This is a news compilation setting the record straight on the day’s top anti-oil and gas stories and providing research and facts to counter misinformation about the oil and gas industry.
News Headline:
Clean Prosperity publishes an apologist article on carbon taxes in Tides funded National Observer.
Raising the carbon tax makes more sense than you might think
The Facts:
Clean Prosperity recycles a lot of debunked myths about carbon taxes as misinformation for activists following of the National Observer
- The author says conservatives invented carbon pricing. But Nobel economics prize winner for economics, Robert Nordhaus, conceived carbon taxes as regional if not global, revenue-neutral, and a replacement for regulation. The Liberal Government version of carbon pricing is none of those things and shouldn’t even have the same name.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/the-liberals-carbon-tax-plan-bastardizes-actual-sensible-nobel-winning-economics - The author makes the classic logical fallacy of a false choice – it’s carbon pricing or regulatory mandates. In fact, there are at least 8 policy choice buckets for emissions. Carbon tax apologists like the misnamed Clean Prosperity group don’t want you to know about these options that were debated at the Manning Conference in 2018
https://www.questerre.com/mike-blog/2018/02/15/conservatives-leap-climate-policy-forward/
They also makes the tiresome ‘all economists agree’ argument but like all who make this type of argument ignores all the economists that don’t agree and is left with only those who do. Many economists point to inelasticity of demand for energy (which means people need it even if it’s more expensive), carbon leakage (taxing it one country moves it to another), the complexity of increased regulation, and energy poverty as serious concerns about carbon pricing policies.
Conference Board of Canada – The cost of a cleaner future
Navius Research – Reversing Carbon Leakage
Canadian Energy Research Institute
just to name just a few.
The past President of Clean Property disclosed at the Manning Conference that the main funder of Clean Prosperity was Bull Frog Power who benefits from Carbon Taxes and it seems also from misinformation about carbon taxes.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/peter-foster-the-counterfeit-conservativism-of-carbon-taxers
- Despite groups claiming that the carbon tax won’t adversely affect Canadians. The Conference Board of Canada found that carbon pricing could negatively impact Canadian lives by displacing nearly 94,000 jobs and $21.1 billion from the country’s GDP. This is around $550 per tonne of emissions shifted or reduced.
https://www.conferenceboard.ca/temp/4af84e9c-9a95-48b8-bc1a-6e8570562caf/10485_TippingtheScales-RPT.pdf
