Posted on 05/27/2008 6:21:33 AM PDT by Clive
OTTAWA -The cash-strapped Liberal party plans to spend a precious chunk of its election reserve to advertise their carbon tax when the scheme is unveiled next month.
Imagine that. The first election-revving pitch by an official opposition boxed about the ears for more than a year by bare-knuckle Conservative attack ads will be to sell Canadians on higher energy taxes.
Some insiders suggest the plan should be launched with defiant fanfare at the Calgary Petroleum Club. Those Liberals sure have a warped sense of humour.
Wherever it's launched, there will be no mention of a "carbon tax". They'll call it "carbon pricing" or some other weasel words, but the impact will still be higher gasoline prices and home heating bills.
No, no, no, Liberals will insist in the ad campaign. This won't be a tax hitting at the pumps or in the furnace. It will only tax oil refineries and power generators. And where, pray tell, does one expect that tax bump to land? Why back on the motorist and homeowner, of course.
The reason the Liberals are embracing what appears to be the purple Kool-Aid of policy is because polls show a carbon tax is reluctantly accepted for the greener good, even though Liberal leader Stephane Dion is still at the musing stage and not ready to discuss the fine print.
The Conservatives aren't waiting for the details. They've conducted focus groups on carbon taxation showing that while the general notion of taxing pollution is dandy, discussing the cost to individuals dramatically increases public resistance.
That's why the Harper government is already road-testing a fear-mongering campaign to blame the Liberals for introducing the mother of all gas-tax grabs.
And that's why the Liberals have assigned their best communications brains to marketing the tax as an effective carbon-reduction tool that won't unfairly whack the consumer.
It will be a tough sell.
The Liberal promise to make it "revenue neutral", returning what they collect at the smokestack as income tax reductions, is fraught with logistical challenges.
Income status does not necessarily drive carbon consumption. The middle class usually can't afford the high cost of downtown or inner city housing, for example. They're squeezed into an outer suburbia, often without mass transit, that sentences them to a gas-guzzling life of rush-hour commuting.
Seniors on fixed incomes may live in heritage family homes that are not the most energy efficient, but lack the means to improve them. Again the Liberals boast they have an answer: Rebates will be sent to the poor fireplace-huddled masses forced by unique circumstances to shoulder an unfair amount of carbon taxation.
That sounds like a bureaucracy being born to me and makes you wonder how much after-rebate money will be left for general income tax cuts.
Yet despite all the negatives and unknowns, Liberals are starting to sense they have the unlikeliest of winners on both policy and political fronts.
Alone as carbon tax cheerleaders, facing equal derision from the Conservatives and the New Democrats, the Liberals find themselves claiming ownership over an environmental concept that seems popular, at least temporarily.
And they're finding friends in the strangest places. Even the hardest-right conservative columnists -- yes, that's you Andrew Coyne -- are on side with the tax and usually caustic commentators -- why, hello there Rex Murphy -- praise Mr. Dion's stand as courageous and consistent.
I'm not sure how consistent it is for Mr. Dion, whose own leadership platform loudly denounced the carbon tax, to suddenly flip-flop and fold the concept into his election pamphlet, but such are the shifting sands of pre-election politics.
However, the central question still nags: Will it change industry or consumer behaviour enough to reduce the carbon footprint?
Well, not so much in Norway, the first country to embrace carbon taxation in the early 1990s, where it gets very lackluster reviews. The Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change noted only a short-term adjustment before people returned to old consumption patterns. And Statistics Norway gives its carbon-cutting performance a shrug: "Despite considerable taxes and price increases for some fuel-types, the carbon tax effect has been modest," it reported.
The Liberals don't really care. The only effect that matters to them is the impact on voters.
They know it could reenergize the party's environmental credentials or turn the next campaign into a taxing experience with significant seat losses.
The stakes are incredibly high. That's why the Liberal carbon tax sales job -- and the Conservatives countering the tax as a snow job -- is starting now.
dmartin@nationalpost.com
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The Carbon Tax - Because fuel prices are not high enough!
This is criminal act - joint criminal enterprise to defraud taxpayers.
Canadian territory CREATES more Oxygen than Canada consumes. This Oxygen comes from CO2 on Canadian territory.
Insted of PAYING Carbon tax, Canada should RECEIVE Carbon credit ransom, if this stupidity makes any difference.
Believing that Human activity creates Global warming is no different from other primitive fixations (singing to bring rain, avert earthquaqe or offering sacrifice to have a better harvest).
Global warming is related to Solar activity and human stupidity to understand it.
Does anyone have an idea how we can organize and stop this criminal activity?
For example, class action to sue for fraud?
At last we are getting to the core of the whole “cap and trade” carbon exchange deal - it is the basis of a new means of taxation. People with small “carbon footprints” that is well below some arbitrary level which is “acceptable”, may sell some of their “unused” carbon credits to some major consumer of carbon. But the user of the vast amounts of carbon, far above his (or her) allotted portion, is taxed on carbon consumption, with a graduated scale increasing up to some almost confiscatory level, providing and absolute top limite of how much carbon any one person may use.
Now, how would this apply to corporations? Simple, since the corporation is by law, a “person”, the same taxation rules would apply. Therefore, any or all corporations may only reach a certain size, when it becomes fiscally not feasible for them to expand further, as the “excess” use of carbon provides them with no incentive.
Conclusion, fewer people on the planet means that each person may have a LARGER artificial limitation on the amount of “carbon credits” to each individual. Conversely, the more human beings there are on the planet, the FEWER “carbon credits” may be accorded to each individual.
Talk about a zero-sum game. There would NEVER be any room for expansion.
I like how it was explained to me:
Cap and Trade = Huge Carbon Tax + Corporate Welfare.
Cap and Trade = Huge Carbon Tax + Corporate Welfare.
Cap and Trade = cap our prosperity + trade-in our standard of living
It may be more accurate to say...
Cap prosperity + Trade liberty
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