I am probably the last person on earth to encourage a better understanding of economics. Seriously, it was literally the bane of my existence during my graduate studies, a required course, where our poor professor was stuck teaching a class of international economics to a bunch of students who really, really, did not want to take it.
If only there had been an election going on.
It wasn't until it began to look like this election was turning into a debate between the environment and the economy that I was forced to understand the principle of taxation. The carbon tax issue will hopefully be one that finally forces the change we need to create a world where we take into account the environment and the services it provides to us in order to sustain life. We cannot polarize the environment and the economy. In our society, in this day and age, they are intricately connected.
Which is why, as foggy memories of supply and demand and consumer behaviour finally begin to make sense, I keep wondering the same thing Chris Bilton beautifully explains in an article in Eye Weekly:
"The best way to discourage behaviour, economists say, is to raise the price of it. So why is it so hard to sell a carbon tax?"
Check out the full article, "The dollar value of change." It's much better than International Eco 101.
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I've been trying to make the same argument on my site... I work in the environmental publishing industry, and every week I watch as billions of dollars are spend in places like Japan, Germany, UK, Denmark, Spain... well, it's a very long list.
Everywhere but Canada.
A carbon tax would change that, and help us regain some competitiveness — and some creditability — internationally. But Harper has his head stuck in the tar sands.