Tuesday, March 21, 2023
No Result
View All Result
  • Media
Support Us
Macdonald-Laurier Institute
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
    • Jobs
    • Women’s History Month Fundraiser
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy Program
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Energy Policy Program
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy Program
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs Program
  • Projects
    • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
    • Provincial COVID Misery Index
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Dragon at the Door
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
    • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
    • Competition Policy in Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
    • Past Projects
      • Justice Report Card
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Annual Reports
    • Inside Policy Magazine
      • Inside Policy Back Issues
      • Inside Policy Blog
    • Papers
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Commentary
    • Straight Talk
    • Video
    • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Leading Economic Indicator
    • Labour Market Report
    • MLI in the Media
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
    • Jobs
    • Women’s History Month Fundraiser
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy Program
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Energy Policy Program
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy Program
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs Program
  • Projects
    • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
    • Provincial COVID Misery Index
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Dragon at the Door
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
    • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
    • Competition Policy in Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
    • Past Projects
      • Justice Report Card
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Annual Reports
    • Inside Policy Magazine
      • Inside Policy Back Issues
      • Inside Policy Blog
    • Papers
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Commentary
    • Straight Talk
    • Video
    • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Leading Economic Indicator
    • Labour Market Report
    • MLI in the Media
No Result
View All Result
Macdonald-Laurier Institute

How to get conservatives on board with environmental issues: Jerome Gessaroli in the Edmonton Journal

By recognizing that conservative values are complementary, rather than opposed, to environmental stewardship, we will be in a better position to engage with conservatives.

September 30, 2022
in Domestic Policy Program, Environment, In the Media, Jerome Gessaroli, Latest News
Reading Time: 4 mins read
A A
How to get conservatives on board with environmental issues: Jerome Gessaroli in the Edmonton Journal

Photo by G. Lamar, via Flickr.

This article originally appeared in the Edmonton Journal.

By Jerome Gessaroli, September 30, 2022

Polls show that conservative Canadians are less inclined than progressive Canadians to prioritize environmental issues. That is unfortunate, as climate policies will only succeed if all major constituents throughout the country see them as valuable. It is not that conservatives don’t care; rather, they are opposed to how environmental policy is discussed and constructed.

Left and left-leaning progressives have dominated the environmental movement and shaped policies based on centralized big government and regulatory top-down principles. They have also inserted other social justice issues into the environmental movement, using such terms such as “climate justice” and “environmental racism.” Reflexively, conservatives will recoil at this approach.

Engaging and encouraging conservatives to support action on the environment and climate change is possible by creating policies that respect important conservative values. Such values include taking personal responsibility, protecting private property, and encouraging growth through competitive markets. It is quite possible to create effective environmental and climate policies around these values.

Personal responsibility includes paying for the pollution one creates. Taxing pollution puts a price on it, requiring companies to pay for how much they pollute. The challenging part here is designing a pollution tax that is strictly revenue-neutral and does not unduly burden those who rely on fossil fuel use in their jobs or where they reside. For example, those living in rural areas requiring trucks or farmers needing to fuel their equipment should be provided larger tax offsets to compensate for the higher carbon taxes they’ll pay. The incentive to reduce carbon emissions will still be in place, since using more fuel-efficient equipment and vehicles will reduce the carbon tax they pay and result in overall lower taxes.

In addition, any tax must only affect those companies that pollute. Too often, governments use the pretext above to impose a tax but then apply it too widely and to use the tax as an additional revenue source. Back in 2008, British Columbia introduced a well thought-out carbon tax. However, in 2017, the NDP government removed its revenue neutrality, and it is now another tax that adds to the government’s coffers.

Second, protecting private property includes valuing environmental benefits that reside on private property. Just as there should be a cost to polluting by those who pollute, there also should be benefit to private property owners for conserving environmentally important land for the public’s benefit. Think of the habitat of endangered species.

Unfortunately, regulations dealing with endangered species on private lands can create perverse incentives that increase the extinction risk. The regulations can be so burdensome that property owners are incentivized to prematurely destroy endangered species habitats on their property, to avoid future punitive regulatory costs. Shawn Regan, an environmental economist, explains the misaligned rules this way: “If I have a rare metal on my property, its value goes up, but if a rare bird occupies the land, its value disappears.” By pricing environmental benefits, property owners have an incentive to conserve.

Third, the market economy is often blamed for pollution, but that assertion is incorrect. In the 1980s, Eastern European countries in the Soviet bloc had neither a market economy nor private property rights, yet those countries experienced terrible environmental degradation. For example, these countries on average used 75 per cent more energy per dollar of GDP as compared to the United States. And although they accounted for only 12 per cent of European output, eastern bloc countries contributed to over half of the continent’s particulate air pollution. This is but one of a multitude of pollution statistics created by their socialist system.

Competitive markets can help the environment. Capitalism creates economic growth. And according to the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy on sustainability, there is a strong positive relationship between economic wealth and environmental stewardship. This makes sense. Those with greater wealth can afford and invest in more sustainable activities.

Market competition also improves how resources are used. For example, North American sawmill efficiency has improved to the extent that wood waste has declined from 55 per cent in the 1930s to 0.8 per cent by 2012. And the industry is still innovating by looking for ways to increase wood reuse and recycling.

It is possible to develop policies for the environment that are based on conservative values. Far too often, we look to the government for solutions. In turn, we get layer upon layer of costly regulatory burden. Not only do they diminish our ability to prosper, but they are often poorly designed and fail to meet their environmental goals.

By recognizing that conservative values are complementary, rather than opposed, to environmental stewardship, we will be in a better position to engage with conservatives and encourage them to join a non-partisan effort to protect the environment and fight climate change. Such efforts will not only be more effective but also sustainable in the long term, irrespective of whether conservatives or progressives hold office.

Jerome Gessaroli teaches at the British Columbia Institute of Technology and is a Visiting Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Source: Edmonton Journal
Tags: Environment
Previous Post

Inside Policy: Walking together? Reconciliation after the papal visit

Next Post

Unleash the Montney, Canada’s world-class gas field is waiting to be tapped: Heather Exner-Pirot in the Financial Post

Related Posts

Oaths, trust and Canadian democracy: Stephen Van Dine and Karl Salgo for Inside Policy
Inside Policy

Oaths, trust and Canadian democracy: Stephen Van Dine and Karl Salgo for Inside Policy

March 17, 2023
Preparing for the Foreign Threats to Canadian Democracy: Straight Talk with Richard Fadden
Inside Policy

Canada and Japan’s common miscalculation in cyberspace: Koichiro Komiyama for Inside Policy

March 15, 2023
Defending against foreign interference in our elections: Marcus Kolga for Inside Policy
Columns

As Ottawa balks at an election interference inquiry, public trust in our democracy is draining away: Marcus Kolga in the Globe and Mail

March 15, 2023
Next Post
Unleash the Montney, Canada’s world-class gas field is waiting to be tapped: Heather Exner-Pirot in the Financial Post

Unleash the Montney, Canada’s world-class gas field is waiting to be tapped: Heather Exner-Pirot in the Financial Post

Macdonald-Laurier Institute

323 Chapel Street, Suite #300
Ottawa, Ontario
K1N 7Z2 Canada

613.482.8327

info@macdonaldlaurier.ca
MLI directory

Follow us on

Newsletter Signup

Support Us

Support the Macdonald-Laurier Institute to help ensure that Canada is one of the best governed countries in the world. Click below to learn more or become a sponsor.

Support Us

Inside Policy Magazine

  • Current Issue
  • Back Issues
  • Advertising
  • Inside Policy Blog
  • Privacy Policy

© 2021 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
    • Jobs
    • Women’s History Month Fundraiser
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy Program
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Energy Policy Program
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy Program
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs Program
  • Projects
    • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
    • Provincial COVID Misery Index
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Dragon at the Door
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
    • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
    • Competition Policy in Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
    • Past Projects
      • Justice Report Card
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Annual Reports
    • Inside Policy Magazine
      • Inside Policy Back Issues
      • Inside Policy Blog
    • Papers
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Commentary
    • Straight Talk
    • Video
    • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Leading Economic Indicator
    • Labour Market Report
    • MLI in the Media

© 2021 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.