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Now that the federal government has conceded that it will fall short of its 2020 greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction commitment by a wide margin and the U.N. says it will miss its 2030 targets by about 220 million tons, carbon tax policy is about to spiral from dysfunction into madness.

In their obsession with reducing emissions to save the planet, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Catherine McKenna, the minister of environment and climate change, are imposing a multi-billion burden on the economy, raising the price of almost everything for stretched lower-and middle-class Canadians and fostering bitter regional resentment. Yet the carbon tax is too low to measurably reduce global warming, so their goal is unattainable without economic devastation, equivalent to closing entire industrial sectors.

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As a result, the greatest lunacy is to come — paying billions of dollars for meaningless scraps of paper, euphemistically labelled international carbon credits. That evokes the sale of medieval indulgences whereby sinners avoided purgatory through cash payments that enriched the theocracy. The outstanding issue is whether the government can convince a credulous public to go along.