Cheerleaders for the Carbon Tax

This is old - so old that these cheerleaders no longer actively cheer for the carbon tax as the liberal leader in Canada.  But I still find it ammusing =p.  I met Stéphane Dion when he was promoting the Green Shift in Kingston, Ontario.  Hope you enjoy it =)

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!

BC Carbon Tax - more than just tax, BC needs energy change!

I like this article, written by a few gurus of the climate change experts in Canada, and published on the Vancouver Sun last week.  It’s a pretty easy read with loads of great information.  Most importnatly, it’s great to see postive articles about carbon tax, especially at election time.  It’s crucial to understand current policies regarding to carbon tax and (eventual) cap and trade systems that we will have in BC, and it’s crucial to understand these policies to make an informed decision for BC, whatever your decision might be.

They commented that to ultimately get to a zero carbon economy, three most important steps are:

• energy efficiency and conservation;  
• renewable energy; and 
• price on carbon.

Energy Efficiency - reduce energy consumption through increasing energy efficiency.  Luckily as wasteful as we are in Canada, we have lots of opportunities to increase energy efficiency.  But these come with a price tag:  we pay to become more energy efficient!

Renewable energy - whenever possible, consider renewable energy options.  ”Renewable Energy” does not need to be as sexy as wind turbines or solar panels.  Whenever we can reduce “engineered” resources it’s great.  rain water collection is a great example.

Price on carbon - Yes, we need to put a price on carbon; and it will cost us!  Through the carbon neutral tax and a cap-and-trade system that is in the plan, this integrated system will allow us to move towards a carbon neutral community.  And don’t forget that in addition to paying for carbon, there’ll also be business cases to be involved in this area!  Money doesn’t just disappear (well, maybe they do), if we’re paying for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and carbon, then this amount of money could be used to feed back to the system!

The authors:

• Guy Dauncey is president of the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association;
• Will Horter is executive director of the Dogwood Initiative; 
• Merran Smith is climate director with ForestEthics; Tzeporah 
• Berman is executive director of PowerUP Canada; 
• Michele Patterson is acting vice-president, WWF-Canada — Pacific Region; 
• Ian Gill is president of Ecotrust Canada, and Greg Gowe is a staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law Association.

Food for thought - carbon footprint of rice

Since I started reading about meats and their carbon footprints, I figured I should check the carbon footprint for some of my favourite food.  I grew up eating rice, so I googled rice carbon footprint.  It was a huge surprirse to me when I found out that rice has a much higher carbon footprint comparing to beef on the same weight basis.  According to this article, rice contributes 24 times more greenhouse gases to the environment than even beef and per pound rice is equivalent of 276  5 to 35? pounds of CO2-equivilant! NOTE: the author of the above mentioned article has had several discussions with readers to verify the actual CO2-equivalent figures based o n various literature sources. In one discussion he realizes that the calculation was off by 100 times, but does not believe that a number approximately 1000x smaller is the “right” number. Follow his discussions here. There has yet to be a conclusion - the number he still believed would to be 5 and 35 lbs of CO2-equivalent per lb rice produced. Something I should really look into as well…..

It might be one thing to stop eating beef, but it’s not really possible for me to stop eating rice!!  

So why does rice have such a high carbon footprint?  It is because methane is produced during flooded rice cultivation by the decomposition of organic matter in the soil.  Details to the carbon footprint of rice cultivation can be found in the agriculture section of the 2009 Draft U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report.

So what can we do?  Apparently the most significant factor for methane release is related to the amount of water that the rice is grown under!  In some areas where rice fields are not flooded, no methane is created!  Similarly, if the water level is more than 1m (so called deepwater rice fields), methane production is also limited.  In other words, if rice production is from shallow flooding (which is most of the case), then the amount of methane and therefore its carbon footprint is much much more significant.  

As someone growing up eating rice, most of the time I am quite picky about the type of rice (long grain, short grain, and so on) than the type of rice farming!  I will need to do a bit more research to find out the carbon footprint of my favourite type of rice…

Food for thought - cheeseburger carbon footprint

This was reported quite a while ago by Jamais Cascio of Open the Future.  Definitely some food for thought…. the carbon footprint of a cheeseburger is approximately 3.6-6.1 kg of CO2-equivalent per burger, similar to driving with 1L of gasoline.  Depending on the fuel efficiency, that means about 10km of driving….  Isn’t that amazing?!  WOW….  

A friend and I have talked about developing food carbon labels for a while, i guess it is already being developed.  When will we be seeing them on the mainstream market?  I can’t wait =)