28 May Did Campbell’s carbon tax win him the BC election?

Andrew Coyne thinks BC Premier Gordon Campbell’s embrace of a “real” carbon tax (i.e., one in which every dollar of income raised by taxing carbon was returned in reduced income taxes) may have won him the election. He hopes it will serve as a template for a new conservative coalition.

Others have noted the discomfort Campbell’s embrace of the carbon tax caused the NDP, under attack throughout the campaign by its traditional environmentalist allies. Less commented upon was the degree to which he was able to draw those kinds of voters to his own party. Simply put, Campbell has reinvented the conservative coalition. The old coalition, between economic liberals (in the free-market sense) and social conservatives, was always an uneasy one: their interests and values were too often at odds. But a coalition of free marketers and environmentalists is a more natural fit—if only conservatives would realize it.

A whole generation of environmentalists have grown up who “get” the market: who understand its uses as an instrument for promoting social goals through individual choices. That, after all, is what the market does every day. Conventionally, this is understood in terms of efficiency: price signals lead each of us to economize in his use of scarce resources in such a way as to maximize the output of society. But it’s just as applicable to environmental concerns like global warming. Indeed, the two problems—economic and ecologic—are essentially the same. It’s all about minimizing waste.

Alas, not in Nova Scotia, where the NDP wants to subsidize carbon consumption and environmentalists clamor for taxpayer subsidies to inefficient producers.  Coyne’s whole Maclean’s  piece in the current Maclean’s is worth reading.