As the story goes, B.C.’s premier Gordon Campbell was in China touring the new Olympic stadium, when he was enveloped by a stinging haze of pollution.
The eye-watering, throat irritating experience pushed our premier to become an Al Gore disciple and before you could say “choke,” B.C. consumers became the first North American casualties in the controversial war against global warming.
Under new policies announced in the latest B.C. Budget, you will pay beginning July 1 an extra 2.4 cents per litre of gasoline at the pump to discourage use of fossil fuels.
The new consumer-based carbon tax, a North American first — which also impacts home heating costs — will go up every year to make us all feel warm and fuzzy about doing our bit for the environment.
That means Joe Average who can’t afford a house in Vancouver near his office and drives in from Chilliwack will have less to spend stocking up his fridge.
If he wants to keep buying those extra Haagen Dazs chocolate ice-cream bars, he can spend three hours on unpredictable public transit every day and have less time for his family and community.
Campbell and his John Fluevog-heeled finance minister Carole Taylor insist this is not so.
The tax will be revenue-neutral. What’s more, they have kindly offered us a one-time $100 cheque in June to adjust to the cost of the tax. Corporate and personal income tax rates will drop to help make the tax revenue-neutral, they promise.
While we wait for those bold assumptions to materialize, there is another side to this story that shows Campbell’s going-green philosophy is a smoke and mirrors show.
Do not be fooled — those toxin-laden clouds of pollution that wrapped Campbell in China are also making their way across the Pacific and piling up against the West Coast.
The People’s Republic of China is the world’s biggest air polluter and thanks to prevailing wind patterns, a lot of its pollution ends up right here.
As much as 40 per cent of the air pollution West Coast states breathe originates in China, said Peter Brookes, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
Sensors in the Sierra Nevada Mountains have identified huge Chinese pollution clouds that cross the Pacific Ocean to the North American West Coast.
In California, Oregon and Washington, American studies show that sulfur from China is at an alarming level. Overall, researchers believe a third of California’s air pollution (and a fifth of Oregon’s) originates in China.
In one severe dust storm in spring 1998, particle pollution levels in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia soared. Measurements by the University of Washington showed that 75 per cent of it came from China.
While you get dinged with a political pie-in-the sky idealistic grab at your wallet, the industrial behemoth belching toxic fumes across the Pacific will be building 50 to 100 new coal-burning power plants a year — that’s one a week — until 2012.
That unfettered expansion will outstrip all the possible gains envisioned under the Kyoto environmental treaty.
While we pay to park our cars, China will have 150 million to 300 million vehicles on the road by 2020, dumping tons of additional CO2 into the air with little, or no, pollution regulation whatsoever.
Bottom line, China’s pollution will nullify any moves here in B.C. to clean up the planet’s atmosphere.
As one pundit put it: “Even if cars were completely banned in B.C., China’s air pollution will be reaching the pure lungs of the left-wing who believe that everyone should be walking and riding bicycles — made in China of course.”
Campbell plans two more trips to China before this year is out.
How about a Beijing bombshell, Mr. Premier?
Announce a carbon tax on imports from China to B.C. to level the breathing room.
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