Response to the article by Andrew Cohen

Re: A Higher Carbon Price Could Get Us To Paris On Its Own, At Much Less Cost To The Economy (Opinion, Nov. 27):

There are limits to carbon pricing. They provide price signals, hence their effectiveness is limited for measures not sensitive to prices, such as urban planning, building standards and appliance efficiency. Their focus on low-cost measures means they provide little incentive for new, higher-cost technologies such as solar, electric vehicles and green hydrogen.

To limit warming of 1.5 C, the world will need to reduce emissions to net-zero about midcentury. Several high-cost reductions, such as green steel, low-emissions cement and non-fossil chemicals, will take decades to implement. Regulations are needed to start those transformations, even if marginal costs exceed the carbon price.

–Erik Haites Lead author, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group III, Chapter 13: National and Subnational Policies and Institutions; Toronto

Canada did not successfully address acid rain by taxing sulphur dioxide or depletion of stratospheric ozone by taxing chlorofluorocarbons in spray cans and refrigerators. It understood the technological roots of these problems and applied technological as well as economic solutions.

Canada should be equally well-informed on greenhouse gas emissions by using more modern simulation analysis to better understand its options. Until the country does so, it will, as the Environment Commissioner wrote, continue to go from “failure to failure” on climate change, extreme weather events, sea level rise and acidification of surface waters.

-John Hollins, Ottawa