Category Environment
Economic policy advice for the NDP, Part VI: Climate change
The NDP has traditionally had a certain amount of credibility in its concern for environmental issues, and it can fairly fairly credited for dragging many environmental issues to to the political forefront. But that's not the same thing as being able to come up with sensible policy prescriptions to deal with the problems it identifies. […]
Canada’s Black Shift
This chart is from The Economist: There is only one country (thanks to sharper-eyed Frances in the comments) are only two countries in this list that have reduced gasoline taxes in the last ten years. Okay, the units are measured in euro cents, and the CAD depreciated slightly against the euro over this period. But […]
An open letter to the leaders of Canada’s federal political parties from economists teaching in Canadian colleges and universities
The press release and the list of signatories (more than 230 and counting) are over here. Here's the letter: One of the few issues on which most economists agree is the need for public policy to protect the environment. Why so much agreement? Because in the absence of policy, individuals generally don’t take the environmental […]
Why aren’t there more stories like this in the MSM?
An economics lesson for Stephen Harper (and everyone else, come to that), in which Ottawa Citizen columnist Dan Gardner gives Greg Mankiw a call. It's a clear and readable explanation of the economics of climate change policy, in 800 words or fewer. And all a journalist had to do was call an economist and ask […]
Climate change policy and the Conservative-NDP Axis of Dimwits
For reasons I'm going to explain shortly, the Conservatives and the NDP are unlikely allies in the debate on climate change policy. I'll be ripping into the idiocy of their positions pretty hard, so in order to balance what follows, I'm going to make a separate point as a sort of disclaimer. For more than […]
More reactions to the Liberals’ carbon tax proposal
The Liberals have provided more detail on their carbon tax proposal (48-page pdf), and it has received generally positive reviews. The basic strategy is to take the existing gasoline tax, re-interpret it as a tax on carbon, and to extend it to other sources of greenhouse gases. As an exercise in electoral politics, introducing a […]
Carbon taxes vs cap-and-trade
There are now several plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions bouncing around the political landscape. The BC Liberals have implemented a carbon tax and the federal Liberals are also floating the idea. For their part, the federal NDP is talking about a cap-and-trade model, as are the premiers of Ontario and Quebec. And a cap-and-trade […]
Reactions to the carbon tax: the good, the bad, and the ugly
The good: In addition to being good policy, there's some reason to be optimistic that the Liberals' carbon tax proposal will be good politics. According to one poll, more than 60% of Canadians approve of the general idea of carbon taxes. And even noted environmentalist David Suzuki endorses the idea. David Suzuki can't always be […]
The Liberals’ carbon tax proposal
Stéphane Dion and the Liberals are floating the idea of a carbon tax: Liberals say carbon tax will be revenue-neutral: [I]nternal policy discussions are still underway and a number of proposals are under consideration. One proposal under study would replace the federal fuel excise tax – which applies to gasoline and diesel used for vehicles […]
The best response to John Baird’s report on the cost of meeting the Kyoto targets…
…is right here. Go read it.
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