Hopewit

  Environmental researcher Tony Walker: “When the cost is a disincentive to do an activity, people change their behaviour.” She was talking about reusable bags when shopping.                 It’s a bit disconcerting to speak of people—or to be spoken of—as if one were a member of an enormous flock of sheep. It implies that reason alone won’t be enough to get individuals to break habits, to cooperatively join in a campaign to save the planet, for instance. But we need only look to ourselves to see how tenaciously we cling to present patterns of behaviour, even when our reason tells us the sloppy use and disposal of plastics, for instance, is like a poison to sea life on which so many people depend for food.                  It’s this tendency in human nature that makes Pigovian punishment/reward incentives like the carbon tax necessary. When tobacco-caused lung cancers overburdened oncological healthcare and cost thousands of lives annually, tobacco was heavily taxed, as is liquor. W