Editor, The Times:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not a climate denier. He’s just trying to square political reality with, well, reality.
Political reality says that a carbon tax will somehow give the government the social licence to build more pipelines. And reality? According to a recent study by geoscientist David Hughes, Canada will not meet its weak CO2 reduction targets if new pipelines are built.
Margaret Wente states that an effective price on carbon will need to rise to $200 per carbon tonne by 2030 to help meet these targets, but – according to her – the public would never stand for it.
They won’t, unless 100 per cent of the revenue collected from the fee is returned to Canadian households. They may also stand for it when they see that the steadily increasing carbon price stimulates Canada’s clean-tech sector, which some projections say could employ 100,000 Canadians by 2022.
Cheryl McNamara
Toronto, Ontario