Heard the one about the carbon tax working perfectly nicely, enjoying popular approval, reducing emissions, not killing capitalism? No, it's not a joke, or a fantasy – it's British Columbia.

If anyone took Christopher Monckton seriously enough to bother contradicting him, a quick check of the Canadian province's experience with a carbon tax would destroy his typically hyperbolic claim that putting a price on carbon would reduce Australia to a Third World banana monarchy.

This week's Economist magazine notes that, since introducing the tax in 2008, the BC economy has done well, outperforming the rest of Canada with slightly higher growth, slightly lower unemployment and lower income taxes. And the carbon tax has the support of the majority of the citizenry.

This is a tax that was introduced at $C10 a tonne, rising by $C5 a year to be $C30 next year when Australia's allegedly catastrophic version starts at $23 a tonne. (The Canadian and Australian dollars are within three cents of parity, so the numbers are much of a muchness.)

And the BC government didn't wimp out on applying the tax to fuel either – the Economist reports the tax adds 5 cents a litre to the price of petrol. Fuel consumption per head in BC has fallen by 4.5 per cent since 2008, more than the fall elsewhere in Canada.