Increasing the price of carbon means people will have an incentive to stop generating so much of it. If it’s free to put another ton of CO2 into the atmosphere many people won’t think twice about doing it.
Yes, but there has to be viable alternatives to actually let people change.
People won’t stop using the highway for their commute if there isn’t another option like a train, reliable rapid transit bus, or an affordable apartment closer to the office.
Most people won’t demand any of that if gas is cheap. It requires political will to get public transit built and funded.
Public transit is the standard and the normal around the world. People will commute to work in whichever way is fastest and conveneient for them. Many people would rather read a book or browse the web while a train takes them to work over sitting in traffic. The only reason we don’t currently demand it is because many people in Canada have never experienced good transit and walkability so they really don’t know we could be building much better. Your mobility freedom in this country is nearly dependant on a driver’s lisence or access to a car.
We shouldn’t have to be doing the tax shake down and public revolt steps when we know by the numbers that transit is more energy and carbon effecient. Once those alternatives exist, a carbon tax would be much more effective because now people actually have a choice in their transportation.
Yes, but there has to be viable alternatives to actually let people change.
But what comes first? An incentive to change or an alternative to the status quo that’s been here for over 100 years?
Incentives are needed. Otherwise, as long as it’s free to pollute, people won’t do anything.
Public transit is public infrastructure.
Did you move into your house before the road to it was built? Or before the water, sewage, and electricity was built?
If we thought of transit the same way, we could have policies like developers need to consider transit connections on new developments just like they’d need to consider roads, sewers and electrcity. The longer we put off building transit, the longer its gonna take to have it working and reducing carbon emissions.
The alternative to the status quo is the incentive to change. If you build the transit and make it a viable alternative in terms of costs and time, people will take it: millennials, gen z, and soon gen alpha aren’t driving at the rate of previous generations for many reasons, they want public transit but they are forced to drive. If cities actually start to prioritize public and active transit infrastructure improvements over those for single occupancy vehicles in a meaningful way people will take them. This is one of those candy for dinner scenarios where the public wants what they want without understanding why it’s not good for them and the gov’t needs to step up and do what’s right instead of caving to the pressure.
But what comes first?
The carbon tax disincentive came first, and I think most reasonable people would agree it made sense whether it cost them personally or not. The problem is that for a lot of people the disincentive keeps growing while the alternatives haven’t improved at all.
No city can just build alternatives if they don’t know where the demand is.
Before a city can justify building anywhere,there needs to be demand. Both sides need to increase in stride.
Viable, but not perfect alternatives do already exist, and if more people use them they will get better, that is exactly what putting a price on carbon does.
