Must-read: Eduardo Porter: “Does a Carbon Tax Work? Ask British Columbia”

Must-Read: Eduardo Porter: Does a Carbon Tax Work? Ask British Columbia: “Ted Cruz says climate change is not happening…

…Donald Trump says he doesn’t believe in it. Marco Rubio, whose hometown, Miami, is projected to be largely underwater within the not too distant future as ice caps shrink and the sea level rises, argues that government efforts to combat it will ‘destroy our economy.’ But those views are not widely shared by conservatives elsewhere around the world. Indeed, not that long ago in a not too distant country, a right-leaning party that shares many of the antitax, pro-business beliefs of Republicans in the United States did exactly what its unbelieving candidates so fear….
In 2008, the British Columbia Liberal Party, which confoundingly leans right, introduced a tax on the carbon emissions of businesses and families, cars and trucks, factories and homes across the province…. Their experience shows that cutting carbon emissions enough to make a difference in preventing global warming remains a difficult challenge. But the most important takeaway for American skeptics is that the policy basically worked as advertised. British Columbia’s economy did not collapse…