Feb. 3 to 5, students from Dr. Peter Tsigaris’ Economics of Climate Change course participated in the CommUnity Innovation Lab conference held at Thompson Rivers University. Hosted by the Fresh Outlook Foundation, the conference served to inspire community conversations for sustainable change.

Students designed 10 posters on various areas related to climate change and presented a showcase at the conference. Topics covered include planetary boundaries and the Anthropocene era; the science of climate change; the forces behind GHG emissions; the costs of stabilization of GHGs; economic development and climate change; problems and solutions to international cooperation; the carbon tax and the economy; the risks and uncertainty of climate change; the economics of geoengineering  solutions; and the economics of adaptation to climate change.

Kile McKenna and Paige Wildeman discuss the BC carton tax with a conference participant. McKenna and Wildeman found evidence that the carbon tax does not hurt the economy as has been suggested by the literature and the media. The research was done by looking at economic growth before and after the imposition of the tax and comparing it to other Canadian provinces that do not have a carbon tax in order to account for the counter-factual. The students also looked at the performance of other jurisdictions around the world that have a carbon tax. Their findings again do not support the hypothesis that the tax will impact the economy negatively.