BC will lose its position as an environmental leader if carbon tax is dropped

Today, three prominent environmental groups have denounce their support to the BC NDP because of NDP’s agenda to get rid of the carbon tax, as published on this article on CBC.ca.  These three groups are the David Suzuki Foundation, the Pambina Institute, and ForestEthics .  They held a joint newsconference and stressed that:

Thousands of jobs in the green economy will be lost, and the province will lose its position as an environmental leader if the tax is dropped.

- David Suzuki Foundation + Pambina Institute + ForestEthics

On the other hand, Carole James, the leader of NDP, stressed that:

We disagree with the environmental movement. “We believe a bad tax is a bad tax.

- Carole James, BC NDP Leader

A “bad tax is a bad tax”?  What does that mean anyway? I think she needs to revisit what it means by revenue neutral carbon tax, and how this is a “tax shift” and not a “tax grab”!

I’m glad to see more articles on BC’s carbon tax as the provincial election is officially kicking off today, but i’m disappointed again that the article refers the “carbon tax” as “gas tax”.  BC’s carbon tax is more than just the gas tax…  In BC, only 14% of the carbon tax collected is from gasoline and diesel for transportations!

2 Comments

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  By Jay, April 14, 2009 @ 10:18 pm

  I admit I’m just starting to try to understand what this is all about. The concept of ‘revenue neutral’ is fine but its impact to climate change is not clear to me. My concept about tax is either to collect money to improve something, or to control the rate of (ab)using something. There’s tollways that you pay to go through. The government collect the toll to repair/improve the road. There’s also highways that use toll to limit traffic flow. The carbon tax sounds like the latter. It’s redistribution of taxes. This is fine. What I’m not sure is whether this mechanism will really discourage people from wasting energy. Say if I receive a 5% income tax cut but I use this saved money to buy more gasoline and use it. Eventually not only it is revenue neutral, it could also be carbon neutral.
  In my opinion, we should use the tax to the source where the tax is collected on. You collect money on a broken road and use it to repair the road, then nobody would complain. If the money is used to build a school, that’s okay too, but some people may complain.
  My point is, use the carbon tax to research and development on renewable energy technology. Use the money to build the infrastructure. Use it to transform our energy system to adopt new alternatives.

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  By flo, April 15, 2009 @ 11:19 pm

  Hey Jay - well, the word “tax” was just not the best way to describe the “carbon tax” in BC - because people like to associate “tax” with a negativity…. if the BC government collects the tax to invest in green technologies, then like you said, it’s the same as fixing road with taxes. But people don’t want to pay more tax!

  The “revenue neutral” carbon tax allows you to have the incentive to be more responsible to the world and allows you to have th option on what you want to do with the gas tax that you paid. Sure, as individuals, you can save the money, buy an ipod, whatever you wish, and it’s great because it’s not in the government’s pocket. But Carbon tax doesn’t just impact individuals, it impacts every entity in BC - municipalities, companies, industries. Now municipalities, who also get the revenue neutral carbon tax back from the government, are investing and will keep investing in green technologies! Same thing will likely be found for companies and industries, where the economic impact is much more significant than individual level.

  In order to achieve carbon neutrality (which we can not because we’ll always need to use gasoline, natural gas, and other fossil fuels), we’ll need to offset our carbon emissions. And with that, there are business cases for private companies to invest in green technologies to become the “dealer” of carbon offsets! And don’t forget that we’ll ultimately be in part of a cap-and-trade system where these green investments may get more revenue from other parties in the cap-and-trade system!

  In my view, this whole movement is definitely a paradigm shift! We all need to sacrifice and make changes, not just the government. and taking more money from our pocket is really not that most popular way to go.

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