Premier Doug Ford is after the wrong suspect in his determined bid to lay a murder charge. He cites no evidence to support his claim that Ottawa’s carbon tax is a major killer of jobs. Scientists, however, have presented an airtight case against a real killer — climate change — which threatens us all if it isn’t soon stopped.

Look, I didn’t choose the metaphor of death. Ford did, using hyperbole to garner public support for his stance. In response, I simply point to the main finding of a conference on climate change and health in 2017 in Atlanta: The environmental effects of climate change are killing humans right now.

Or to another recent report from the World Meteorological Organization: Forget the future, it says. The world already is nearly five times as dangerous and disaster prone as it was in the 1970s, because of the increasing risks from climate change.

As to the alleged killer’s victim — jobs — Ford’s condemnation of a carbon tax is based on his assessment of its economic costs. So let’s also take a look at the economic costs of climate change, which have been thoroughly documented by people with real expertise.

The most recent report from the UN panel on climate change says the damage caused by a 1.5 C rise in temperature by 2040 would come at a cost of $54 trillion. That’s a whopping 62 per cent of the entire world’s nominal GDP last year.

In Canada, we can see the first signs of these costs in claims insurers are already paying on natural catastrophes — floods, forest fires and other extreme weather events. Now in the billions, total claims for such major catastrophes over the past three years on average were more than seven times higher than they were just as few decades ago. Similarly, government payouts from the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements hit $2 billion in 2013-14, a 20-fold increase from two decades ago.

So how to stop this real killer? According to economists, one of the most effective tools is the very carbon tax that Ford rails against. By raising the price of goods and services that are sources of carbon emissions, Ottawa’s proposed carbon tax would work just as cigarette taxes have worked in discouraging people from smoking — but with one, very big difference.

The higher cigarette prices from tobacco taxes hit smokers in two ways. The first is called an income effect. For people who continue to smoke, the higher price of cigarettes leaves them with less money to spend on other things. As this income effect hits smokers right in the pocketbook, it makes for a powerful incentive to quit.

But with its proposed carbon tax, the federal government plans to give 90 per cent of the tax collected back to consumers, which, in effect, would eliminate the so-called income effect for most Ontarians. So the federal carbon tax wouldn’t have the harsh, punishing effects of a cigarette tax.

But it would still have what economists call a substitution effect. The tax would raise the prices of goods and services that are sources of carbon pollution relative to the prices of goods and services that are not. In this way it would encourage consumers to substitute “cleaner” products for “dirtier” ones.

So without the punitive impact of a cigarette tax, Ottawa’s carbon tax would simply create an incentive for consumers to modify the basket of goods and services they buy: such as from switching from a gas to an electric car; or from driving to work to taking public transit, which would be that much more attractive if government also invested more in it.

Let us all not lose sight of the real threat to us and not be swayed by nonsense about “job-killing” carbon taxes any more than we are about “buck-a-beer” babble.

Given the dangers we face and the ever-shrinking time span we have to take action against this unquestionable killer, we should all welcome this income-protecting incentive to do the right thing.

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Nate Laurie was an economic adviser to former prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

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