"Carbon Neutrality"

[flamingfingers]

Sounds good, but is it sound?

Public-sector tax pays private-sector benefits

Industry must fund its share if the carbon tax is to really pay its way

By Bob Simpson, Times Colonist October 26, 2011

In the name of "carbon neutrality," the provincial government has capped the carbon emissions of a large portion of the public sector and taxed those emissions at $25 a tonne.

This tax, in the form of an "offset charge," comes out of the cash-strapped operating budgets of health authorities, school districts, universities and colleges, Community Living B.C., B.C. Housing and other public agencies. This offset tax is paid each year to the Pacific Carbon Trust to fund private sector projects that supposedly reduce B.C.'s overall carbon emissions.

Last year a total of $18.2 million was clawed back from the public sector for this offset scheme. This included $5.4 million from the public health sector, $4.4 million from school districts, $3.8 million from post-secondary institutions, and $2.3 million from Crown corporations.

With the exception of school districts, however, this carbon neutral tax is in addition to the carbon tax public agencies pay on their fuel. So, public sector agencies that are forced to achieve "carbon neutrality" each year pay a $25 a tonne carbon tax on their fuel purchases and another $25 a tonne "offset fee" on their emissions from that fuel.

Essentially this means that more than $10 million of your tax dollars that should have gone to direct health care activities and $7 million that should have been spent in post-secondary education facilities went instead to pay a double carbon tax.

Meanwhile, industrial emitters in B.C. pay no tax on their process emissions. As much as 40 per cent of B.C.'s total emissions are not subject to the carbon tax on fuels. For example, the emissions from processing plants that vent excess carbon into the atmosphere from shale gas are not taxed.

The public sector contributes less than one per cent to B.C.'s total greenhouse gas emissions, but they are capped and doubled taxed. The oil and gas industry contributes as much as 21 per cent (and growing) to B.C.'s total emissions, yet this sector is not capped and a large portion of these emissions are not taxed.

The unfairness of this situation was made abundantly clear this spring when Encana Corp., one B.C.'s biggest carbon emitters, was given an undisclosed amount of public money (money that should have been spent in classrooms and hospitals, etc.) from the Pacific Carbon Trust towards a project that supposedly reduced Encana's carbon emissions by 84,000 tonnes.

Meanwhile, Encana is opening a new gas processing plant that will spew an additional 2.2 million tonnes of untaxed GHGs into the atmosphere every year.

This is three times as much as the total annual public sector emissions captured under the government's carbon neutral scheme - from just one industrial plant.

In a time when the premier is talking about fiscal restraint and there is a real potential of more cuts to already tight public sector operating budgets, there is no justification for taking money from the public sector through a double carbon tax and giving that money to profitable corporations that do not pay carbon tax on their processing emissions.

The government's "carbon neutral" claim is a sham anyway. In order to achieve carbon neutrality without bankrupting itself, the government exempted emissions from B.C. Ferries (its largest emissions source), school buses, government projects like the Port Mann Bridge and B.C. Place, public-private partnerships, and not-for-profits that deliver government services. Oh, and the B.C. legislature and its independent officers are not part of the offset scheme either.

It's also a sham because all of the projects the carbon trust funded with your tax money in 2010 either had already happened before the trust came into existence, were in the works, or would have happened without trust money. Yet, the most fundamental principle of the government's "carbon neutral" claim is that the money taken away from classrooms and hospitals leveraged projects which created brand new, never-wouldhave-happened-without-taxpayer-money GHG reductions.

The government should abandon its carbon neutral claim and repeal the carbon neutral legislation that double-taxes the public sector to the benefit of private corporations.

If the government wants to keep the Pacific Carbon Trust offset program alive, then it should tax the 30 to 40 per cent of industrial emissions that are not captured under the current carbon tax and put the money into the trust for both public and private sector GHG emission reduction projects.

That way we can start to address B.C.'s real GHG emissions problem: The 99 per cent of greenhouse emissions in B.C. that are not associated with the public sector and that must be steadily lowered if the province is to achieve its legislated GHG reduction targets.

Bob Simpson is the Independent MLA for Cariboo North.

Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/technology ... z1d1u0Rlzi

[coffeeFreak]

Unless I haven't had enough coffee here flaming, I'm confused about your comment "sounds good but is it sound"? Because the way I'm reading it, is the liberals basically "stole" from the budget of Health and Education to subsidize private business. This article only adds to the list of why we a citizens need kick a certain party to the curb.

[steven lloyd]

This article only adds to the list of why we a citizens need kick a certain party to the curb.

This list is getting ridiculously long, isn't it ?

[Rwede]

Bob Simpson is knocking on the door to be allowed back into his beloved NDP.

[grammafreddy]

Hmmm ... I am confused too, FF, but also confess the first jolt of caffeine has yet to hit this morning.

There is no part of GHG that I agree with and all the carbon tax crap is just that - crap. It's a cash grab tax. Carbon neutrality is also garbage and there's no such thing.

There is no way the people should be funding projects for private enterprise. There is no way the government should be funding education and health with one hand and taking it away to give to private enterprise with the other hand.

The reason the government gets away with it is because of all the wacko envirofreeks who will support anything whether it makes sense or not if the government calls it some shade of green.

[NAB]

Some of the good reasons why those who continually keep harping only on how much money is increasingly allocated to Ministries each year (such as education and health, among others of course) in the budgets are not credible. It has been known for at least 5 or 6 years that the "basic formula" this government operates under is to make a big media deal about the money they promise to give out or spend with one hand, while behind the scenes quietly developing ways to take it away with the other hand. Smoke and Mirrors at its finest LOL.

Nab

[flamingfingers]

So much for "sound" and financially responsible government..

[The Green Barbarian]

So much for "sound" and financially responsible government..

I never understood why Campbell tried to appease the enviro-loons with this carbon neutrality nonsense. They'll never be happy until we're all living in caves freezing to death anyway. Just plain lunacy.

[NAB]

So much for "sound" and financially responsible government..

I never understood why Campbell tried to appease the enviro-loons with this carbon neutrality nonsense. They'll never be happy until we're all living in caves freezing to death anyway. Just plain lunacy.

I agree, in spades! We have to remember however that the enviro movement was at its frenzied peak, and governments all over the world were realizing it was an opportunity to make inroads into territory nomally the domain of left wing voters and pick up support. We also have to remember that it wasn't so much Campbell who put the scheme together and had to do the heavy lifting, but rather his new finance minister of the time, Carole Taylor. (Edit: Former Chair of the CBC before leaving to join the BC Liberal Party and run for a seat in 2005 incidentally ;-) )

Nab