Article Review on Carbon Tax Policy Essay

Discussions on climate change have gained traction over the years, with nations including Canada aiming to meet their Paris Agreement goals. Governments are putting in enough efforts towards climate change if the declaration by forty-five countries to cut greenhouse gas emission by 2030 is anything to go by (Resource Works, 2021). In the article “When it comes to the new carbon tax, sustainability is a double-edged sword,” Resource Works examines concerns of the economic sustainability of the environmental public policy implementation in Canada (Resource Works, 2021). Whereas the article points out the financial implication of the Canadian government policy on climate change, it failed to appreciate the general ethical benefits that the world will gain if Canada commits to climate change programs.

Resource works (2021) put emphasis on the tax implication of the Canadian climate change policy and overlooked other benefits that the tax rule brings to the world. The article negates the regulation by indicating that social and economic activities will suffer in the near future if the policy is implemented. The emphasis on the tax rise on carbon emission to cut down the greenhouse gas emission is a manifestation of the researcher’s way of opposing the climate change initiative.

The article outlined key issues in the Canadian climate change activities by examining the socio-economic implications of the regulation. The ethical concerns aboard jobs and income loss due to tax increase helps understand how worldview affects the implementation of public policies. According to Saul Alinsky, “The sixth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the less important the end be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means” (Alinsky, 2010, P. 48).

Based on the rule, the article did not point out how less important climate change is to Canada. In so doing, the report failed to convince the reader whether the Canadian government should abolish the push to climate change at the expense of tax implications. In fact, according to the Bible, in Mark 12:17, Jesus told his disciples to give Caesar what belongs to Caesar. Therefore, if Resource works believe that climate change is good for Canadian and the world, they should have looked at the bigger ethical benefits that will come when more taxes at levied on carbon emission to discourage the activities.

References

Alinsky, S. (2010). Rules for radicals (pp. 48-124). New York: Random House US.

Resource Works (2021). When it comes to the new carbon tax, sustainability is a double-edged sword. Web.