Do They Work?

At The Conversation Paul Griffin addresses an important question. Do carbon taxes work?

Carbon taxes were in effect in about 25 countries as of 2018

Studies, however, indicate that greenhouse gas emission reductions from carbon taxes have been mostly underwhelming.

Researchers generally use two approaches to draw this conclusion, by either building a “counterfactual” model of what the past experience would have looked like with no carbon taxes or by comparing emissions before and after the introduction of a tax with controls for reasons for emissions changes other than a carbon tax.

For example, a 2016 paper examining several studies of emission reductions in 16 countries and two Canadian provinces found an average reduction in carbon emission intensity and energy use of less than 1 percent per year. British Columbia, though, was at the upper end of the emission reduction scale, with emissions per capita falling by as much as 9 percent.

He does not even mention two of the gravest problems with carbon taxes: they are regressive and carbon emissions rise geometrically with income rather than linearly. In other words they only really motivate people who can’t do anything about emissions.