How the Carbon Tax has benefitted British Columbia: Congress 2013

Research showing that BC’s carbon tax has significantly lowered greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions without harming the economy will be part of an experts’ panel on carbon taxation Tuesday at Congress 2013 at the University of Victoria.

The Benefits of Carbon Taxation panel, presented by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS), will discuss the role carbon taxes have had in reducing carbon emissions while stimulating social and economic change and innovation. PICS is a four-university consortium based at the University of Victoria.

The panel will comprise Stewart Elgie, professor of law and economics at the University of Ottawa and founder and chair of the green economy think-tank Sustainable Prosperity; James Mack, head of BC’s Climate Action Secretariat; and Tom Pedersen, PICS executive director.

Per capita fuel consumption has dropped 16 percent in BC since the carbon tax was introduced in 2008, while the provincial economy has grown faster than the Canadian average. Pedersen says fears about the tax harming the economy have proved groundless, and BC should continue being a climate change leader through ongoing incremental increases and scope expansion of the tax.

“Last month saw, for the first time in human history, carbon dioxide levels exceed 400 parts-per-million in the atmosphere — a symbolic threshold that reinforces the scale at which human activities are altering the composition of the atmosphere,” says Pedersen. “Rising global temperatures will show no signs of slowing until we reduce GHG emissions, and that is why using tools that work, such as a carbon tax, are so crucial. And those tools have an important side benefit: they stimulate the generation of new economic activity, something we all want to see.”

The event is free and open to the public and media. Advance interviews are available on request. Full bios of the panellists are available on the PICS website. PICS brings together leading researchers from BC and around the world to study the impacts of climate change and to develop positive approaches to mitigation and adaptation.

WHAT:         Free public panel on The Benefits of Carbon Taxation at Congress 2013
WHO:          Stewart Elgie, James Mack, and Tom Pedersen
WHEN:        2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., Tuesday, June 4, 2013
WHERE:     Bob Wright Centre, Room A104, University of Victoria
 

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