Raising the carbon tax makes more sense than you might think

By Michael Bernstein

The first time I heard the phrase “carbon tax,” I admit that I was confused. I had a sense this was a policy to help protect the environment, but I couldn’t have told you anything beyond that. 

I thought of myself as someone who cared about environmental issues, but I was also busy running a small business and trying to figure out how to be a father to a new baby. I wasn’t thinking about climate change, let alone climate policy. 

A few years later, my thinking started to change. I began seeing the impact that extreme weather was having on the farmers who supplied my company, and it made me think about the world my son would inherit.

I began reading about climate change, and it was like a punch in the gut. I had no idea we were putting ourselves in so much jeopardy by warming the planet. 

My first instinct was to change my own behaviour. But it didn’t take long to see that turning down the heat in my house wasn’t going to solve the problem, while change on a bigger scale would require government policy.

In my search for solutions, I kept reading about carbon pricing. The vast majority of experts — climate scientistseconomists, concerned citizens — all agreed it was the lowest-cost way to tackle climate change. Their arguments made sense to me.

As the owner of a small food delivery business, carbon pricing appealed to me because it’s a market-based solution to climate change. It gives people and businesses the freedom to choose how to reduce their emissions — it doesn’t impose solutions on them with regulations. Carbon pricing offers a solution to the climate problem that allows people to transform the economy themselves, rather than re-engineering it from above.

Today, I’ve switched to working full time as an advocate for smart climate policies.

“Carbon pricing offers a solution to the climate problem that allows people to transform the economy themselves, rather than re-engineering it from above,” writes @bernstein_micha, executive director of Clean Prosperity.

Continue reading further on the National Observer website.