B.C. Put a Price on Carbon. What Happened Next Will Surprise You

The British Columbia carbon tax is built on a simple tenet of human behavior:  When the price of something goes up, people will consume less of it.  It actually applies to not just gasoline, but to all sources of atmospheric carbon, including natural gas and propane, and is based on how much carbon they emit.  For example, since natural gas burns cleaner than gasoline, it is taxed at a lower rate.  This ensures emissions are priced in proportion to their impact on the climate.

As a result, British Columbia’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions are now nearly 20 percent below the rest of Canada’s.  This put the province “within spitting distance”  of being a year ahead of schedule on its goal to reduce emissions 6 percent below 2007 levels by 2012, says Mary Polak, B.C.’s minister of the environment.

Sustainable Prosperity, a research and policy institute that measured the tax’s impacts, reported that the policy reduced fuel consumption seven times more than if the price of gas had naturally increased by the same amount due to market fluctuations.  The tax drove consumption down not just by pushing gas prices up, but also by raising awareness about why we need to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

All that happened in the span of just five years.

B.C. Put a Price on Carbon. What Happened Next Will Surprise You