Quote:
Originally Posted by Corndogger
Is that necessarily bad? Now those people have gained their freedom back. The vast majority of people put a high value on being able to control their own actions and deciding when to travel, how, etc. are near the top of the list. This is why people in China and India are buying cars at a rapid rate (1 million/month in each country). Which is another reason why Dion is a complete idiot for even talking about us reducing our carbon output.
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Your going to get a big tax cut unless you consume carbon at an above average rate. The impact on conventional oil and gas will be less than Stelmach's 'Conservative' royalty review, while for Suncor it works out to about $3 a barrel (from pit to pipeline). BC's carbon tax starts of July 1st and there is a flurry of exploration activity going on there right now.
For gasoline, the carbon tax replaces the old federal excise tax. There will be the pass through cost of exploration and refining as there has always been, but I don't see people complaining that diesel is almost sulphur free now (another program that was denounced as going to ruin the economy, acid rain reduction)
All the proposed systems (conservative, Liberal, ndp) for controlling greenhouse gases would increase costs, the Liberal plan is the only one that returns that cost back into the economy as tax breaks.
Unless you don't believe we should take any action at all to combat the climate change crisis, well then I guess none of the federal political parties represents you then.
A carbon tax, is letting the market work. It lets everyone enjoy all the freedom of the road they want. You can heat and cool your house as much as you want. You can use electric space heaters if you really want, or leave your oven on all day. Thats your choice, and if those actions cause GHGs to be emitted you will pay a carbon tax on them.
As for induced demand, again this is another situation of market equilibrium. You increase supply, the 'price' goes down, both in fuel consumed from less traffic jams, and from amount of time used. You both create new trips, and change the mode of other trips. In this way, unless you overbuild to such a crazy capacity, or create a price signal for the consumption of the road, you will never get rid of congestion.
Economics applies to everything. You can't say you love choice then say markets can't be used to represent choice. You can use economics to predict what kind of socks business people will wear, and to predict road, rail, and air plane demand. It works for almost everything!
Sometimes markets take awhile to work. The gasoline price signal won't cause an immediate change to smaller vehicles because of existing capital stock, but on the next upgrade cycle the vehicle mix will shift. Just as the gasoline price signal will cause devaluing of houses with excessive commuting distances, that aren't served by transit.
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