Point taken, but I find it highly interesting that Hydrogen doesn't believe that relieving income taxes and implementing a carbon tax doesn't solve anything.
You are missing the point. First off, what will taxing carbon (fuel) actually do? Will it suddenly make all cars, transportation and travel go away? How much of a percentage drop in consumption will be brought about by such a tax? Probably not much, as there is no alternative to these fuels.
What actual problem will this tax supposedly solve? If you mean carbon dioxide emissions, most of carbon dioxide emissions are natural. Human additions are a tiny fraction of the total carbon dioxide that cycles through ecosystem. And how do you know that this carbon dioxide is so dangerous? Look around you. Anything that is green lives because of carbon dioxide. You are alive because of carbon dioxide. Water vapour is the most prominent infrared absorber in the atmosphere - by far. Maybe we should all stop boiling water, too.
As I have noted earlier, you are supporting a tax that is supposed to provide
diminishing returns by supposedly forcing a reduction in consumption. Since the idea of this tax is supposedly to reduce fuel consumption, that means that the tax collected will inevitably be reduced as well. So to promise a reduction in other forms of taxation is counterproductive to maintaining balanced government revenues. That means you won't be seeing reductions in other forms of taxation.
However, if the Liberals are bullshitting you, they know that you are captive to the fuels that are available, and since consumption won't be dropping off any time soon due to the lack of a large-scale alternative, they get you to pay a tax that actually won't do anything appreciable about carbon emissions. You will have to raise taxes very significantly to reduce consumption, but by that point you will be pushing inflation up as well. That'll screw over the economy. Good plan.
You may disagree with the concept (government using its power to encourage certain types of energy consumption over others), but it does solve the biggest problem with going green: the power of the pocketbook by creating incentive to purchase green energy and to spend less on oil and other carbon fuels.
The point is that this tax solves no actual problems. It only makes things more expensive since this tax will be applied to energy usage. That energy use is necessary to things such as the production of goods, the transport of food, getting people to work, and so on. You are neglecting this point. Your life is made good by cheap energy.
And just to note, taxes don't fix problems. Actual measurable solutions fix problems. A tax for general revenues just raises taxes. That's it. As I have noted earlier, consumption taxes such as the GST and the PST were not introduced during bad economic times so as to slow the economy or shrink the tax base. There is no fundamental difference between those taxes and this.
As for government muscle, the gasoline price at the pump is already about 40% tax (varies between provinces). It doesn't seem to have solved the worries of carbon, has it?
If that doesn't solve anything, then someone needs to go back and retake Micro AND Macro econ 101. Creating that kind of incentive in a market economy does more than any government mandate will ever do alone. You can ask a company to do anything, but if there are no buyers in the market the business will always fail. Market incentives are what make everyone go out and buy what they buy.
Uh huh. Interstate highways were courtesy of the government mandate. Nuclear power was courtesy of governments. Turbo jets exist because of massive government funding. That's just to name a few. The markets picked up on these technologies and have used them. Your sudden reliance on the market for all solutions is nice, but free markets have never been big fans of high taxes.
Also, just to note, market incentives alone don't explain all consumer activity. Necessity plays a significant role. You seem to have neglected this obvious fact. Energy is a rather massive
necessity.
Taxing doesn't solve problems. Taxing raises revenues. If the only policy strategy that the Liberals can come up with to deal with this issue is to raise taxes, then they are intellectually bankrupt. If you really believe that carbon emissions are an actual problem, then there ought to be a concerted and directed effort to dealing with it, don't you think? Since this is a technology issue, then is must be dealt with in terms of technology. Taxing for general revenue is kind of pointless, vague and gets the government off the hook in actually doing or directing anything with regards to supposed solutions.