1) Global warming, there’s two options on this
a) its real we should address it
b) its not man caused. It still in our interest to slow it, but even broader, there are alot of negative impacts from energy consumption beyond global warming, smog, urban sprawl etc

2) Is the tax large enogh?
this question realy misses the boat, the idea is not to create such a large tax that nobody can afford to buy a hummer. Rather to create an incentive to buy the vespa. A large tax gives nobody a chance to change practices and bankrupts a large number of people. A smaller tax will effect peoples habits on the margin. Those choices they can make as opposed to making choices nessecary.

3) revenue neutrality
This doesnt make the tas ineffective, because the rebates are unconnected with carbon consumption, an individual will recieve a net benifit from switching away from carbon consuption and still recieving the rebates, conversly despite recieving rebates, increasing carbon consumption woul reduce an individuals net welfare as they pay more tax and recieve no increase in the rebate.

I attack Dion’s Tax Grab from a different angle, inflation. This year the GST cut was masking the CPI number by about 0.6% according to Stats Canada, also the Bank of Canada is worried about inflation being higher next year; already they halted cuts and talks of interest rate increases at the first signs of things getting too high. Now what happens next year when you add a large consumption tax on top of goods prices?

What you get is the Bank of Canada scrambling to keep up with rising rates. With rising rates comes homeowners tightening, businesses making due with what they have, general slowing down of everything . . . including our employment numbers.

There is a reason that 77% of the people on Yahoo Finance when asked if they agree with the Liberal Green Shift plan voted “No – It’s just a massive tax grab “. That’s because people who are interested in money flow and know how the economy works realize what it is. I wonder what would happen if you put the same voting question on CBC’s website if the answers would be near the same?

Unfortunately, most Canadians have unwittingly swallowed the theory as truth, for worse I fear. In my view the Liberals with their Green Shift are essentually, craftily, exploiting the general good will of Canadians to “do something about it” to make a sneaky election platform designed to garner votes in Ontario and Quebec in order to win power (the name of the game). Given that big $$$$ will flow from west to east under this plan via promised income tax cuts, it should more honestly be called NEP v2.0. Note the plan has no targets for CO2 – another revealing insight that suggests this has nothing whatsoever to do with carbon or with the environment. The GreenShift is actually a disguised Greenback Shift.

I am all for conservation, big time, and I know history will judge us harshly by how we squandered over 200 million years of accumulated energy in less than 200 years. But the Green Shift is not an environmental or meaningful conservation plan at all. Its all politics.

Dion’s tax in my opinion has not been well thought out. Why would you exempt gasoline from the tax but include natural gas and diesel? It does not make sense. You have to treat every fuel the same to avoid be a hypocrite which apparently Dion is. For starters, exempting gasoline won’t encourage people to drive smaller cars. Taxing diesel will hurt truckers who haul all our food from afar during winter months. As well taxing very fuel efficient diesel cars is punishing those who get over 60 miles/gal. The only reason Dion doesn’t want to tax gasoline is because it will NOT sell politically. If you are going to make bold moves then have a good reason for it; don’t pick and choose which fuel to tax based on politics but on facts.

Another example is that is kinda gets cold in Canada unless Dion hasn’t noticed. I can’t choose whether or not to heat my home. I have to heat my home. The best way to do it apart from spending tens of thousands on geothermal heating is by natural gas. So Dion is punishing me to having to heat my home yet he is exempting me if I choose to get into a gas guzzling car. By the way I drive a fuel efficient car. Doesn’t anybody else see the hypocracy?

Gee another politician with a new tax what a surprise. Anyone figured what all the new green taxes that all levels of government are piling on will cost the general taxpayer.?

TonyR: The increase in fuel prices still doesn’t factor in the externalities from pollution. Yes, the increase in prices is curbing the consumption of carbon, but the price only reflects the costs of extracting and refining oil from the ground. I think the point of the green tax is to ensure the other costs from GHG emissions (ie. increased health care costs from a degraded environment, etc.) are taken into consideration by the consumer of oil. That’s something that has to be added on top of the cost of extracting and refining oil.

Phil S: I regularly hear people complaining that corporate taxes punish successful corporations. I regularly assume it’s because people don’t understand why we have corporate taxes. We have them because, essentially, corporations don’t pay tax, people do. Without corporate taxes, you would only pay tax on a dollar earned when you receive a dividend. So there would be a strong disincentive to receiving dividends. But to be fair, there really should be no difference in taxes between someone who earns $1 in a corporation and leaves it there, and someone who takes a dividend and ploughs that money back into the corp. With the tax integration mechanisms, we have the fairness.

Brad, $: Fortunately for us, the C in the CO2 we exhale comes exactly from the food/water/air we consume. If they were to tax us on our C emissions, we should get a credit for the C that we eat. It also means that we don’t need to get ourselves all out of breath about the sheer quantity of CO2 in cow flatulence.

$: That’s almost 3 tonnes of carbon from breathing. For a family of 4 that would mean a tax of 12*40 = $480.

I saw an article today that countries that implemented a carbon shift are grappling with this issue – i.e. the shift was successful that revenues from the carbon tax plummeted over time. Don’t worry though. Governments will find a way to get more revenue.