5 ms·

Why not tax the pipeline to simulate that cost increase? Isn't that the best of all worlds?

skeeter2020 5y ago
that pipeline that now will never exist was substantially owned by the Canadian and ALbertan government. If it was built we would see a very efficient transfer of profit directly to new initiatives. Now we're no further ahead AND we own a pipe-less pipeline project.
apendleton 5y ago
In an idea world, probably, but unfortunately taxes are politically toxic in the US, to the extent that imposing a new tax whose costs will ultimately be born by consumers is impolitic in a way that creating new consumer costs whose revenue accrues to private actors isn't. Voters aren't rational, and elected officials can't do a lot about that. Also, revoking the permit can be done entirely by executive action, where a new tax would require cooperation from Congress, which the administration would never get.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Tiktaalik 5y ago
This was actually the argument of the governments of Canada, to build it, but add a carbon tax. Canada now has a federal carbon tax, BC has a carbon tax and Alberta did have one, but the previous government was thrown out in favour of a deeply conservative one (that is now woefully unpopular so the pro-carbon tax party is probably coming back). You can see one possible issue with the case of the Albertan government changing. Easy to add/remove taxes, hard to add/remove pipelines. There's also even some question of whether the carbon tax will be effective. It arguably hasn't done that much in BC. This is probably because for political reasons it has been set low. A previous conservative government "froze" the tax at low rates. Scientists note the tax needs to be literally $100s more per ton of CO2 to be effective. In my experience the carbon tax has seemed like a good idea, but has seemed in practice more of a political tool to generate the public acceptance of pipelines. The actual CO2 impact of the pipeline is absolutely in zero way mitigated by the carbon tax.

skeeter2020 5y ago

that pipeline that now will never exist was substantially owned by the Canadian and ALbertan government. If it was built we would see a very efficient transfer of profit directly to new initiatives. Now we're no further ahead AND we own a pipe-less pipeline project.

apendleton 5y ago

In an idea world, probably, but unfortunately taxes are politically toxic in the US, to the extent that imposing a new tax whose costs will ultimately be born by consumers is impolitic in a way that creating new consumer costs whose revenue accrues to private actors isn't. Voters aren't rational, and elected officials can't do a lot about that. Also, revoking the permit can be done entirely by executive action, where a new tax would require cooperation from Congress, which the administration would never get.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Tiktaalik 5y ago

This was actually the argument of the governments of Canada, to build it, but add a carbon tax. Canada now has a federal carbon tax, BC has a carbon tax and Alberta did have one, but the previous government was thrown out in favour of a deeply conservative one (that is now woefully unpopular so the pro-carbon tax party is probably coming back). You can see one possible issue with the case of the Albertan government changing. Easy to add/remove taxes, hard to add/remove pipelines. There's also even some question of whether the carbon tax will be effective. It arguably hasn't done that much in BC. This is probably because for political reasons it has been set low. A previous conservative government "froze" the tax at low rates. Scientists note the tax needs to be literally $100s more per ton of CO2 to be effective. In my experience the carbon tax has seemed like a good idea, but has seemed in practice more of a political tool to generate the public acceptance of pipelines. The actual CO2 impact of the pipeline is absolutely in zero way mitigated by the carbon tax.