Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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It is not beyond question that carbon taxes are effective. All the witnesses have done is assert that their effectiveness has been proven by everybody, whoever they are. I cited the example of British Columbia, where the evidence shows that the taxed emissions increased and the untaxed emissions decreased. Rather than this tax being more effective, the opposite was the case. This sort of evidence needs to be scrutinised before we can make blank assertions that carbon taxes are necessarily effective. It has rightly been pointed out that our emissions have continued to climb even though we have a carbon tax. Are we recycling the money that is being generated at the moment so that it has an impact on our emissions? The signs are that we are not doing that, even though a considerable amount is being generated from carbon tax. The witnesses seem to have acknowledged that unless the revenue is recycled in a fair and effective way, it is regressive. The experience is that the receipts from our carbon tax are not being recycled in a manner that is effective or counteracts the regressive impacts of this tax.