Take the carbon taxes off the shoulders of Canadians and transfer them to carbon-spewing Chinese imports
In my last column, in early July, I wrote about the irony that a self-described “progressive” Liberal government kept in power by a deeply socialist NDP, both supposedly dedicated to protecting the poor, was fighting a war on carbon emissions whose costs, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has calculated, fall disproportionately on lower-income Canadians.
Since then we’ve had a devastating wildfire season, so it’s understandable that Canadians may be wondering if high and rising carbon taxes are a sacrifice we simply must make in order to fight climate change.
But would those carbon taxes make any difference whatsoever? As I pointed out in July, calculations using data from the government’s own Greenhouse Gas Emissions website show that, if we took all gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles off the road for a full year, the total emissions avoided would offset just 56 hours’ worth of China’s emissions.
Over the past two decades, China’s carbon dioxide emissions have sky-rocketed from 3.5 billion a year to 10.9 kilo-tonnes. China is now responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the United States, India, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil, Japan and the 27-country European Union combined.
For the rest of this column: https://financialpost.com/opinion/china-pay-higher-price-coal-plants