The British Columbia Carbon Tax A Failed Experiment in Market-Based Solutions to Climate Change

Oct 2016 - Executive Summary Our planet’s climate crisis is intensifying, but many in industry, government and even the advocacy community have turned to market mechanisms to alleviate climate change instead of regulating the pollutants that cause it. These free-market approaches rely on putting a “price” on climate change-inducing emissions — such as imposing taxes on carbon — as an indirect method to reduce these pollutants. The Canadian province of British Columbia implemented a carbon tax on certain fossil fuels in July of 2008. Some experts and pricing proponents are using the British Columbia carbon tax example to promote carbon taxes and other market mechanisms as a way to purportedly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address our climate problem.1 Unfortunately for these free-market proponents, the real-world record fails to demonstrate that British Columbia’s carbon tax reduced carbon emissions, fossil fuel consumption or vehicle travel. Most of the modest and short-term reductions in emissions seem to be related primarily to the 2008 global recession, not to the carbon tax. More recently, British Columbia’s emissions have resumed their rise. This report examines the British Columbia program and finds that this type of pricing approach is not going to save the planet or safeguard our communities. A more straightforward approach of regulating emissions would be significantly more effective at curbing climate change....

Download the report here.