Kevin O'Leary's Letter to Premier Notley - Carbon Tax Discussion

[DiracSpike]

I'll tolerate the carbon tax if it means Tinordi and people of his ilk STFU

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Resurrection

Do you really think zamler and 2stonedbirds have any intention of considering other peoples arguments and weighing them against all evidence?

I am as pragmatic as it gets, show me data that backs up a claim and I will change my position if I happen to be on the other side of the argument. As for the electrification of transport I am one of the strongest supporters and I believe it should be largely powered by solar. I've been mocked for this position quite a lot here for whatever reason.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Regorium

Think about it this way - Let's assume that the carbon tax was $150/tonne, ie. 40c/L. Would that affect your behavior? How about $1500/tonne ($4/L)?
Now assuming that there's a line where you'd actually change your behavior, then it proves that the principle of carbon tax actually works.

I suppose this is true, provided that the caveat is that there is a threshold for each person below which the carbon tax won't affect their behaviour. Given that, it also stands to reason that there is a threshold below which enough people won't change their behaviour that the tax has an insignificant impact on emissions. I'm assuming here that when you say "the principle of the carbon tax", what you mean is the principle that the tax will affect peoples' behaviour in a way that will reduce emissions.

If those premises are accurate, the question then becomes whether you want to create a carbon tax large enough that it would measurably affect behaviour, so as to produce the results you're looking for. Whether you do in fact want to do that should depend on what the other effects of a carbon tax that significant would be. I suspect they'd be horrible - a $1500 / tonne carbon tax raising the gas price $4/l would do it, but you can imagine what that would do to the economy.

So given that broader context, doesn't it seem like the carbon tax is either ineffective (because it's not high enough to achieve the results you want it to), or deleterious (because when it is high enough it has a bunch of other bad effects)? And if so, would it not follow that the "principle of carbon tax" is badly flawed?

Originally Posted by DiracSpike

I'll tolerate the carbon tax if it means Tinordi and people of his ilk STFU

Well, now you're just emboldening the terrorists.

[Red]

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

Those alternatives Tinordi, public transportation and electric sound great and may work for some people but have you considered the people who live and work in rural areas, what choice do they have?

A electric car isn't going to pull my work trailer and bust snow drifts on goat trails while doing so. There is no bus stop or train that passes by my work.

Do the studies show, or has the govt proposed a timeline when people such as myself will see the benefits from investing in green energy? Do the auto manufacturers have an idea when they will release a 4wd vehicle capable of pulling 14000 pounds of dead weight? Do the auto manufacturers even have a plan in place based on govt mandate?

This is not a solution for all. There will always be people that pollute more for various reasons. But most people can reduce their gas consumption and higher prices may be a good reason to do so. Look at what people drive in Europe. Gas is very expensive there. And they have trailers too. That 6.7L Cummins is nice to have, but should not be a necessity to pull a trailer. Or drive to the office.

[EldrickOnIce]

Originally Posted by Regorium

Why does it seem ridiculous?

Think about it this way - Let's assume that the carbon tax was $150/tonne, ie. 40c/L. Would that affect your behavior? How about $1500/tonne ($4/L)?

Now assuming that there's a line where you'd actually change your behavior, then it proves that the principle of carbon tax actually works.

For some people, that line could absolutely be as low as 4 cents a liter. I know of a lot of people that will go out of their way to a Costco just to save a couple cents on gas. It's not like they immediately reduced their consumption by X%. But as the cost goes up, there's a subconscious effort to think about efficiency, like combining a grocery trip and a gas trip together at Costco. Maybe someone makes a trip to the store straight after work, rather than coming home first and then going back out again. When your tax is a trivial 4 cents a liter, even making 2-3 of these decisions in an entire year is probably enough to reduce your consumption by that commensurate amount.

I don't think this is accurate. But maybe my numbers are significantly off. I thought a generally accepted number was 15,000km per year. A 10% reduction has to essentially mean at 10% reduction in driving, so that's 1500km less per year. Just saying this seems to be significantly more than 2 or 3 decisions per year.

[llwhiteoutll]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Your lack of belief in personal responsibility is noted.

And the thing is that everyone in Canada will be paying, so that's a step. Everyone in China will be paying in a couple years (they've committed to a national cap and trade scheme by 2020). And on a tax per litre basis, Europeans are already paying 3-4 times what you pay. So yeah. If we continue to delay to do something until someone else does that will be the end of us. Need to bite the bullet and move forward.

If the government figures are to be believed, there are a lot of people in Alberta who won't be paying and some who will be making money on the carbon tax.

If the goal was to change behaviors, they seem to only be trying to change the behavior of 40% of the population. Someone who gets a full rebate on the cost of the tax isn't going to change anything.

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I suppose this is true, provided that the caveat is that there is a threshold for each person below which the carbon tax won't affect their behaviour. Given that, it also stands to reason that there is a threshold below which enough people won't change their behaviour that the tax has an insignificant impact on emissions. I'm assuming here that when you say "the principle of the carbon tax", what you mean is the principle that the tax will affect peoples' behaviour in a way that will reduce emissions.

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).

So given that broader context, doesn't it seem like the carbon tax is either ineffective (because it's not high enough to achieve the results you want it to), or deleterious (because when it is high enough it has a bunch of other bad effects)? And if so, would it not follow that the "principle of carbon tax" is badly flawed?

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.

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

I don't think this is accurate. But maybe my numbers are significantly off. I thought a generally accepted number was 15,000km per year. A 10% reduction has to essentially mean at 10% reduction in driving, so that's 1500km less per year. Just saying this seems to be significantly more than 2 or 3 decisions per year.

I guess it's pretty clear that I'm underestimating the number of decisions that people are making considering the $30/tonne carbon tax -> 10% gasoline reduction is real hard data and mine was just napkin math and handwaving.

[IliketoPuck]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

Was, is and always will be my problem with the carbon tax:
"providing incremental fiscal capacity for government priorities, be they infrastructure spending, tax reductions, deficit reductions or other programs."

Take the $3B and put it into effective green policy initiatives, and its all good. Make it just another slush fund revenue source for mismanaged spending, and it's less good.

When I step back and think about it, this is my biggest issue as well.

Carbon (dioxide) reduction, global warming, carbon (dioxide) taxes.....whatever.

Ultimately I don't trust the NDP to be able to efficiently allocate the capital that they are raising with this new tax. They are creating a new bureaucratic hub to do so, and I question whether additional bureaucracy is necessary when we are already burdening ourselves with debt to cover operating expenses.

The NDP then get to pick winners on the green initiatives side. That is terrifying if you look at how they've handled themselves with other business related transactions. Their inability (refusal, incompetence?) to read a contract document landed them in the PPA mess, and we are supposed to blindly trust their ability to allocate billions of dollars per year to green initiatives?

The chances of us ending up in a similar situation as Ontario (largest sub-sovereign debt load in the world) is far more likely than us suddenly becoming a "diversified green economy."

And its not like we are talking about politicians that have business and capital allocation experience either. We are talking about politicians that shortly before the election held positions like grocery clerk or college student. And these are the people deciding who's green initiative gets funded.....

[IliketoPuck]

Interesting article relevant to today's discussion:

http://boereport.com/2017/01/03/the-...pt-for-canada/

[Ducay]

Good post IliketoPuck and a good linked article, solid summary at a macro level.

Originally Posted by BOE report

We also need to stop being embarrassed by these resources on the world stage because the topic du jour is green energy, when the world’s oil consumption continues to relentlessly grow.

Excellent quote, I find "greenies" fail to understand this fact that oil demands keeps growing and growing as the world develops. Even if solar/renewables grow at a ridiculous pace (faster than they even are now), they will barely cover the growth in energy use, let alone replace the baseline 100 million bpd usage nowadays.

The world needs oil, will continue to use oil until renewables comes a long long way, and all we are doing in Canada is squandering the value we have been given.

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by IliketoPuck

When I step back and think about it, this is my biggest issue as well.

Carbon (dioxide) reduction, global warming, carbon (dioxide) taxes.....whatever.

Ultimately I don't trust the NDP to be able to efficiently allocate the capital that they are raising with this new tax. They are creating a new bureaucratic hub to do so, and I question whether additional bureaucracy is necessary when we are already burdening ourselves with debt to cover operating expenses.

Yup, I much much much prefer that they would copy BC and use the revenue neutral income tax cut approach.

However, I still say that a carbon tax is the best tool that we have to put us on the right path to our climate goals.

Also, that's why Chong is by far the best candidate in all the parties for climate change policy.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

More evidence that the carbon tax is useless. BC Carbon tax reduced gasoline consumption by 10.7%.

http://institute.smartprosperity.ca/...ne-consumption

Eager to hear the next round of baseless ignorant accusations from non-economists and non-policy analysts on why the most universally recommended policy instrument to reduce GHG emissions is actually not going to work. Please continue to cite no evidence to support for opinion while amping up your hysteria and overconfidence.

I'm not going to make a case for whether or not the carbon tax will impact fuel consumption, even though I believe it will. However I think it's a fairly reasonable argument to suggest that there are numerous other factors that likely also played a role in the decrease that happened in BC. Claiming the carbon tax is directly responsible for all decreases in fuel consumption since its introduction seems a little dismissive of the other possible causes, such as improvements made to fuel economy by auto makers, more and more people buying electric or hybrids, people trying to make greener/healthier life choices by biking to work, etc.. Again I'm not saying the carbon tax doesn't make an impact, I just feel that this article is presenting facts in a manner that doesn't seem to acknowledge the possibility of other contributing factors to the decline.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Ducay

Good post IliketoPuck and a good linked article, solid summary at a macro level.



Excellent quote, I find "greenies" fail to understand this fact that oil demands keeps growing and growing as the world develops. Even if solar/renewables grow at a ridiculous pace (faster than they even are now), they will barely cover the growth in energy use, let alone replace the baseline 100 million bpd usage nowadays.

The world needs oil, will continue to use oil until renewables comes a long long way, and all we are doing in Canada is squandering the value we have been given.

In addition to this, we aren't just squandering the value we have been given, we're actively killing the Canadian economy.

Green energy isn't like natural resources. The economy that revolves around green energy is based on the technology behind extraction, it has nothing to do with the energy itself. Green energy can't be exported because (cost wise) it makes significantly more sense to just import the technology and produce your own. Why pay for the energy produced by the sun, for example, when everyone has access to it.

We would be so, so much smarter to funnel this carbon tax into becoming a technology leader in green energy in order to drop our imports of the technology, position ourselves to export to emerging markets and have self-sustaining energy programs. "Green initiatives" would be a natural product of our technology leadership, it shouldn't be the first step.

I think something like 45% of our exports are directly related to petroleum products? That's a lot. Green tech wouldn't replace it, but having nothing to replace it while you actively kill it is insane.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

Was, is and always will be my problem with the carbon tax:
"providing incremental fiscal capacity for government priorities, be they infrastructure spending, tax reductions, deficit reductions or other programs."

Take the $3B and put it into effective green policy initiatives, and its all good. Make it just another slush fund revenue source for mismanaged spending, and it's less good.

There needs to be some discretion when deciding what tax dollars are allocated for though. When you say it's all good if they put all the funds towards green initiatives, to me that would suggest that you'd be happy if they pushed forward with $1B in green initiatives because the funds are there while raising taxes to cover areas where the budgets have a $1B deficit. Like yourself I think the best outcome is if they are in a position to allocate all the revenue from the carbon tax to green initiatives, but I think handcuffing them to spend all the revenue in that area regardless of other potential issues that are a more pressing concern would be a mistake.

[CaptainCrunch]

Take 100% of the revenue from this thing and put it in a separate version like a heritage fund. That way how the revenue is spent is traceable and the taxpayers can see where its going.

If they want to support Green Company XYZ then it becomes very clear where the funds are going and we can see if the Government can actually pick winners and losers and becomes accountable towards that.

If they want to put money towards operating costs then we can see an actual audit trail of where the money is going.

If they want to put it into Infrastructure we'll know.

And if they want to pay down the deficit, great, then we can see if this thing is useful or not.

But for the dollars to go into some nebulous general accounting means that it opens a way for this carbon tax not to have anything to do with climate or the environment but its just a tax grab by a spend happy government.

At least if you separate it, then there's accountability, and every year instead of spending 9 million dollars in advertising for it, they can probably spend a third of that sending out a report to every voter.

We collected this much and we spent it here here and here.

[gasman]

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.

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.

[2Stonedbirds]

Originally Posted by Red

This is not a solution for all. There will always be people that pollute more for various reasons. But most people can reduce their gas consumption and higher prices may be a good reason to do so. Look at what people drive in Europe. Gas is very expensive there. And they have trailers too. That 6.7L Cummins is nice to have, but should not be a necessity to pull a trailer. Or drive to the office.

My 1 ton 5.9 24v cummins gets about 24mpg when hauling air, there is nothing comparable in a gas job that will come close to pulling the load I pull everyday. If it's not the service trailer it's a gooseneck with equipment. I'm curious if the cummins is not a necessity to pull a 14000 pnd trailer, what would you recommend that would compete with the cummins for mileage and still do what I require?

I have a gas jobby for a grocery getter, and a streetbike for cheap commuting in the summer when I'm not working. The cummins is a work truck.

This still doesn't address if the govt has actively reached out to auto manufacturers to find out if they have anything in the pipe in regards to green tech for industry. Passenger cars aside, where is the investment coming from? Does the NDP have any takers, ie a plan, or is the plan to tax first and figure out how to spend later?

[para transit fellow]

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

.... If John Deere could build a electric tractor that can pull a subsoiler, I'd love to see it. When the govt says they will use this influx of tax revenue to invest in green energy; that's fine. But show me how. Show me the willingness from industry to spend and develop R&D to make it a reality....

Well it turns out that JD is indeed working on such a beast,

Their preliminary efforts are profiled in this article:

https://electrek.co/2016/12/05/john-...tor-prototype/

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

I'm not going to make a case for whether or not the carbon tax will impact fuel consumption, even though I believe it will. However I think it's a fairly reasonable argument to suggest that there are numerous other factors that likely also played a role in the decrease that happened in BC. Claiming the carbon tax is directly responsible for all decreases in fuel consumption since its introduction seems a little dismissive of the other possible causes, such as improvements made to fuel economy by auto makers, more and more people buying electric or hybrids, people trying to make greener/healthier life choices by biking to work, etc.. Again I'm not saying the carbon tax doesn't make an impact, I just feel that this article is presenting facts in a manner that doesn't seem to acknowledge the possibility of other contributing factors to the decline.

http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/soe/indicat...emissions.html

Other factors are at work