Premier Jason Kenney is not one to eat humble pie.

But in the coming months he'll have to swallow his pride.

He has to convince Albertans to accept a provincial carbon tax, something he has demonized the past two years.

Not that Kenney is admitting that, yet. But that's where he finds himself after Thursday's 6-3 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that upholds the federal carbon tax.

Kenney has to either accept the federal tax imposed on Alberta or come up with his own tax instead.

When asked if he'd now introduce an Alberta-based price on carbon emissions, Kenney tap danced around the issue.

"There are a number of different options that we will be considering," said Kenney. "We will be starting those consultations right away."

Kenney's options are limited. He could theoretically use some imaginative legal grounds to launch another challenge against the federal policy but that would be akin to banging his head against the wall. And Kenney has been doing enough of that the past two years, alongside fellow premieral head bangers, including Saskatchewan's Scott Moe, who are now dealing with a court-imposed political migraine.

After reading the court ruling, Moe reluctantly admitted he's ready to impose his own made-in-Saskatchewan carbon tax rather than be "subject to the punitive and ineffective carbon tax imposed by Prime Minister Trudeau and the federal government."

It would seem that even though the court battle is dead the overwrought rhetoric lives on.

Kenney didn't go as far as Moe, but he's not lagging much behind: "When it comes to complying with this decision, we're going to do it in a way that imposes the lowest possible cost on Albertans."

Interestingly, Kenney pointed out Quebec's provincial price on carbon is about $20 a tonne while the federal tax now being imposed on Alberta will soon be $40 a tonne. That in itself would seem to be an argument for a made-in-Alberta tax.

Kenney and Moe took great pains to paint Thursday's court ruling as a threat to provincial rights, arguing the court "discovered a new federal power that erodes provincial jurisdiction and undermines our constitutional system."

This is how Kenney and other anti-carbon-tax premiers have tried to frame the argument, by pretending it has nothing to do with the environment, that it's a tax on hard-working citizens, that it's a social plot to transfer wealth, that it's a Liberal conspiracy to attack provincial rights.

They deliberately ignored the court's lengthy argument on the need to deal with global warming.

"This matter is critical to a response to an existential threat to human life in Canada and around the world," wrote Chief Justice Richard Wagner.

No doubt anticipating Kenney and Moe's complaints about provincial rights, Wagner pointed out the court's ruling applies to "only exceptional cases."

In this case, the court agreed with the federal government that it had to act on a national level to reduce emissions through its carbon tax — technically, a price on emissions— because the provinces are "constitutionally incapable of establishing minimum standards of greenhouse gases price stringency to reduce emissions."

The court ruling is not an attack on provincial rights but an admission that provinces don't always have the nation's best interest at heart. Especially when the nation is gearing up to fight climate change while some provinces would prefer to be non-combatants.

After Kenney and some other premiers have spent much of the past two years having a temper tantrum at the federal dinner table, the supreme court is making them eat their vegetables.

Kenney is still turning up his nose.

He doesn't want to openly admit defeat or admit that he might end up having to introduce a new carbon tax similar to the old NDP government's carbon levy that he scrapped in 2019.

Kenney is taking a page from former-premier Ralph Klein's playbook to bluster it out in fights with the federal government. Klein knew he couldn't win fights against the GST and same-sex marriage but in the shake-your-fist-at-the-clouds strategy it wasn't the destination but the angry journey that counted.

"Just because the court says that the federal government can punish people for filling up their gas tanks and driving to work and heating their homes, doesn't mean the federal government should do that," said Kenney.

I may have missed something but I don't think the supreme court mentioned anything about punishing people. It did mention the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"Any province's failure to act threatens Canada's ability to meet its international obligations, which in turn hinders Canada's ability to push for international action to reduce GHG emissions," said Chief Justice Wagner. "Therefore, a provincial failure to act directly threatens Canada as a whole."

Wagner said provinces are free to design their own carbon pricing system as long as they meet federal emission-reduction targets.

So, Kenney can either live with the federal carbon tax or swallow his pride and do what the NDP government did and introduce a made-in-Alberta carbon levy.