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We give everyone a rebate just so that those poorer people will not come out behind. In a way, it is a simple transfer from stubborn Hot Tub Guy to Very Poor Guy. If Hot Tub Guy doesn’t like this idea, he can start looking around for ways to pay less carbon tax. I would suggest maybe having a second look at the hot tub. But you do you.

Photo by Graham Hughes/CP

The truth is that most of us probably have our versions of the hot tub. I know from living in Alberta that the federal backstop version of the carbon tax will make people scream “OH, SO I’M SUPPOSED TO WALK SIX MILES TO WORK AND NOT HEAT MY HOUSE IN FEBRUARY?” It will, in fact, make some politicians scream that. But this is — well, I don’t want to call it deliberate stupidity: let’s say it is a stupid way of expressing more complicated or subtle moral sentiments.

Is there really absolutely nothing you can do, even if you’re quite lower-middle-class, to create energy savings in your life? You never go to the fried chicken place across town instead of the one on the next block? Are you sure you need to own a pickup for one home reno project or a bit of landscaping every three years? Have you even looked into smart thermostats or checked your window seals? Invested in a Snuggie? Taken the old incandescent Christmas lights off the hot tub?

Is there really absolutely nothing you can do … to create energy savings in your life?

The real problem is that you can’t ask these questions — even hypothetically, or even just to point out that every single household might ask hundreds of them — without sounding like an obnoxious schoolmaster. A carbon tax is social engineering — it is just an optimum, consciously designed, maximally market-friendly way of going about it. Any economist will add the implied caveat that all taxes are social engineering, and other taxes are engineering society in dumb or bad ways. A “carbon tax” is meant, for better or worse, to discourage the emission of free carbon. “Income tax,” which discourages honest work, starts to look pretty ridiculous when you follow the logic just a few inches further. But those are always the hardest inches to cross in the face of a policy novelty.

• Email: ccosh@postmedia.com | Twitter: colbycosh