Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon – According to Guardian Climate Change Columnist Dana Nuccitelli, the Guardian has decided to “discontinue” its science and environment blogging networks, a policy shift which seems to involve a significant cut to their climate change blogging (see the bottom of the quote for the Guardian announcement).
Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
Dana Nuccitelli
Fri 26 Oct 2018 18.15 AEDTBy rebating the revenue to households, disposable income rises, which can be a boon for the Canadian economy
Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that under the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, Canada will implement a revenue-neutral carbon tax starting in 2019, fulfilling a campaign pledge he made in 2015.
Starting next spring, it’ll no longer be free to pollute in Canada. We’re putting a price on pollution in provinces that don’t yet have a plan to fight climate change. More on our plan to cut pollution, grow the economy & create jobs: https://t.co/VjCNOOKLVB
#EnvironmentEconomy pic.twitter.com/b4wFc17Qte— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) October 23, 2018
The federal carbon pollution price will start low at $20 per ton in 2019, rising at $10 per ton per year until reaching $50 per ton in 2022. The carbon tax will stay at that level unless the legislation is revisited and revised.
This is a somewhat modest carbon tax – after all, the social cost of carbon is many times higher – but it’s a higher carbon price than has been implemented in most countries. Moreover, a carbon tax doesn’t necessarily have to reflect the social cost of carbon. The question is whether it will be sufficiently high to meet the country’s climate targets.
…
Energy prices will rise
A $20/ton carbon tax translates into a 16.6 cent per gallon surcharge on gasoline. So, in 2022, the $50/ton carbon tax will increase Canadian gasoline prices by about 42 cents per gallon (11 cents per liter). For comparison, the average price of gasoline in Canada is $1.43 per liter, so that would be about an 8% gasoline price increase in 2022.
…
Note: this will be our final entry on Climate Consensus – the 97%. The Guardian has decided to discontinue its Science and Environment blogging networks. We would like to thank this great paper for hosting us over the past five years, and to our readers for making it a worthwhile and rewarding endeavor.
Dana Nuccitelli has provided us with lots of entertainment over the years, balancing his big oil career with radical environmentalism.
Whenever I was short of ideas for what to write, I could usually look up Dana’s whacky green opinion pieces for inspiration.
Obviously at this stage it is difficult to know where The Guardian will go next with its climate change reporting. I find it hard to believe the Guardian have decided to entirely quit the environment / climate change reporting space.
On the other hand, a few formerly prolific climate action advocacy blogs have been going dark lately, as their authors run out of things to say, or lose interest in talking about climate change. Perhaps even the Guardian has gotten fed up with flogging a dead horse. Or maybe they are just running out of money.
Update (EW): Fixed a typo (h/t Canman)
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I reported this news 2 days ago in this blog.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/26/why-the-weather-doomsayers-need-to-take-a-raincheck/
And I acknowledged you on the fourth comment posted on this article.
Don’t forget that Nuccitelli was only half of the comedy knockabout team known as The 97%, which took over the sciencey part of the Graun’s climate reporting when their environmental journalists got fed up with being ridiculed in the comments thread, the other half being engineering college professor John Abrahams, who came to the Guardian’s notice when he posted a podcast in which he maundered on about something Monckton once said for eighty minutes. The Guardian posted the podcast and two articles (one by Monbiot) praising Abrahams.
I wasted an evening of my life transcribing the Abrahams podcast and posting what he said at the Guardian, something the Graun hadn’t thought to do. Abrahams’ method of analysis was to take a criticism by Monckton of something said by a scientist, phone up the scientist in question and ask: “Who’s right, Monckton or you?” and report the response. I got as far as where Abrahams said “According to the world’s most authoritative polar bears…” and gave up.
For the 40 years from 1970 to 2010 US inflation annualized at ~ 4.3%. Gasoline prices in period went from 10 cents/litre in 1970 to 90 cents per litre in 2010 which was a 5.6% annualized increase. assuming the same numbers apply to Canada, that means if in Canada the carbon tax causes a 8 % gasoline price increase by 2022, that should translate to a 8 * .76 = 6 % change in the inflation rate caused by gasoline prices alone. That works out to a 1.467 % annualized increase in inflation over the next 4 years caused by gasoline carbon price tax by itself irregardless of the other increases to inflation which will occur. Some of the present top 620 CO2 emitters in Canada (the only ones that potentially are forced to pay the tax) will switch from a carbon based fuel to a non carbon based fuel. This means that those firms won’t pay the tax, so the tax won’t get collected and reimbursed to the public. So the public will not recover the full impact of inflation because of the carbon tax. And the government hasn’t guaranteed that the reimbursements will happen every year indefinitely. Once the inflation goes up the public has to pay that inflation every year indefinitely. The inflation will go up, whether the firms pay the tax or not. This is because for the firms that switch fuels, the cost of the new fuel will be more expensive; or that firm would already be using that fuel. THIS IS UTTER MADNESS AND A BIG RIPOFF
What is a revenue neutral tax anyway?
It’s a bit like a policy-neutral policy recommendation for policymakers, of the kind the IPCC specializes in summarizing.