“People are never going to change just to save a few bucks,” cries everyone who has never listened to their parents gleefully explain how they travel 45 minutes out of their way to save a whole half-cent on each litre of gas they buy.
The truth is that people change their consumption habits in response to pricing—all pricing—but interestingly, this is even more true with carbon pricing. In British Columbia, drivers were four times more responsive to changes in gas prices brought about by the carbon tax than to price changes created by other market forces. The B.C. carbon tax went $10 to $35 per tonne over 10 years and has brought per-capita gasoline and natural gas use down by at least 7 per cent. Decades of data shows that carbon pricing works—even at low levels, which are a good place to start.