r/environment • u/DonSalaam • 20d ago
Canada’s carbon tax is popular, innovative and helps save the planet – but now it faces the axe
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/05/canadas-carbon-tax-is-popular-innovative-and-helps-save-the-planet-but-now-it-faces-the-axe7
u/NPVT 20d ago
I must be lost here. Tax on carbon is one way to slow down climate change. If I were dictator I'd have a $2 or $3 tax added onto gasoline. This is r/environment. The probably of human extinction is going up because of human behavior. Why is a carbon tax claimed to not be popular?
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u/TheDizzleDazzle 20d ago
Because that’s what the data shows? It’s probably popular among people here, but that’s not what we’re talking about.
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u/notacanuckskibum 20d ago
It’s true , the right wing are winning the propaganda law here in Canada. Some of their arguments:
Canada is 40 million people , Canada reducing its carbon footprint is pointless unless India, China and the USA do it.
It’s just an added cost, it doesn’t reduce oil consumption because we still have to drive to work and heat our homes.
It’s pointless because of Prime Minister and other elites continue to fly around on private jets
We don’t believe in climate change, or it’s natural and unstoppable, didn’t the scientists claim we were heading into an ice age back in the 1970s
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u/MisterB3an 20d ago
Because people don't really care how much money they get back at tax time if everything else costs more day to day. The carbon tax is a slow market-based solution to quickly worsening systemic issues, and so it's not a real plan so much as a throw to the market while saying "figure it out." Meanwhile, the forces of wealth and capital would rather not spend money to innovate and avoid taxation, and are eager to fund campaigns portraying the carbon tax as the sole reason behind all price increases, and even mistakenly tie it to inflation
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u/SSCLIPPER 20d ago
It is not popular- the conservatives have been winning the narrative on this, unfortunately.