Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) about carbon pricing with Chris Ragan and Dale Beugin

Event Details

  • Friday, April 6, 2018
  • 2:00-4:00 pm EDT
  • Free
  • Reddit

Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) about carbon pricing with Chris Ragan and Dale Beugin

Read the Q&As from the AMA
Thanks to those who participated in our first #AMA!

#AMA

Governments across Canada are implementing carbon pricing to combat climate change. But the growing consensus around carbon pricing is not yet universal. Some have questioned whether it’s just a tax grab, or whether it will actually reduce emissions. And then there are others who seem to like the policy more for the investments that can be made with the revenues, rather than the price signal it sends.

With elections on the horizon, the public debate is heating up. Such policy debates are healthy and necessary. But debates will only support good policy decisions if they are based on facts and evidence. And there is strong evidence, grounded in solid policy experience, that carbon pricing works.

The Ecofiscal Commission’s latest report, Clearing the air: How carbon pricing helps Canada fight climate change, digs into the evidence. It also explains the economics behind why and how carbon tax and cap-and-trade systems work. In this AMA, Chris Ragan will answer your carbon pricing questions.

Understanding carbon pricing really matters because these policies will influence how we live and how we do business. It’s time we have a more informed conversation about carbon pricing. So, let’s have that. Let’s clear the air, together.

Guide to participating:

  • Join us on our AMA event page on Friday April 6th at 2pm EDT
    • You’ll need to create a Reddit account to ask a question and vote
  • Engage with us:
    • Ask us a question or a follow-up question
    • Vote for questions that have already been asked to improve their chance of being answered
  • Share the AMA to amplify this conversation

AMA Experts

Member

CHRIS RAGAN

Chair, Canada's Ecofiscal Commission
Director, Max Bell School of Public Policy
McGill University, Department of Economics

Christopher Ragan is the inaugural Director of McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy and is an Associate Professor in McGill’s Department of Economics. He is the Chair of Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, which launched in November 2014 with a 5-year horizon to identify policy options to improve environmental and economic performance in Canada. He is also a member of the federal finance minister’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth, which began in early 2016.

Chris Ragan is a Research Fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute, from 2010-13 he held the Institute’s David Dodge Chair in Monetary Policy, and for many years was a member of its Monetary Policy Council. In 2009-10, he was the Clifford Clark Visiting Economist at Finance Canada; in 2004-05 he served as Special Advisor to the Governor of the Bank of Canada. In 2010-12 he was the President of the Ottawa Economics Association.

Ragan’s published research focuses mostly on the conduct of macroeconomic policy. His 2004 book, co-edited with William Watson, is called Is the Debt War Over? In 2007 he published A Canadian Priorities Agenda, co-edited with Jeremy Leonard and France St-Hilaire from the Institute for Research on Public Policy. The Ecofiscal Commission’s The Way Forward (2015) was awarded the prestigious Doug Purvis Memorial Prize for the best work in Canadian economic policy.

Chris Ragan is an enthusiastic teacher and public communicator. In 2007 Ragan was awarded the Noel Fieldhouse teaching prize at McGill. He is the author of Economics (formerly co-authored with Richard Lipsey), which after fifteen editions is still the most widely used introductory economics textbook in Canada. Ragan also writes frequent columns for newspapers, most often in The Globe and Mail. He teaches in several MBA and Executive MBA programs, including at McGill, EDHEC in France, and in special courses offered by McKinsey & Company. He gives dozens of public speeches every year.

Ragan received his B.A. (Honours) in economics in 1984 from the University of Victoria and his M.A. in economics from Queen’s University in 1985. He then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts where he completed his Ph.D. in economics at M.I.T. in 1989. See his personal McGill website for downloads of his published research as well as his newspaper columns: https://mcgill.ca/economics/christopher-t-s-ragan

Member

DALE BEUGIN

Executive Director & Research Director

Dale is Ecofiscal’s lead policy wonk. He moves comfortably from big-picture strategy to quantitative analytics. He has deep expertise and experience in environmental economics and policy, and in particular carbon pricing. He has consulted for governments and organizations across Canada and internationally. He also worked as a Policy Advisor with the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. Dale holds a masters degree in resource and environmental management from Simon Fraser University, with a specialization in energy-economy modelling. Read his blogs here.