i think this is the best thing these Liberals have done (and no, I am not typically a BC Liberal supporter).

I think the carbon tax is a good thing, and yes I am a northerner.

Carbon reduction is a great idea..
can't say I am thrilled about the way it has been implemented...

I do feel though that unless everyone in the world gets on with it the weather currents are just going to circulate the bad air right back at us.

Sort of a waste of time I think....
at this time anyways.

The carbon tax is nothing but a tax grab end of story.

Oh yeah and yes I'm a northerner, I can't wait until I turn the furnace back on this winter. Or maybe not.

Just took a look at the B.C. gov. website regarding the carbon tax...they suggest replacing all your light bulbs with compact flourescents and buy a more fuel efficient vehicle.
Replacing light bulbs over time as needed makes more sense to me than replacing all at once because the resources have already been extracted and pollution has been emitted to produce the old bulbs.
Has there been any research done regarding the environmental cost of keeping an older vehicle running versus buying a new more fuel efficient vehicle?
New vehicles probably have twice the parts of my older car and no doubt cause much more pollution than when manufactured than did my old car.
If I did replace my car I am sure the metal would be recycled which causes pollution to strip the paint and the rest of the car would end up in an landfill causing more pollution...what should I do?Seems like a lose lose proposition.

Those are very thought provoking comments, hindsight. In the rush to be GREEN, we may well be spending a dollar to save two cents. In my opinion, the only angle of attack the greenies would have against the notion would be the less efficient motor in the old car. It might indeed make more sense to upgrade the old to be a little more efficient, rather than sustain the scenario you describe. Myself, I bought an obscene amount of diesel fuel yesterday to save the .02 something per litre.
metalman.

tax needed for 2010.

I was hoping to take my family to the Canada day events at the park today but we cannot afford to burn the gas so we won't go. But I guess that is what those communist Liberals wanted us to do we must all stay home don't burn gas so the planet will be a greenier place (ya right) ride a bike well not a bad thing but I live on the hart and my little ones will have a hard time coming home up the hill, take the bus well if it was running not a bad idea, walk guess we could do that but will take a long while. I hope we can make it before those mosquitos chew us apart. I also hope the ones that chew us are not Liberals because they will suck the blood right out of us before we get home and we won't have a chance to cash in our giant windfall that the Liberals sent us on Friday. Have a green and safe summer everyone and remember, the May elections are only ten months away.

If it's “revenue neutral”, then why waste money printing checks and refunding us our hard earned money? I don't see how that will discourage me from driving! I only see how I will have to payout hundreds of dollars a year more because the government won't legislate clean air...

Why not start building the infrastructure for the hydrogen car? I saw a news clip last week about one that is on the road now. About a hundred of them and they expect to be ready for mass production in 6 or 7 years. Wouldn't it be nice to have the infrastructure in place so that people could buy their next new vehicle as one that has zero emissions AND be able to drive it?!?!

10 months seems like such a long time!
And while I don't believe Gordo and his gang will lose the next provincial election for a second,I would like to see them take a major hit from the people of B.C.,just so they begin to understand that we are not a bunch of mindless puppets.
Particularly here in the north, where we don't have what they have on the lower mainland.
And never will.
That is the part that Campbell missed bigtime!
Bringing in a so called "carbon tax/money grab" is one thing,but it should at least have been applied fairly,and that is not the case.
What kind of a government kicks you when you are down?
We have a major problem here in the north in regards to the forest industry and our economy and it isn't going away anytime soon.
People,lots of people,are hurting.
When fuel prices started to skyrocket,Gordon Campbell and his gang should have backed off,even if it was only until things stabilized somewhat.
The fact that he choose not to do that tells me that the Liberals have a problem and a big one.
It's called Gordon Campbell, and if the Liberals want to survive,the party needs to eat him,and before the next election.
He has become a serious liabiltiy.
It also tells me that there IS in fact a hidden agenda, and my guess is it is a serious cash flow problem that will relate to 2010 and a few other gross expenditures on the lower mainland over the next 2 years.

Good points hindsight.

I read somewhere that it takes more energy to make a car than the energy which the car uses during its lifetime.

I don't know for sure--but this makes sense to me.

If this was correct a new average vehicle which lasted for 200,000km would use somewhere around 25,000 litres of gas.
The energy which is used to manufacture a car is mostly electricity and natural gas and some diesel and oils which make the plastic. The nuclear or hydro electricity is far cheaper than gasoline, and you could guess that the equivalent amount of energy could be used which would cost around 10,000.00 to make the car.

Even though the price of this energy is less per unit, the consumption is significant and perhaps equivalent to the gas energy which the car burns in its lifetime.
The question would therefore be:
Is it better to keep buying new vehicles which get moderly better fuel mileage when it takes so much energy to make these new cars? A crude calculation would suggest that your new car would need to be twice as fuel efficent to use the same energy as keeping the old one for another 200,000 kms.

The second dilemma involves auto emmissions versus fuel economy.
Do we make cars which produce less emissions at the expense of less fuel economy. My experience in Europe is that their cars get far greater mileage (nearly twice) but produce more emissions.

If "dirty energy" such as oil from the tar sands is required to fuel our continent, has anyone calculated the increased emmissions caused from producing this oil as opposed to lowering consumption through vehicles which get better mileage but less than ideal emmissions?
Of 2 barrels of oil produced from the tar sands it takes one more barrel to extract and refine the 2 barrels (or a half a barrel for each barrel sold.)

This might work economically--but does it work for conservation or total emmissions?
Buying a new slightly more efficent car which burns gasoline solves nothing in my opinion and the only answer is alternative fuels.

I wonder how many trucks and big SUV's are going to be replaced in PG when gas eventually hits 2-3 bucks per litre? Take it to the bank folks, within 2-3 years, you'll be paying as much to fill up a car as you currently do to fill up a truck. The carbon tax is the least of our concerns when it comes to what gas prices are going to keep doing.

Oh and for the record, I have no problem with the intent of the carbon tax. It could use some work on how it gets applied and I don't think it should be applied to heating fuel, however, there's little to no doubt that higher gas prices will have an impact on consumer behaviour when it comes to choosing which vehicles to drive and isn't that the point?. We're already seeing this as both GM and Ford are severely cutting back production of trucks and SUV's and shifting their production into smaller cars.

Last year I needed a new car so I looked into the Canadian made ZEN electric car. If the government really wanted to cut down on the emmissions they would allow this car to be sold in BC. It's low price would allow this car to be owned by the majority of Canadians. They only allow the car to be used in Vancouver but you still have to go to Washington State to buy it.

Buying a new slightly more efficent car which burns gasoline solves nothing in my opinion and the only answer is alternative fuels.

The last time I filled my Toyota (two days ago) it cost me about $40.00. How much would it cost to fill up an SUV or one of those 350 dullies ? let me guess $100.00 or maybe $150.00?

Cheers

wanna be green? keep your car for a long time, its a lot greener than buying a new hybrid. If we all bought hybrids the price of the precious metals used in the electronics and the big battery would shoot through the roof. On top of that we would need more open pit mines full of heavy equipment etc, etc, etc. Then, in ten years the landfills would be full of toxic batteries from these hybrids. I've read somewhere (maybe a mainstream corporate owned newspaper) when you factor in the energy used in development and manufacturing the prius actually has a bigger carbon footprint than a hummer....BS or not?
While hybrids are a great idea that came too late, they are not the saviour of the environment that many drivers think they are.

Corporate Corruption and Government collusion at its finest.

The horse I bought to replace my car gives of more emissions and pollution than my Mercury Sable. But being positive, I may get some bucks for the after effects, because the Government has had no problem in selling us a pile of HS!

Our gov has been trying to do away with the middle class in this country and we are getting closer to their dream.

Soon to be only the rich and the poor in Canada.

"Our gov has been trying to do away with the middle class in this country and we are getting closer to their dream"

Which government? Municipal? Provincial? Federal? Also, which party and which councillors, MLA's and MP's?

And finally the big question, why would they do that and how exactly would they accomplish such a feat when they can't even agree on mundane things at the best of time?

Trackster. Park you horse around City Hall
the HS will never be noticed because of the huge amount being deposited on a daily basis by the Mayor and his co-horts.

"A crude calculation would suggest that your new car would need to be twice as fuel efficent to use the same energy as keeping the old one for another 200,000 kms."

Payback calculations on improvements in technology to reduce ongoing operating costs are very important. Typically to go to higher efficiency furnaces, for instance, has not been that good until recently. If your equipment is about to go anywher, then it becomes another story.

Even then, any premium one pays to get a cheaper operating cost takes some time to recover as in several years.

Most people who have gone out of their way to be environmentally responsible have not done so because it is cheaper. They have done so because it feels good for them.

So, to do it so that people will actually make a change, will require a considerable narrowing of that return on investment timeframe. Some countries realized that during the last oil crisis in the 1970s and they have started to reap some of the benefits this time around and will do much more so in the short term ahead.

I just don't get it. People complaining about a 2.34 cent/litre carbon tax, with a reduction in personal taxes and a $100 cheque.

Yet we have the NDP's carbon tax plans on their website which states that it will "cost consumers" through hidden taxes.

Likely much greater than the current carbon tax.

So which do you prefer carbon tax do ya prefer... the more expensive and hidden NDP plan?

Thanks for another BS Liberal tax grab Gordo. Is it going to pay for the over run on the Vancouver Convention Centre? Count on my vote next May if I can afford to get to the polling station.

Why are people so up in arms over a couple of cents when the price has gone up by far more than that over the past six months.

At least we knew this increase was coming.

"So which do you prefer carbon tax do ya prefer... the more expensive and hidden NDP plan?"

Looks like Kitimat dodged a bullet: The Liberal's carbon tax exempts aluminum smelters from the carbon tax! The NDP calls that *letting the big polluters off the hook*. Alcan/Rio Tinto announced last year already that a carbon tax on it's Canadian smelters would cause it to move all its smelting capacity to other countries where there is no carbon tax.

Can't smelt aluminum without using large amounts of carbon paste, something like a half tonne of carbon for every tonne of aluminum produced - unless somebody invents an entirely new technology, of course.

Just to clarify Owl.
There are at least two parts to this carbon tax issue.
One being the goal of reducing "total" carbon output and the second being the cost to really accomplish this reduction.

What hindsight touched on was that consumer choices are not as simple as they appear and we could actually cause more harm than good by jumping to act.
The transition from what we have been doing to what we need to be doing to reduce consumption and reduce emissions is more complicated if you look at the total picture. The total picture of the auto is the energy required to make the new car and the emissions caused from this plus the energy which the new car uses and the emissions which it produces as well as the disposal/recycling of the old car.It is also about the amount which we use our auto and the wastefull idling and warmup times which people will quickly stop.

The point was that by prematurely scrapping our existing cars and buy new slightly more fuel efficent cars--we might be doing more harm than good--to the total carbon output.

The economic question is somewhat different as the cost to the consumer to fuel the new car should be somewhat less and this should result in less overall consumption.

You would think that increasing the cost of energy will for sure reduce carbon output and if energy gets high enough, industries will surely fail and a drastic worldwide economic slowdown is inevitable--at least to a level when supply-demand balances and hopefully prices come back down a little.

I'm not holdimg my breath on prices coming down for quite a long and painfull period.

My question is when the world's economics fall to its knees that these environmental choices will become nearly impossible to execute as there will be little money to pay for these expensive changes.

The final and most important question is whether the economic pain will be endured worldwide OR will the economic priorities prevail over carbon reduction objectives?

The time of which this environmental transition is allowed is critical to retaining economic strength to achieve it.