO[sub]2[/sub] emmissions in our USA vehicles by 84%. Voluntarily ?
If the USA (and Canada) gradually brought the gasoline price up to France’s level and rebated the citizenry the increased revenue, we’d see the private sector mobilized on their own like never before to pursue the alternatives. We’d see increasing use of public transportation and city planning to reflect high commuter costs. We’d see a serious push for more fuel efficient and smaller cars like we saw in the seventies before we broke the back of OPEC. We’d see a drastic reduction in oil revenue to the corporations and foreign countries because we’ve interjected our grubby fingers into the pie.
And we would see more money available for alternative spending through the cash back to pursue whatever our hearts desire.
Lets get serious. Others have done it and so can we.
Well, I supose I should be grateful to realize that there is nothing to debate about the feasability of a significant carbon tax on gasoline. While Canadians have followed the European example to a limited degree with limited success in reducing gasoline consumption and carbon emmissions compared to the USA, both countries in my opinion have nothing to say about AGW until they get their shit together and do something just as productive and effective about their embarassing fossil fuel consumption and carbon pollution.
While a carbon tax is a fairly efficient means to curtail the use of carbon in some circumstances, what makes you think that 8 cents a gallon is not a reasonable amount? And you might want to mentioned that the current tax of 2.4 cents/L is just the starting point, and that it is going to increase each year until it hits 7.2 cents/L in just 4 years. That’s a little over 27 cents per gallon. That seems like a pretty hefty tax to me. That’s about 1/3 the size of the largest carbon taxes in the world.
You have to understand that a provincial government runs big risks when taxing carbon - risk that carbon intensive industries will move out of the province. This is a problem with any non-global carbon tax, but it’s especially difficult if a single province within a country does it, because there are no trade barriers and few natural barriers stopping the flow of goods from one province to another. If BC has much higher energy prices than Alberta, then new companies looking to relocate west or start up new operations are going to be biased towards Alberta, all other things being equal.
In any event, BC’s carbon tax will do precisely zero for global warming. Oil is a global, fungible commodity. BC could stop using it entirely tomorrow, and the only effect would be to drop demand a little, which would drive down the price and stimulate consumption elsewhere. You can not solve the global warming problem with carbon taxes unless you manage to put a global tax regime in place. And that’s not going to happen. So the BC law is little more than a guilt-assuaging, economy-hurting feel good measure.
It seems to me that the 4-year phase in of this tax is the only intelligent thing about it. You need to give the market time to adapt. People need time to sell their gas guzzlers and buy cheaper ones. Companies need time to eliminate or improve their most inefficient operations.
And also, moving factories and jobs to Alberta and Saskatchewan takes time…
Do you realize that the U.S. and Canada are both already reducing their oil usage quite dramatically? More so than most other countries?
What you need to understand is that global oil demand is slowing because the global price of oil is very high. Carbon taxes are completely different, in that they are implemented locally. Implementing local taxes on a global commodity doesn’t do squat other than punish the country that implemented the tax.
This is one reason why most economists who advocate carbon taxes say that you need a global tax framework. If you can’t get China to implement a carbon tax (and they not only will refuse to do so, but they actually heavily subsidize fossil fuel consumption), you will need to set up a global tariff structure on goods that have carbon in them. Otherwise, high-energy manufacturers will simply relocate from countries with high carbon taxes to those with no carbon taxes.
But a global tariff regime on goods to pay for their carbon content would quite severely hurt the global economy, at a time when it’s already slowing down. A global tariff framework will also never, ever happen. Given that fact, local carbon taxes or other mandates to conserve or lower the consumption of oil aren’t going to do a thing.
I’ve been doing a lot of hard thinking about the energy problem and global warming, and I’ve come to the conclusion that fussing around with carbon taxes and cap and trade and all other local measures to lower demand is a complete waste of time. The hard fact is that a global, fungible commodity is going to be used until it no longer makes economic sense to use it. That means every drop of oil is coming out of the ground and burned until it’s no longer cheaper than other available energy sources. Period.
The entire western world could stop using gas tomorrow, and all that would do is make Asia awash in very cheap fossil fuel energy, giving them a huge competitive advantage. Industry would flow in, consumption would increase dramatically, and we’d be right back where we started from.
Actually, would you temporarily decrease fuel consumption, but only because the resulting economic shocks from the dislocation would cause a severe worldwide recession, which would decrease energy use for a time until the economy adapted.
The only answer to eliminating fossil fuels is to either work to make an energy source that is cheaper and just as easy to use, or wait for it to become scarce enough that the price rises to the point whre it no longer makes economic sense to burn it. Everything else is a distraction.
I should say that all this is in respect to eliminating wordwide oil consumption. Local carbon taxes or other restrictions like cap and trade can certainly have the effect of changing the way people in that country use fossil fuels, change the mix of goods in use in the country, and stimulate local investment in other alternative energy sources. Whether or not this is a good thing is a another matter.
Consider the effect of raising the local cost of oil to the point where solar was more cost-effective. Let’s say you raised it by a factor of four, and this hypothetical country completely converted its energy needs to solar, but overall paid twice as much for energy as other countries. What would be the effect? Woudl worldwide oil consumption decline? Maybe in the short term. But the price would also decline. Lower oil prices would stimulate the economies of coutnries that use it, leading to higher economic growth. industries that use lots of energy would locate to these countries, further increasing economic growth. In the meantime, the country with the really expensive solar energy would be at a competitive disadvantage and would spend more of its GDP on providng its power. So its economy would decline and the standard of living would decline. This would lower immigration and stimulate it elsewhere.
And so it goes. In the end, after a short period of re-adjustment the world would continue burning fossil fuels. The effect of the ‘solar mandate’ would be to simply distort the market and cause it to adapt.
This is the hard logic of trying to manipulate a global commodity with local policies. Good luck with that.
A hefty tax? The BC carbon tax at 7.2 cents per liter is only 5% of the $1.50 per liter I recently paid for gasoline. That’s less than the provincial sales tax on other goods and services
I have to agree with you on every point you make here. I’m urging for a national hefty carbon tax with caveats I’ll follow up on.
I’ll take your word on that, but I doubt the reduction approaches anywhere near the consumtion level of European countries whose economies by the way are generally on par with Canada and the US. The Euro has done quite well against our dollars.
Exactly ! I suppose we should be grateful to the oil companies and foreign oil producers etc who are reaping the profits while doing their part to make us reduce carbon emissions. I heard T Boone Pickens tell us that the US pumps 3/4 of a trillion dollars abroad for oil.Don’t you think a tax on oil would depress foreign and oil company profits. The price at the pumps, taxes or no taxes, is very much determined by how much the consumer is able to pay. Lets say the US gas price drops $1.00 dollar per gallon with the recent drop in demand. And then lets say the US implements an immediate $1.00 per gallon tax to sustain the lower demand. Given the US consumption plays such a large part in the demand for oil I can’t see the world price ignoring the consumption effect of making the US consumer pay an additional $1.00 per gallon. There definitely will be a net reduction in dollar outlflow.
Tell that to Europe. Carbon tax or just plain gas tax as hefty as it is in Europe doesn’t seem to punish them.
China is a lost cause at the moment. But if we are serious, countries like China can be dealt with through tarrifs and trade restrictions
Well, I disagree.
I agree with the portion I bolded. But I believe serious revenue neutral taxes on gasoline will keep more money in our US and Canada economies and spur the private sector to respond with alternatives. By the time the rest of the world is starving for oil, we’ll have the alternative technologies to keep us economically strong. And by the time we have developed true economically viable alternatives to oil, countries like China may inevitably follow for their own economic benefit.
You’ll recall that the French pay the most for gasoline with the least consumption in the first world. You may also know that the French get 80% of their energy from nuclear power plants. When the sit hits the fan, they’ll be in a very good position.
The lower oil price would affect all countries that consume it. In the case of a heavily carbon taxed US and Canada it would be an oportunity to increase the taxes an use the revenue elswhere in the economy
Hasn’t happened in France. (substitute nuclear for solar)
I mention caveats with respect to a carbon tax. I would withdraw my entire proposal if the carbon tax went into general revenue for the government
We’ve had that tax in the U.K. for some time and it doesn’t work.
People dont use their cars any less though they grumble more.
The treasury makes a fortune but the money isn’t spent on the enviroment,just the same old same old.
I’ve predicted among friends for some time that a “carbon footprint tax” was going to come. They didn’t believe me, but then the “gas guzzler tax” was instituted (at least here in Missouri - I don’t know if it’s Federal or not), and they started to understand that the politicians would be using the “environmental movement” (sounds like a vegetarian BM) to raise taxes and in other ways attempt to modify behavior. Now, whether or not it’s the government’s job to modify behavior of it’s citizens is another debate, but I vehemently oppose any “carbon tax.”
Also, someone who has better google-fu than I should probably do a search for comparisons of carbon emissions as opposed to GDP or some other qualitative, objective measure. This would be a better gauge of whether a country is “clean” or not.
For some time I know. I remember adjusting to the high price of gasoline in the UK when i lived there in 1975. 75p per gallon as I recall. UK gas was twice what I paid in Canada when I got back.
It doesn’t work hey ? Bollocks. Explain to me why the UK was able to get by consuming only 436 liters per capita for 2003 compared to the American consumption of 1635 liters per capita. That whopping 75% reduction had nothing to do with the pump price?
The difference between U.S.consumption per Capita and U.K. consumption per capita is NOT a reduction as we’ve never ever used that amount on a personal basis.
Up until fairly recent years Brits have never,ever been as dependant on personal transport as Americans and probably still aren’t.
In the U.S. the roads are bigger as are the cars by quite a degree and I would suspect that average distances travelled are a lot greater in the U.S. then in tiny old Britain.
I had a girlfriend in Colorado whos weekly main shopping trip amounted to a couple of hundred miles there and back for example.
This was not due to the cost of petrol but to the lack of shopping facilities in her town and the distance to the nearest town where they were available.
Such a long weekly trip for shopping would be unheard of in the U.K. but over there it didn’t even raise an eyebrow.
Your belief in the efficacy of a Carbon tax is based on a false premise if you are using the U.K. as an example of success.
And may I commend you on your knowledge of U.K English vernaculer though not of the appropriate times and places to use it.
That’s because you’ve been heavily taxed on petrol for as far back as I remember, and its worked to keep down consumption. I’m not asking Europeans to increase their taxes
That’s because your society has developed differently due to high petrol costs. You have way more efficient public transportation systems, you’re content with smaller vehicles, you don’t have numerous big box stores drawing business away from local communities resulting in pressure to take your shopping to the big city.
I can remember the day when it wasn’t so, but years of cheap gas has a way of transforming a society’s infrastructure and choices.
So ask yourself “why were there a lack of shopping facilities?” Could it be that local stores could compete better if her fellow townsfolk had to pay an extra $100 per week to shop in the big city?
I know! Ask yourself Why?!
Well I’m pretty sure I’ve answered to you’re assertion.
Actually in retrospect you’ve made some pretty good points there and I think that you’re mostly right but I still think that the smallness of the U.K plays a not insignificant part in our lesser fuel consumption,but credit where credits due.
High Petrol costs are not a major factor. Britons use less gas because they have less need to travel. You simply can’t ignore the fact that one country is 93000 square miles, and the other is 3537441 square miles - 38 times bigger!
Price of gas has some effect, but not as much as other major factors, like the price of land and the distant locations of various resources. For example, gas has more than doubled in price in the last couple of years, and yet American per capita vehicle miles traveled is down less than 5%.
If your argument is that if gas prices had always been higher, then the country would have developed more densely and efficiently, I think you wildly overestimate that effect as well. People value land greatly. More likely, a higher price for fuels would change the rent price of land - the suburbs would be cheaper, and inner cities more expensive. There might be slight changes in development patterns, but large spaces are just too valuable to give up.
Europeans are very smug about their small cars and lower energy consumption, but those results are forced on them by population density, not by moral superiority. When populations are packed together like sardines, travel will obviously be more efficient. When homes are, by necessity, 1/3 the size, obviously heating and cooling bills will be lower. Europeans aren’t living this way because they love the earth - they live that way because the live in a geographically small yet highly populated area.
I’m willing to bet that big box retailers have made the suburbs more energy efficient - not less. In fact, they are a market response to the problems of a decentralized population. I live in the suburbs, but I am within a couple of miles of most of the goods I need to buy. There are two large grocery stores almost within walking distance, a big box retailer of electronics, a home depot, a box-box furniture store, a Staples office supply store, and a couple of other big boxes a mile or so away. The only time I have to travel for goods is when I need a specialty or hobby item not sold in the area, and that’s rarely.
Again, it’s not cheap gas. Canada has developed along almost identical paths to the U.S., and our gas is far more expensive. Our infrastructure is what it is because we’re freaking big. Cheap land means big farms. Big farms means big distances between large communities. Cheap land means communities can afford to spread out. Diverse, widely spaced apart resources means communities develop a long way from each other. All these factors are far more important than the price of gas.
There’s no evidence that people shop in the big city because of low gas prices. And as I said, all the latest trends move shoppers OUT of the big city, and keep them in their own suburbs. The market does indeed adapt, and these adaptations look pretty good to me.
If you want to find a better correlation between efficiency and gas prices, the size of cars is a better model. Canada generally prefers slightly smaller passenger cars than the U.S., despite having similar travel needs, and I’ll bet the price of gas is a factor.
But even here you can get too carried away assigning cause to gas prices. For example, the difference between Canada and the U.S. is still quite small in terms of vehicle choices - we love our SUVs too. Europe tends to have much smaller cars, but that’s more a function of lack of parking/garaging space, smaller roads, narrow city streets left over from a time when there were no cars. European cities are much older, and thefere much less car-friendly than North American cities.
If your gas prices were the same, but your country was festooned with large wide multi-lane roads like ours is, and your average house had a 2-car garage, like ours do, and your cities were spread out enough to allow for big lots all over the place just for parking your cars, you’d be driving larger cars as well.
The term you’re looking for is ‘energy intensity’, or the amount of energy used per dollar of GDP output.
Here’s a chart for you: Energy Intensity of various countries. The U.S. is about in the middle of the pack. The worst country is Norway. China is slightly behind the U.S., and India is the worst on the chart.
You have to be a bit careful with the energy intensity figure, because coutnries with highly industrial economies will use more energy. India uses very little energy per GDP because so much of its economy is still low-tech, low energy. If one country makes autos and steel, and another makes fine linens, and one country trades autos and steel for linens, then the linen-making country will look like it is much more efficient, even if in the end they both consume the same stuff.
But America is not the energy-hog everyone thinks it is. It sounds bad when you point out that America uses about 25% of the world’s energy and only has 5% of the world’s population - a statistic environmentalists love to trot out. It doesn’t sound so bad when you point out that America uses 25% of the world’s energy, but makes 22% of the world’s stuff.
What if you just assume that the UK is a province of Europe, a much greater land mass. Most of these countries in Europe have comparable gas prices and comparable per capita consumption.
And if per capita land area is the basis of the per capita consumption of gasoline, consider that Canadians with 10 times the per capita land area and higher gas prices consume less than Americans!
In fact consider Sweden with a comarable per capita land mass to all of the USA. Sweden with 0.05 square km/c (higher) compared to the whole US 0.034 square km/c , consume 36 % of what the US consumes and they pay exactly twice what Americans pay for gasoline! Say what you will, but the numbers just bear me out.
The rest of your post is conjecture and opinion that i really have no response other than I feel your argument pales in comparison to the facts I present.
That’s a very misleading statistic. Canada’s population is mostly located in a narrow band just north of the U.S. border. The vast amount of Canadian land is not traversed by the population at all.
Sweden is much smaller than the U.S (roughtly 1/20 of the size). Most of its industry and population is condensed in the southern part of the country.
And I think your facts are cherry picked, you ignore factors much more important than gas prices, and they prove exactly nothing. I’ve presented a pretty compelling counter-fact - Canadians drive almost as much as Americans and we have comparable amounts of urban sprawl and similar development patterns, despite our gas prices historically being much higher, and our per-capita income lower, meaning gas is an even larger component of our incomes. On the other hand, all the countries you have used as an example of how high gas prices deter car travel are in fact orders of magnitude smaller than the U.S. and Canada and are saddled with older infrastructures that are much less car friendly.
Finally, the burden of proof is on you. You’re the one making the assertion that Europe’s gas prices have significantly altered the way that Europe has developed, with more mass transit and less car use and denser cities and whatnot. I have pointed out enough confounding factors to call your conclusion into question. I have provided examples of countries in which higher gas prices have not significantly altered development as compared to the U.S. I don’t have to prove my case - the burden is on the person making the original assertion of fact.
I don’t have any doubt that higher gas prices correspond to less travel. We’ve already seen that - vehicle miles traveled have decreased 3.8% in the U.S. in the past couple of years. But your assertion is far more sweeping - that low gas prices are the driving force behind the car-friendly, widely dispersed nature of America. You simply have not made that case, and have been provided with counter-examples that call it into question.
In the first year. Why do you keep ignoring the fact that the tax will be four times this size in four years? The only sensible part of this whole plan is that the government didn’t attempt to drop a 30% tax on gas all at once.
Making the tax national makes no difference. Oil is a global market. Canada is already at an energy disadvantage to the U.S. Put another 30% tax on oil in Canada, and you’ll drive industry across the border. And you’ll do nothing for global warming, because you’ll stimulate demand for gas in other countries.
