As with many things today, carbon taxes are more about politics than any practical solution to a serious problem.

At first glance, they seem quite logical as government policy. If you want to reduce the use of something — whether it’s gasoline, cigarettes or eating pizza — then jack up the price until you eventually accomplish your goal.

But in reality, the imposition of these green levies will never reach a level where people cut back usage enough to have an appreciable effect on humanity’s production of carbon. Any politician attempting to do so would be run out of office long before the tax was high enough to change behaviour to such an extent it made any noticeable, environmental difference.

That’s especially true in Canada, where a relatively small population spread out across a huge and often frozen land mass could not survive, never mind thrive, without delivering a rather large carbon footprint.

Shrinking that footprint by any sizable degree would leave us stranded, freezing in the dark, allowing the much larger........

© Calgary Herald