Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
Masters of Greenwash: B.C.’s Carbon Tax Is No Answer to Climate Change
by Roger Annis
When it comes to the greenwashing of politics, no government in Canada can equal the Liberal Party government here, headed by Premier Gordon Campbell.
Last year, Campbell made a much ballyhooed announcement that his government intended to legislate a 33% reduction in carbon emissions by the year 2020 and aim for an 80% reduction by 2050. No plan for how to achieve these lofty goals accompanied the announcement, and the province’s residents are still waiting for one.
Vancouver, British Columbia — In a budget released on February 19, the government announced a
new “carbon tax” that now occupies centre-stage of its carbon reduction
goals. The province becomes the first jurisdiction in North America to
introduce such a tax. It will penalize users of fossil fuels with a
levy of $10 per ton of carbon emissions, eventually rising to $30 per
ton. For gasoline, that means an initial tax of 2½ cents per litre.
Billions for roads, ports, fossil fuel
The government’s emissions reduction goals are laughable because everything it is doing ensures that they will never be reached.
Shortly
after the Liberals were first elected in 2001, they abolished the
province’s environment ministry, cutting 1,000 jobs. One of its
functions was to monitor violations of pollution laws and prosecute
offenders.
The same budget that introduced the carbon tax gives
tax breaks to oil and gas companies to boost exploration and
production. And several of the most polluting industries in the
province are exempt, including production of natural gas, cement, and
aluminium.
The B.C. and Canadian governments are charging ahead
with huge expansions of two shipping ports in the province —Vancouver
and Prince Rupert. These will facilitate the export of fossil fuels and
the import of manufactured goods to markets across North America. The
movement of ships is one of the largest emitters of carbon dioxide and
other pollutants. The port expansions necessarily require more
associated roads and railways.
The Vancouver part of this plan,
the “Gateway Program,” will spend more than $5 billion on port and rail
expansion and a huge extension of bridges and highways in the
metropolitan region. A significant movement of opposition has sprung
up, but so far both governments are sticking to their guns.
No answer on public transit
Another
target of the provincial government’s greenwashing is public transit.
In January, it announced it would add $14 billion to transit spending
across the province by 2011.
Public transit in the Vancouver
region is woefully inadequate. Service cannot keep up with demand, and
fares are rising sharply. Rail lines that could be used for transit sit
idle. Bus travel is crowded and inadequate. Successive governments in
B.C. have invested in an overhead rapid transit system called
“skytrain” that provides inferior service and starves the transit
system of funding for less costly and more functional technologies such
as light rail and buses.
Most of the announced $14 billion will
go towards more skytrains. Construction of a third skytrain line began
several years ago in order to reach the Vancouver airport in time for
the 2010 Winter Olympics. It will cost at least $2 billion, more than
$100 million per kilometre. Without a broad, effective rebuilding of
the entire transit system, this massive spending on skytrain will not
reduce automobile travel by any appreciable amount.
The carbon
tax fits the policy pattern of provincial governments in Canada that
have engineered a massive shift in the taxation system, away from
progressive income tax and in favour of regressive consumption taxes.
This has been accompanied by massive reductions in taxation of
corporate profits.
Nowadays in British Columbia, everything is
up for greenwash. One of the measures in the latest budget is
elimination of a tax on the income of financial institutions operating
in the province. This tax was originally introduced some years ago in
response to the obscene profits they were earning. The Vancouver Sun
editorialized on February 23 that the removal of the tax, “should
unburden the financial services sector, which employs about 27,000
British Columbians in clean, green jobs.” This would be the “sector”
whose financing work will facilitate expansion of fossil fuel
exploration and extraction, road expansion, etc.
Liberal environmentalists endorse the greenwash
More
road building, continued subsidies to corporate polluters, inadequate
plans for transit expansion, rising consumption taxes that hit the poor
the hardest — this doesn’t sound like much of a “green” plan for the
future of British Columbia, or the world. Despite that, some liberal
environmentalists in B.C. have welcomed the government’s plans.
Kevin
Washbrook, director of Voters Taking Action on Climate Change, says the
carbon tax is “good news.” He told the weekly Georgia Straight that the
tax should be $30 per ton from the get-go, instead of the miserly $10
per ton.
“They’re building a good track record,” commented Lisa Matthaus of the Sierra Club of Canada.
Ian
Bruce of the Suzuki Foundation called the transit plan “a good step
forward,” and said the carbon tax will promote development of green
technologies and make B.C. an environmental leader.
Labour needs to revisit positions
The
farce unfolding in British Columbia demonstrates the need for an
independent and forceful campaign on the climate change crisis, one
that places the onus on those who caused the problem in the first place
— greedy corporations and compliant governments. Trade unions and
associated political movements should be taking a lead.
But the
labour movement’s record to date is pretty abysmal. The New Democratic
Party and most unions supported the bid for the 2010 Olympics, a
greenhouse gas-generating monster if every there was one. They also
supported the airport skytrain line boondoggle. For years they have
watched in silence as paper and wood products companies have destroyed
the province’s forests with clearcutting and other environmentally
destructive practices.
But fresh winds are blowing within labour
on climate issues, creating new openings to revisit past positions and
deepen a debate over the future.
Eliminating the pollution
threat to humanity and the rest of the earth’s biosystem requires a
fundamental shift in how the world’s economy is organized. The profit
drive and the belief that the earth’s resources are unlimited must be
replaced with a planned economy that both meets human social and
cultural needs and strictly respects humanity’s dependence on a healthy
biosphere.
An important step in this direction is establishing
free and effective public transit. The unelected board of directors
that runs Vancouver’s transit system represents the interests of
companies that profit from the movement of goods, real estate interests
that make a killing along the routes of rapid transit lines, and
construction companies that have an interest in having cumbersome and
expensive technologies adopted.
Summing up in fine style a
capitalist’s approach to public transit, federal government finance
minister James Flaherty recently explained why his government is
providing funding to Vancouver for skytrain expansion:
“It’s about
reducing traffic congestion so goods can get to market on time.”
Public
transit should be about creating a better society and eliminating the
killer pollution caused by cars and trucks. It should be organized by
elected bodies that represent ordinary citizens. Their job is to meet
people’s need for cheap, comfortable and effective transportation.
Consumption
taxes like the B.C. government’s carbon tax cannot solve the earth’s
looming environmental calamity. They punish the poorest people in
society for the follies and excesses of the wealthiest.
Climate
change writer and activist Ian Angus explained in a recent article why
carbon taxes won’t stop greenhouse gas emissions: “So long as
corporations are free to invest as they see fit, any carbon tax that is
high enough to be effective will lead to capital flight, not to
investment in new technology.” If carbon taxes are to be part of an
effective anti-emissions policy, he says;
“they must be coupled with
broad-scale economic planning and a determined effort to shut down the
Alberta tar sands and other major emitters.”
In a recent article in the online journal, Climate and Capitalism, Angus proposed six steps to reduce carbon emissions:
Unilaterally
adopt and implement the emission reduction targets proposed by the
experts in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: 25%-40% below
1990 levels by 2020, and 50%-85% by 2050.
Instead of carbon taxes
and carbon exchange schemes, impose hard limits on the emissions
produced by the largest resource and energy companies.
Stop all expansion of the tar sands — and then shut them down quickly.
Redirect
military spending and the federal budget surplus into public
energy-saving projects such as expanding mass transit and retrofitting
homes and office buildings. Tar sands workers and redeployed soldiers
can play key roles in this effort.
Recognize Canada’s ecological
debt to the Third World and to indigenous peoples. Clean up the damage
that Canada’s capitalists have caused, provide assistance in adapting
to climate change, and transfer the resources and technology needed for
clean economic development.
Get the science staight first! written by Ray,
March 26, 2008
To impose such a tax on some public opinion of environmentalists that have no clue of what science is, is definitely insane. It is clear that this tax is a great opportunity for Gordy's friends to make tons of money, and nothing else.
One day, the hoax of anthropogenic global warming will be exposed... will we get our money back and throw those traitors in jail? I hope so!
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One day, the hoax of anthropogenic global warming will be exposed... will we get our money back and throw those traitors in jail? I hope so!
We really need elections in this province.