Climate warrior Jane Goodall isn't sold on carbon taxes and electric vehicles

World-renowned primatologist and climate activist Jane Goodall says carbon pricing schemes like the one Canada has deployed aren't a silver bullet to solve the pressing threat of climate change.

Speaking to CBC News during the Ottawa stop of her cross-country tour of Canada this week, Goodall said the jury's out on whether levying a consumer price on emissions will meaningfully improve the climate picture over the long term.

Goodall, who just turned 90, said a carbon tax can seem punitive to consumers — making a measure to fight climate change seem like a costly chore.

She said she also worries that the fight against climate change has been «politicized… causing people just not to listen» — and that's a problem because the urgency of the crisis demands an all-hands-on-deck response.

Industrial carbon taxes also rarely impose a huge financial burden on major energy companies, which can pay a levy and go on drilling and mining resources that are damaging to the environment, she said.

«The problem with a climate tax is that, yes, it can do some good — it gives money to control climate change and so on — but it doesn't get to the root cause, which is fossil fuel emissions, emissions of methane from industrial farming,» she said. «So, in that sense, it's not something I endorse.»

Goodall said carbon taxes are «not a bad thing at all» but «a big oil and gas company, they pay a tax and then they're making so much money they go on emitting and mining and so on. So it's not the solution.»

She said a more effective measure would be to aggressively curtail fossil fuel extraction and their use in Canada and around the world.

«We need to curb it everywhere. I have great faith in young people — they're beginning to understand and they can