
Does a carbon tax work?  Ask British Columbia - cossatot
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/02/business/does-a-carbon-tax-work-ask-british-columbia.html
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osipovas
Alberta, the neighbouring province I'm a resident of is considering something
"similar". Here is a great article by Macleans:
[http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/heres-
what-w...](http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/heres-what-we-know-
and-dont-know-about-albertas-carbon-tax/)

I for one, as a citizen am in favour of shutting down coal fired plants that
add to the particulate count in my air. I will gladly pay the extra $300-$500
to get rid of it :)

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cossatot
I'm not sure if one exists (in US or Canada) but some sort of particulate
matter tax would also be nice, and in some cases preferable to regulations. A
major political benefit is that particulates are a much more local problem
than CO2.

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ryao
Renewable energy can be considered to be a perpetuity in economics.
Perpeuities are definitely valuable and should always improve the economy in
the long term, even if jobs are lost in the transition, which will happen with
jobs around coal and natural gas when we finally transition to renewable
energy. I would rather see taxation policies focus on them rather than "global
warming". The same sort of transition would happen, although aiming for the
transition itself rather than a perceived problem would probably achieve it
faster.

I would also like to see any taxes instituted be accompanied by reductions in
existing taxes to eliminate the possibility of increased tax burden to
increasing breathing room for government corruption and waste. I suspect that
politicians behind these initiatives publicly claim global warming and
privately think/talk about increased breathing room, so there is little chance
of seeing anything adopted that responsibly avoids increasing taxation and I
imagine fights over this will continue.

This is from someone who had solar panels installed on his home 4 months ago
with the goal that they generate more electrical energy than his house
consumes each year and is looking into other green technologies (E85 vehicle
conversion, passivhaus, etcetera), but does not consider discussions of global
warming to be a strong motivating factor for any of it.

