A B.C. Liberal operative was out with the online spin hours before Premier Christy Clark the much-leaked news in a Friday afternoon announcement at an obscure location in Richmond.
The, er, freeze is continuing for B.C.鈥檚 ground-breaking, world-saving carbon tax, which hasn鈥檛 changed since before Clark was elected in 2013.
The spin was Olympic-themed, with a picture labeled to show B.C. as a swimmer far out in the lead in the pool, to symbolize that it鈥檚 the other provinces that need to catch up in the race to save the planet.
Clark has been saying that for years, and there is merit to it. Even without a tax on 鈥減rocess emissions鈥� such as from cement kilns, B.C.鈥檚 carbon tax encourages imports of non-taxed cement from the U.S. and China.
Alberta business professor Andrew Leach, who advised the Stephen Harper and then Rachel Notley governments on greenhouse gas policies, summed up the problem this way.
鈥淯ntil the rest of the world has policies that impose similar cost, you鈥檙e not actually reducing emissions to the extent you think,鈥� Leach said. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e just displacing the emissions and the economic activity to other jurisdictions.鈥�
Alberta is moving to join B.C. with a modest carbon tax, but the NDP government plans to spend the proceeds rather than return them in income tax as B.C. has done. And Washington state and most of the rest of the world have no carbon tax as such, so their businesses benefit from B.C.鈥檚 鈥渃limate leadership.鈥�
B.C.鈥檚 foreign-funded eco-radical community was, needless to say, appalled. The Pembina Institute鈥檚 Matt Horne and career protesters Tzeporah Berman and Merran Smith were named to the premier鈥檚 advisory committee last year, along with business, academic and aboriginal representatives.
They concluded that increases to B.C.鈥檚 broad-based tax on carbon fuels should resume its upward march in 2018.
When it comes to climate leadership, BC is the Katy Ledecky of Canada.
鈥� laura miller (@laurakmiller)
Other committee members, including the mayors of Surrey, Comox and Burns Lake, were not heard from. Public discussion on this issue is now reduced to a staged conflict between those who demand a holy war on deadly carbon dioxide 鈥減ollution,鈥� and those who don鈥檛 care if their grandchildren perish in a hell-fire of fossil fuel use.
We鈥檝e just come off another El Nino year, like the hot year of 1998. Regular readers will recall the last time I discussed this topic was this spring, where I questioned the premier鈥檚 dire warnings of another horrendous forest fire season.
What followed has been one of the forest fire seasons in the last decade, although dry conditions have finally emerged this month. Climate predictions, like next week鈥檚 weather forecast, are less than consistent.
I am regularly sent messages calling me a 鈥渃limate change denier,鈥� the nonsense term that continues to be used by federal Environment Minister Catharine McKenna among many others. I know of no one who denies that climate is always changing, at times dramatically.
If you wish to believe that paying an extra seven cents a litre for gasoline in B.C. is helping to slow the very gradual increase in temperatures we鈥檙e seeing in the northern hemisphere, you are free to do so.
You may even be persuaded to take a government subsidy and buy an expensive, short-range electric car. Me, I鈥檓 off to Prince Rupert and Revelstoke pretty soon, so I鈥檒l stick with my little four-cylinder gas sipper for now.
Hydro-powered B.C. represents a small fraction of the less than two per cent Canada contributes to global greenhouse gas emissions. We鈥檙e not the problem, and no, the world is not looking to us for guidance.
Tom Fletcher is B.C. legislature reporter and columnist for Black Press. Email: tfletcher@blackpress.ca Twitter:
