Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark
I don't think it works that simply or can be considered in such simplistic terms, such as 'just throw a carbon tax on everything based on its carbon footprint'. If anything the carbon tax is just as arbitrary as an all out ban on 'everything' that falls under a particular category.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't believe a carbon tax will look that deeply into each situation and be decided by some complex formula that reflects the actual carbon footprint of an item. I don't believe that the government has the resources, or the will, to implement the tax more intricately than broad categories, like usage of petroleum products (actually, it appears to be mostly aimed at petroleum products).
But, if you want to look at the example you cited based on carbon, then you don't have to think very hard to understand the carbon footprint of manufacturing a device, like a printer for example, overseas in a plant that probably gets its power from an older coal-fired plant, then shipping it overseas by container ship to Canada, where it's shipped to a depot, then sorted and shipped to a store, used for a couple of years (maybe) before it breaks or becomes outdated, and then has to be recycled (which also requires energy) and the cycle starts again when you have to buy a replacement. Is the government going to calculate the carbon footprint of each such device? Even if they did, how would they determine the lifespan of such a device, as lifespan has a heavy influence on its carbon footprint, by requiring a new device to be manufactured and shipped to replace the failed one. It's not simple, but it's a real situation.
I agree that we need to be pragmatic and look at the situation from a problem-solution standpoint, but I'm afraid that's not being done, nor will it be.
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It's not that complicated to calculate the carbon cost, at least within Canada - we're already doing it. Most of the consumption is embedded in the fuel cost or electrical, and any carbon emitted in industrial processes can be calculated too - otherwise how would we even know how much CO2 Canada emits? If there are any problems with the calculation, it needs to be fixed regardless, and it is not solely managed by governments, businesses carry most of the burden of calculating it.
Calculating it for other countries is more complicated, for sure. My first thought is to put a 'worst case' estimate of imported goods' carbon impact and tariff them if the exporting country is not doing a good enough job of calculating and pricing their carbon. That way the final price will have all the carbon included into it.
Regardless, no matter how complicated pricing carbon would be, it's orders of magnitude less complicated than implementing regulations to reduce 'throw away items'. Where would you even begin? And it would suffer immense pushback from companies as well as increasing cost. All for something that would likely be easy for manufacturers to get around and likely reduce emissions by a negligible amount compared to other things.