I basically agree with Ian Bruce BUT....

Progressives at the CCPA and some of the leading environmental organizations in BC have been so happy with the idea of the carbon tax that they have skirted around some of the problems with Campbell's version of it. The best and most balanced discussion of this issue that I have seen is in Mark Crawford's blog, B.C. Policy Perspectives http://www.markcrawford.blogspot.com/. Crawford has three blog postings, the first of which, "Axe the Tax?" http://markcrawford.blogspot.com/2008/06/axe-tax.html , sets out the general argument in defense of carbon taxes, and is commented upon by Bill Tieleman.

The second,"The New Utilitarians:Ignatieff, Campbell, Dion, and the Inadequacy of Revenue Neutrality," http://markcrawford.blogspot.com/2008/07/more-than-opportunism-lies-behind-ndp.html ,exposes the unfairness of revenue neutrality and proposes that carbon taxes should replace excise taxes and not progressive income taxes. David Schreck makes the comment that more can be accomplished through regulation than piling on a gas tax.

In the third posting, "As I was Saying", http://markcrawford.blogspot.com/2008/07/as-i-was-sayingwhat-to-do-about-carbon.html, Crawford reasserts the value of a well-designed carbon tax within the context of a more comprehensive climate change policy.

Crawford agrees with Ian Bruce that we should not simply rely upon high oil and gas prices to ensure energy conservation. On the other hand, the carbon tax should be revised to accomplish conservation in a more equitable and effective manner.

Tieleman spins tax

Interesting that Bill Tieleman's comment to Mark Crawford's site is about the Liberals playing politics with the carbon tax. Here's a quote from Tieleman in a Tyee article from June 5:

The way things are now, the carbon tax is a made-to-order election issue for the NDP and they should seize it, said Bill Tieleman, a political consultant who worked for the party in the 1990s.

"You have to drive it and drive it mercilessly," he said. "They have the opportunity to make Campbell wear not just the carbon tax, but the market increase as well."

Seems the NDP has been listening to the spin doctor. A shame, really, when there are so many things that the NDP could be criticizing Gordon Campbell's Liberals for, rather than playing politics with one of the few sensible things the Liberals have done.

URL for Tieleman quote

http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/06/05/CarbonCampaign/

Let's stop spinning our wheels

Here's an interview with Paul Erlich.

Note that he asserts that the ONLY winning approach is to immediately embark upon alternative energy projects.

http://forests.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=canada_clayoquot_logging

Why is it sensible?

Why is it sensible to support a tax that is purpose built to do NOTHING; is doing nothing and will do nothing?

The central feature of the Campbell Tax is its revenue neutrality and that is what is essentially wrong with it. Furthermore, it is administratively costly and irrelevant.

We are already moving into a period of economic stagflation which the Campbell Tax only exacerbates - especially for the bottom 80% of the population.

Instead of using the revenue to address other areas where changes ARE possible, the Campbell Tax Wurlitzer vacuums up money for each fiscal year and then spins it back out in more of the kind of pandering tax cuts that have created the services and delivery crunches in other areas of provincial jurisdiction such as health care, homelessness, education, disability services, affordable housing and the like.

There are plenty of ways the revenue from the Campbell Tax should have been used to address the abatement of GHG emissions. Instead, Campbell and Falcon promote the insanity of the Gateway strategy.

Anyone who cares to learn about what might have been started by this government can read about it here:

http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/pdf/US_ghg_final_report.pdf

IAN BRUCE - WHO PAYS HIS SALARY?

Ian Bruce is not some professor. He's an advocate, a promoter of certain ideas and ideologies. In that regard, he's rather like the staff of the Fraser Institute, also a tax deductible "charity".

Who pays Ian Bruce's salary and benefits, and what ARE those benefits? Do they include a company car and free parking? Or does he get a transit pass? Yes, I know it's the Suzuki Foundation who pays his salary, but who pays into the Foundation's $6 million per year slush fund? The major donors are named in the report, but who are these people?

Could they be executives and professionals and shareholders associated with various "green" companies? Companies that sell wind turbines, solar panels, small scale hydro generators, and the like?

The Suzuki Foundation promotes hybrid vehicles as the green way to go. But as Phil Edmonston of Lemonaid points out, those cars will have to be re-batteried at some point, at a cost of about $8,000 each, their fuel consumption advantages can be vanishingly small compared to other four cylinder cars, and no one knows how long their electric motors will last or what it will cost to maintain or replace them.

If the BC Govt's or Stephane Dion's carbon tax proposals are so beneficial, can Ian Bruce possibly answer this simple question. How much of Premier Gordon M. Campbell's $14 billion transit scheme will be paid for by the revenue-neutral carbon tax? Just thought I'd ask.

And if the Suzuki Foundation and SPEC and the other ENGOs who are so enhralled by the carbon tax are truly concerned about public transit, why do they continue to peddle LRT solutions exclusively, and to urge the cancellation of the GVRD's only long distance, heavy rail transit service, the West Coast Express.

If they were genuinely interested in substituting transit for longer distance commutes, a reasonable person would expect them to be counselling the Premier and Minister Falcon to expand the WCE service to 18 hours a day and to run it in both directions as the GO trains do in Ontario, and to shorten its travel time with track investments.

And one would expect them to urge additional WCE services along the CN line into the south side of the Fraser Valley, to Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford and Chilliwack, and along the Arbutus line to South Vancouver, Richmond, Delta, White Rock and Bellingham, and along the BCR/CN Line north to Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton. Instead, they reject any heavy rail service with park and ride lots as an instrument of urban sprawl.

Why are they doing this? Who is paying them?

WHAT'S THE MATTER, SIDNEY? IS IT TIELEMAN, ... OR CLARK?

Sidney Ball:
"Interesting that Bill Tieleman's comment to Mark Crawford's site is about the Liberals playing politics with the carbon tax. ... "

Let me see if I understand this. Bill Tieleman is a political consultant by occupation, who works for labour and community groups, once worked for former Premier Glen D. Clark, and has never made any secret of his NDP affiliations. He has written columns stating that the BC Liberals are playing politics with the carbon tax, and the NDP should return fire, should play the role of an Opposition, which is the position to which they were elected.

Sidney thinks that's wrong and shameful. Why? To the degree that Sidney is one of those people who styles himself "an environmentalist" and "an urbanite", I wonder if his dislike of Tieleman is an extension of a distaste for Tieleman's ex-boss, Glen Clark? Environmental and urbanista poseurs have been making it painfully clear for years that they detested and loathed Clark for his labour and populist orientations with a passion.

No Matter What

Report: Canada safest from climate change
28 Jul 2008 | Author: Jeanette Wiemers,

Index ranks countries on vulnerability to effects of climate change

Some countries with the most greenhouse gas emissions are also the ‘safest’ in terms of vulnerability to climate change and its impacts, says Maplecroft’s Climate Change Risk Report. Of the 168 countries ranked, three-fourths of the 20 most vulnerable were found in Africa (where carbon emissions are the lowest), while the US (the world’s largest emitter) came in only 12th most at-risk. Canada was ranked the least vulnerable and the “best haven from climate change”.

http://www.climatechangecorp.com

Very convincing!

Generally the folks who design these jokey little indexes have never lived in the places they rank and rate.

Furthermore, their fanciful and feckless predictions come at a fairly stiff price for users in the little 'investor' community they address their 'predictions' to:

The risk assessments and country scorecards in the (Maplecroft) report are “designed to help decision makers in business, government and international organisations assess climate change risks, right down to the level of individual locations and regions.”

I suspect none of the British 'expert's who design these little scorecards have ever tried to grow grain in Palliser's Triangle or survived a winter in the Yukon.

If things get really nasty, my money's on the folks in Africa who know how to survive a ten year drought; people who aren't already spoiled to the point where they couldn't care less about the fact their neighbours are homeless in a paradise like the Lower Mainland.

Generaly speaking such 'predictions' are about as worthwhile as most investment advice. For ordinary people who need to make a living and feed their families I think such reports about the unknown are about as realistic as Gordon Campbell's wet dreams about the future of this province.

From what I've seen, much of the ceo's positive spin is turning into a bad dream stretched across the highway at Portueau Cove.

Funny how reality has a way of bringing the high-flying promoters down to earth.