When the Canadian federal liberals introduced a carbon tax many conservatives rubbed their hands with glee. After all, former Conservative Prime Stephen Harper ran a highly successful campaign against his liberal opponent Stephane Dion in 2008 in opposition to his plan to shift some taxes from income to carbon expenditure. Dion called his climate program a tax shift, but it was really a carbon tax. Harper successfully excoriated Dion as a tax grabber.

But a lot changed in 11 years and the Conservatives, cocooned from reality in western Canada, did not realize it. That is the problem of listening only to people who think like you. You begin to think wrongly that everybody agrees with you. People had moved on. People know that serious problems demand serious solutions. This becomes clearer every year.

The Conservatives lost the 2019 federal election running against a carbon tax proposed by all 3 of their political opponents.  They deserved to lose.

I have been surprised to learn how many people favour a carbon tax as the most viable solution to the emergency of climate change. Even that strongly conservative magazine The Economist, favours it. Even some pretty vigorous capitalists realize something serious, like a carbon tax is necessary. Therefore, they have said they favour it.

ExxonMobil, no shrinking violet of a capitalist firm, has said that a carbon tax is the best policy to tackle climate change in the United States and elsewhere. All of the 4 western major oil companies—Chevron, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, and Total—have said that they support the Paris agreement to limit climate change so that average temperature changes are held to an increase of no more than 2ºC and hopefully 1.5ºC. There is some hope for reason beyond self-interest from multi-national corporations.

Of course, we should not go too far in praising them. Being better than the Conservative Party of Canada is still pretty faint praise. The fact is oil companies are not doing enough, even if they are talking more nicely. The Economist, again, not a wild left-wing source, put it well:

“Yet amid the clamour is a single, jarring truth. Demand for oil is rising and the energy industry, in America, and globally, is planning multi-trillion dollar investments to satisfy it. No firm embodies this strategy better than ExxonMobil, the giant that rivals admire and green activists love to hate. As our briefing explains, it plans to pump 25% more oil and gas in 2025 than in 2017. If the rest of the industry pursues even modest growth, the consequences for the climate could be disastrous.

ExxonMobil shows that the market cannot solve climate change by itself. Muscular government action is needed. Contrary to the fears of many Republicans (and the hopes of some Democrats), that need not involve a bloated role for the state.”

 

Yes, you read that right. The Economist said, “Muscular government action is needed.”    No doubt many of their readers consider that heresy. But I suggest the numbers who would say that are declining. The Economist also said, unsurprisingly, “It would be wrong to conclude that energy firms must therefore be evil.” To which I would respond, it would be wrong to conclude that energy firms must therefore be angels. They are large corporations responding to demand. That is how the system works. Until the demand is quelled that is exactly what they will do and no one should be surprised or dismayed. Rather, we should be determined to demand “muscular government action”.     And soon.

 The Economist has gone a lot farther than the Conservative Party of Canada which weakly criticized the Canadian carbon tax as “a tax grab,” without offering a significant alternative to it that had a hope of success. Recently Canada was criticized for being at the bottom end of the G20 in tackling climate change. To offer alternatives that were even weaker than the liberals did not seem like an attractive option to most Canadians.

The Green New Deal proposed by young radicals like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might be too extreme for many to accept, but offering Caspar Milquetoast in response was also too lame to accept.     Most Canadians know stronger medicine than that is needed. This is no time for lame.

And so far the only proposal that is not lame is the Green New Deal. If conservatives don’t want the Green New Deal they had better come up with something better than they have done so far.