Canada

And kids don't want to eat their vegetables or go to bed on time... Sometimes people need to be encouraged to do the thing they don't want to do, but is only in their best interest.

I work as a public servant and I say this like once a week. The general public acts like a spoiled child who wants to eat candy for dinner. The public do not care that candy isn't nutritious, they do not care that they will rot their teeth out if they eat out for every meal, they do not care that it will give them an upset stomach. They know what's best for them and candy is what's best.

But it's already financially beneficial to the majority! That's what's most frustrating to me!

And those people who don't support it because they pay more in carbon tax are the ones who need their behaviour to change... So, it works.

It's the least painful, most economically efficient way to encourage those things and other transitions. When it comes to transportation, higher gas prices have historically resulted in a market for more fuel efficiency (and inflation-adjusted low gas prices have lead to oversizing of vehicles). Unlike the 70s, this time, the carbon tax is brought in slowly and smoothly over many years to encourage conservation (including the things you mention), drive demand for more fuel efficiency, and in the long term, encourage the electrification of the remaining fleet.

The vast majority of Canadians want the government to do something serious about climate change, but they don't know what that thing is. Economists said a carbon tax and rebate was the most efficient, but public support isn't driven by economic papers, but by propaganda machines. It's just too easy to blame the carbon tax for everyone's problems. It's the perfect boogeyman for inflation. Heavy handed regulation of industrial emitters would probably be the most supported by the public, but it would have a terrible impact on Canadian industry, and actually be limited in it's effectiveness, as most of Canada's emissions would still be "free."

Change starts from the bottom up, people.

Find out what the carbon tax goes to.

Almost like they should prepare and build those public services before applying tax. Applying a tax with no alternative is just a greed tax.

Instead, it's a black hole of who knows where it goes.

It goes into those cheques they mail out every few months, that they somehow completely failed to label "carbon tax rebate" cheques.

The federal carbon tax doesn't go into a black hole its rebated back to taxpayers.

Atlantic Canada only got limited access to natural gas in the last fifteen years. Most homes are heated by electricity or fuel oil, both more expensive than NG. After the oil shocks of the 70s, governments incentivized switching to electricity. Over 60% of houses in NB are heated that way, mostly by baseboard heaters. Baseboards are roughly 100% efficient, while heat pumps are 2 to 3 times that.

Air to air heat pumps work down to about -20C, after that the heating coils will kick in. That's when heat pumps gets more expensive, on par with baseboards.

Base rwd Model 3 has a range of 430kms. With a 20% drop, you're still at 345kms in really cold weather. Even in Toronto, 75% of driving commutes are less than 25kms, and it's the worst case scenario.

One thing people like to ignore, average house sizes have doubled since the 1960s (1200sq ft to 2400sq ft) even as families became smaller than ever. Add in stupid fashions like 10ft ceilings, and heating costs are going to go nowhere but up.

Oh fuck off

My mother does 35000km a year and she did it with a Nissan Leaf (250km range) until we moved far enough that she decided to get an i3 with the generator (180km electric + gas generator) so she can do it without having to charge the few times a year she'll come visit, 95% of the time she doesn't need gas at all and she only charges at home. Before getting the i3 she was renting a gas car once a year to visit our family just because of one stretch where she wasn't sure the charging station would work. The Canadian average yearly mileage is less than half of that, it's just excuses to not change to something new even if it's better.

Not even going to touch on how wrong you are about the carbon tax because others have already covered that.

Edit: Heat pumps work at temperature under -25 and you can use other types of electric heaters for the days that go under that, no need to use fuel.

It's not a black hole. It's nearly completely paid back to Canadians evenly such that most Canadians get more back.

What's also neat is that every single province could do exactly what you're suggesting. All the federal government mandated was a price on carbon, each province could implement whatever system they wanted.

Like everything these days, our worst problems are at the provincial levels, and people don't seem to understand or realize that.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/axe-the-tax-and-carbon-rebate-how-canada-households-affected-1.7046905

I know you had a lot of unbacked up claims in your comment, but I wanted to remind you that most people get money back from the carbon rebate then they paid in.

The carbon pricing redistributes the earnings back to people.

This then does let people have an impact on climate change by influencing them to choose products that produce less carbon and therefore appear to cost less.

The genius is that the price difference is artificial, if on average people in the province choose the more expensive option, they will make back the difference quarterly.

As is the system only really penalizes people who consistently choose the more carbon inefficient options and do it a lot.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/axe-the-tax-and-carbon-rebate-how-canada-households-affected-1.7046905