Ross McKitrick

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Professor of Economics, University of Guelph

Ross R. McKitrick is a Professor of Economics and CBE Fellow in Sustainable Commerce at the University of Guelph where he specializes in environment, energy and climate policy, and a Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute. He has published widely on the economics of pollution, climate change and public policy. His book Economic Analysis of Environmental Policy was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2010. His background in applied statistics has also led him to collaborative work across a wide range of topics in the physical sciences including paleoclimate reconstruction, malaria transmission, surface temperature measurement and climate model evaluation. Professor McKitrick has made many invited academic presentations around the world, and has testified before the US Congress and committees of the Canadian House of Commons and Senate. He appears frequently in the media, and his research has been discussed in many prominent outlets including The New York Times, Nature, Science, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal.

Recent Research by Ross McKitrick

Off Target: The Economics Literature Does Not Support the 1.5°C Climate Ceiling

— Jul 27, 2021

Off Target: The Economics Literature Does Not Support the 1.5°C Climate Ceiling finds that the government policies required to implement the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s goal, to limit the global average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, would impose social and economic costs that far exceed the expected benefits.

Estimated Impacts of a $170 Carbon Tax in Canada

— Mar 16, 2021

Estimated Impacts of a $170 Carbon Tax in Canada finds that the federal government’s plan to impose a $170 per tonne carbon tax by 2030 will result in 184,377 fewer jobs nationwide and cause a 1.8 per cent drop in Canada’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which in 2019 would represent a loss to the economy of about $38 billion.

The Impact of the Federal Carbon Tax on the Competitiveness of Canadian Industries

— Aug 22, 2019

The Impact of the Federal Carbon Tax on the Competitiveness of Canadian Industries finds that the federal carbon tax will increase production costs in key sectors and could trigger a phenomenon known as “carbon leakage”—where firms relocate industrial activity (including petroleum and coal-product manufacturing) to countries with less-stringent climate policies.