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The obvious problem, of course, is that these forums haven’t yet yielded anything approaching a sufficient strategy. The much-vaunted 2015 Paris Agreement contains no enforcement mechanism for targets, which makes it highly unlikely that they will be met. The United States — which alone accounts for 15 per cent of global emissions — has pulled out of the agreement altogether, while China (25 per cent of global emissions) may be able to hit them only because their agreed national target was feeble in the first place. This reflects the biggest problem with the Paris Agreement: national emissions targets were set such that even if every country were to keep its commitments, total emissions reductions would still fall far short of the amount needed to sufficiently limit global temperature increases.

Applying the same reasoning as in NAFTA, the test for Canada’s climate plan should be whether the benefits to Canada outweigh the costs

No less an authority than the United Nations itself has sounded the alarm, releasing a report in early October that suggested a carbon tax of up to US$5,500 per ton ($7,183 CDN) may be necessary to limit temperature increases to 1.5 degrees. If that sounds extreme, it’s because it is.

A tax of this size would work out to an eye-popping $834 of carbon tax on a 50-litre gas fill-up, or around 143 times higher than the maximum $50 per ton the Trudeau government plans to impose on noncompliant provinces by 2022.

But surely doing something is better than nothing, critics insist. We can’t just sit on our hands. But to be blunt, that depends on whether what we do will make any difference, in which case sitting on our hands might be as good a pastime as any.