Taxes more difficult: Economist suggests regulating carbon instead of pricing it
As the federal Liberals try to come up with a way to price carbon that will appease 13 fractious provinces and territories, a prominent academic has a message for them — don’t bother.
Carbon prices high enough to make a difference would doom any government foolish enough to impose them, says Mark Jaccard, an energy economic with Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.
“Report after report is coming out on emissions pricing, but never saying what that price should be,” said Jaccard, co-author of a research report released Tuesday.
Jaccard concludes that to force Canada to meet the goals it agreed to at the Paris climate summit, that price would have to be $200 a tonne. No government in the world will set that, he said.