Jeffrey Sachs fights with Canada's Liberals over placing a price on carbon emissions:
U.S. economist wades into carbon-tax debate at progressive policy conference, by Bruce Cheadle, Canadian Press: There is simply no credible way to attack climate change without raising the cost of carbon emissions, a celebrated American economist from the political left told a public policy conference Thursday. "Be sure that without a price on carbon, there is no (large) scaled solution to this problem," Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University told the Liberal-dominated Canada 2020 conference. "That is the first requirement."
Sachs ... was supposed to give a speech on improving Canada's international impact. But he began the session by throwing open the floor microphones with an angry question as to whether Canada is really abandoning the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gas emissions.
His caustic assessment of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to "just blow off Kyoto because it's mildly inconvenient" was an easy sell for many of the ... conference participants. But talk of carbon taxes is highly uncomfortable for Liberals these days after leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff raised the prospect ... last weekend, only to be pilloried by his fellow candidates and the Conservative government. ...
Sachs ... alluded directly to Ignatieff's talk of carbon taxes and stated categorically that: "Without that price, we are resigned to have an economic system that prevents responsible environmental action." ...
Anne McLellan, the former Liberal deputy prime minister from Alberta, quickly distanced herself from Sachs after the morning session. The federal Liberal government, she said in an interview, categorically ruled out imposing a tax on carbon emissions. "There are other ways to incentivize responsible conduct on the part of the private sector," said McLellan. "Our approach was the carrot" - not the stick.
Talk of carbon taxes inevitably raises the political poison of the Liberal National Energy Program of the 1970s that knee-capped Alberta's oil and gas industry. But Sachs' prescription got an unjaundiced assessment from a surprising source at the conference Thursday.
"It's politically unpopular, but if you don't change the price of a commodity, don't expect the usage pattern to change..." said Marvin Romanow, the chief financial officer of ... a Calgary-based oil and gas company with projects from Yemen to the Gulf of Mexico.
There are many ways to tax carbon, said Romanow, and the trick is to do it in a way that doesn't target a single industry, producer or province. "I think industry ... would have very limited objections to stuff that's applied across all sectors that produce carbon dioxide."
