Quote:
Originally Posted by Regorium
On one hand, we decry that 4c/L is nothing and doesn't do anything, but on the other hand, we have written more than a hundred combined pages of threads about carbon tax. Clearly there's some visceral reaction to something as trivial as this, and visceral reactions generally means that there is significant thought as to how to deal with something like this.
A 4c/L tax (let's say it's 4% cost increase) doesn't need that many people to have a threshold that low. Assuming it's a 1:1 relationship, you need only a 4% reduction in gasoline usage, which is also trivial. A nearly insignificant outcome is exactly the result you'd expect from an insignificant action (which is what $15/tonne is). However, there's data that shows that the effect is much greater than the action, which is why carbon tax is generally touted as excellent policy. It's like the 5 cent per plastic bag "tax", which reduced consumption by 90% or more (although you could argue that going from 0 cents to 5 cents was a massive change in terms of percentage).
The point is that the data shows that even an insignificant increase in gas prices causes significant measurable change.
The principle of carbon tax is basically supply and demand. I'm just framing the context in real world applications and showing why it still applies.
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What data are you refering to? Is it your made up data?
If you refer to the data from a reliable source such as Statscan (Table 326-0009 and Table 405-002 ) Gas price steadily rose from an average of 111.4 to 115.45 from 2011 to 2014 and along the way volume of gas purchased also increased from 5.8MM litres to 6.4MM litres, in 2015 gas dropped to an average of 98.35 and usage stayed constant at 6.4MM litres.
Over three years we experienced a 4c/l increase in the cost of fuel and albertans used 10%
more fuel at the higher price. When price dropped 17c/l usage stayed constant.
That indicates to me that there is something other than price that impacts fuel usage.
The carbon has little to do with changing behaviours and much to do with generating revenue.