Juno News - December 16, 2020


The carbon tax is worse than you think


Episode Stats

Length

4 minutes

Words per Minute

223.67865

Word Count

1,058

Sentence Count

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 so today I'm going to tell you why the new federal carbon tax is actually worse than you think and
00:00:09.840 it's not because the price is going to be exorbitant and going to hit you in the pocketbook it's
00:00:14.640 because it's basically a syntax that leaves you no alternatives now a syntax is a tax that we put
00:00:21.120 on things that are sinful or harmful to society these are traditionally things like gambling or
00:00:25.800 alcohol drugs tobacco might be pornography sugar lately things like driving your car into the city
00:00:32.680 during rush hour put a fee or a levy on you because we simply don't want you to do these things even if
00:00:37.320 we don't want to make them illegal per se now what is the problem with these syntaxes what is the big
00:00:42.220 problem with a tax that is trying to affect your behavior well the problem with those in general
00:00:47.940 is that they're very difficult to predict because people often get a different level of benefit from
00:00:53.760 the thing that we're talking about right if we're talking about a sugar tax it's very difficult to
00:00:58.160 predict how people are going to behave because if you're used to buying a can of pop can of soda for
00:01:02.540 about a buck well at what point are you not going to buy that thing is it have to be a dollar five
00:01:07.200 dollar ten dollar twenty five dollar fifty two dollars you know at what point does the tax have
00:01:12.500 to be so that you're not going to engage in the behavior that the government doesn't want you to
00:01:16.980 behave in and this is ignoring the fact that we may not even agree that the government should be even
00:01:21.600 enforcing such a thing and you know what are your rights about that but again that's a whole entirely
00:01:26.260 different issue but the question here is really the potential alternatives now the tax is going to
00:01:33.160 go up from about thirty dollars to one hundred and seventy dollars per ton and even though most people have
00:01:37.660 no idea what a ton of carbon is or greenhouse gas emissions what you know what does that actually do
00:01:41.920 how do i produce that you know what what does the average canadian produce but the problem is that
00:01:46.820 it's going to go up slowly to a hundred and seventy dollars and even though 2030 is a long time away
00:01:52.120 and there might be very different world that we're going to live in in 10 years the problem is that
00:01:56.660 in two years the effect is going to be about 12 cents per liter on gasoline now the government's stated
00:02:03.060 goal again is to change your behavior and get you away from carbon emissions so they probably would like you
00:02:07.400 to drive an electric car but what if you have no alternative what if you cannot afford to buy an electric car right
00:02:14.280 maybe you don't have the money to switch cars maybe you're driving an old beater because that's what
00:02:17.640 you can afford you're simply beginning to pay 12 cents more and you have no alternative to move away
00:02:23.780 from a gasoline powered car what if you drive a lot and an electric car simply does not work for you
00:02:29.900 because of the amount of driving that you're going to have to do maybe you're you know a taxi cab driver
00:02:34.020 or a limousine driver or some sort of delivery driver the car is going to be running the entire day you
00:02:38.700 cannot drive an electric car because there's simply going to be no time to charge it in between your driving
00:02:43.400 maybe you have a very large family and they don't really make electric cars that are you know
00:02:48.560 affordable for a large family that seats seven or eight people so the fact that the government is
00:02:54.780 framing this as a syntax is actually problematic because ultimately yes they're trying to get you
00:03:00.340 to change your behavior but they're not really leaving you with any alternatives it's not like
00:03:04.600 a tax on soda where you could theoretically just drink something else you know you don't have to drink
00:03:08.680 soda even though again you know maybe it's your right to be able to drink soda that could be argued
00:03:12.600 it's not like a tax on driving into the city where they want to take you to you know they want to make
00:03:18.380 you use public transportation so you can not take your car and again even that it might not work because
00:03:23.520 it might not work for your family but it's a syntax on something that you may have no control over
00:03:28.820 and you may have no alternative and that's why it's actually worse than people think because it's not
00:03:33.800 just a penalty for people who want to pollute like the government says that you know they say that
00:03:38.960 we're going to increase the price and make it more difficult for people to pollute but that might not
00:03:42.860 be the scenario you might have absolutely no choice but to pollute but to you know create carbon
00:03:48.860 emissions which isn't it you know an entirely different issue as well because pollution and
00:03:54.180 carbon emissions may or may not be the same thing so this is why the carbon tax is actually worse than
00:03:59.200 you think and it's not just because it's going to be a very high fee it's worse than you think
00:04:02.980 because it it's going to leave a lot of people with potentially no alternative to change their
00:04:08.780 behavior no way around creating those carbon emissions at the very least in the short term
00:04:14.440 now my good friend candace malcolm has a great series called green hypocrisy and i would definitely
00:04:19.740 recommend that you subscribe to our true north channel and hit that notification bell so you can
00:04:23.440 be notified when the latest episodes come out it's a great series and it will talk about these type of
00:04:28.040 things but i really just wanted to talk about the alternatives that it's going to leave you or not leave you
00:04:32.600 with because that is a serious problem and that's the problem of any syntax or tax that's aimed at
00:04:37.540 changing your behavior so for true north i am sam ashkenazi thank you so so much for watching
00:04:42.520 have yourselves a great day