Urgent: Until Oct. 19 you can add your comments to include incentives to reduce emissions in the new BC Budget!!

Hi gang,
Here's an urgent action. Comments are being accepted until this Friday by the BC Finance Committee on the upcoming budget. Consider taking 5 minutes to submit a response to the BC Finance Committee and urge taking real action on the climate change issue. Here's the link

Complete the brief survey that invites your comments and priorities.

Here's what you might suggest: Introduce a phase-in of a tax shift that will financially penalize those individuals and corporations who use the atmosphere as a free dumping ground for carbon emissions, and benefit those who do not.

This would create a financial incentive for individuals and corporations to reduce their carbon footprint. This would have a range of impacts, making it more expensive, for example, to drive that Hummer, and make the development of gas or coal-fired electricity less attractive. At the same time, it would be a financial benefit to those individuals and companies who take steps to reduce their carbon output.

It would be a 'revenue neutral' Carbon Tax: This means that a carbon tax is introduced, and other taxes (ie income taxes) are lowered, so that total revenue to the government remains the same. The most common tax that people propose lowering is income tax. This approach is also known as tax shifting – shifting taxes from a good (income) to a bad (pollution).

At least one European country has had one for over a decade, and Quebec will start phasing one in next year. BC politicians need to understand that this is the direction that voters want in BC as well. Then we can work on the rest of Canada, and the western states. It is not a cure-all, but it is an important start that is politically possible.

A recent op-ed in the New York times gives some background info