Severn Cullis-Suzuki wants governments to force citizens to be good environmentalists.  I don't think she means green stormtroopers, but punitive taxation that forces rationing.  The problem for Cullis-Suzuki is two-fold:

1. A plan like that won't work unless the major consuming countries all agree to it.
2. Canadians know that a plan like that won't work unless the major consuming countries all agree to it.

Severn Cullis-Suzuki was speaking to a university crowd, when she said we have to forced to be good environmentalists by governments:

Environmentalists Severn Cullis-Suzuki and Stephen Lewis are calling on governments globally to “force” sustainability measures on their citizens, and they want action now.

Cullis-Suzuki, the daughter of renowned activist David Suzuki and Lewis, Canadian politician and diplomat, spoke to a gathering of students at UBC on Wednesday. They outlined a plan of action to address global warming that includes the urgent need for government leaders to provide pragmatic solutions to climate change crisis.

Forcing sustainability?

The article doesn't explain what their plan actually is, but I can hazard a guess.  It is something called "tax rationing".

It is what the carbon tax was supposed to do -- sort of.  Tax rationing works by limiting the demand for something by using taxes to raise the price:

His main concern was about working towards sustainability as a common goal, rather than the ways governments planned on handling the issue.

“I don’t care whether the answer is a carbon tax which appeals to me more than other regiments….I really don’t care what you use…it has to be done and political interventions are necessary,” Lewis said.

The problem with the carbon tax as proposed by the Liberals was that, theoretically, there were supposed to be income tax cuts.  Enriched by lower income taxes, why would the increase in fuel costs matter?

But Stephen Lewis is just quoted talking about a tax.  Apply a straight tax, and you achieve tax rationing as people start consuming less, as the consumer is paying most of the tax.  Why?  This formula explains:

Price rise due to tax = amount of tax * R / (1+R)

Where R is the ratio of price elasticity of supply to price elasticity of demand

When supply is much more elastic than demand, R approaches infinite, then rise of price will approach the amount of tax which means the consumers pay most of the tax.

For fuel, consumer demand is definitely far less elastic than the supply.

So "forcing sustainability" probably means making life a lot more expensive, for regular folks.  No big surprise there.  But too bad we don't actually told any of that.

Or about this bit.  Remember that Cullis-Suzuki and Lewis are not demanding that the Canadian government get cracking on this, but that governments globally force sustainability upon everyone.  There is a good reason for this:

To be effective, tax rationing must be implemented by all countries of the world or at least most of the major resource consuming countries. Otherwise, the demand in the non-tax-rationing countries will rise offsetting the fall of demand in tax rationing countries.

So that means the United States, China, and India have to get on board.  Without them, tax rationing simply doesn't work.  It just hurts consumers in those countries paying the tax, but global consumption continues.

I wonder if Cullis-Suzuki and Lewis explained that.  Because if people understood this point, they would understand that Stephen Harper is right when he says that these plans are doomed to fail if other major consumers aren't doing the same thing.

But then Canadians rejected the carbon tax in the recent election.  Maybe Canadians already understand giving the Canadian government the power to force taxes on energy is all pain and no gain when other major consuming nations who consume far more energy than we do aren't likely to implement a carbon tax of their own.  I wonder if people like Severn Cullis-Suzuki lay awake worrying that Canadians are a pretty smart lot, by and large.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 10:40 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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