B.C. Carbon tax could be reversed.

Everyone is an environmentalist until it costs them! This is from the Globe and Mail.
It is rather surprising that the NDP should oppose the tax. Perhaps there was consultation. The government consulted environmentalists such as Jaccard and maybe the great guru Suzuki. Of course they did not consult the ordinary citizen. Now they are worried that the great beast of the general public may get restless and hard to control come election time.
Environmentalists are often themselves reasonably well off so the extra costs of some environmental policies may not impact on them to the degree it does on those less well off.




GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS
Carbon tax could be reversed, special adviser to Campbell fears
Political pressure might doom it, he says
IAN BAILEY
June 28, 2008
VANCOUVE -- Premier Gordon Campbell's special adviser on climate change says he fears critical and political pressure could prompt the Liberal government to back off the province's carbon tax.
Mark Jaccard, a noted resource economist at Simon Fraser University, made the comments in an interview yesterday shortly after he joined other academics at a news conference to argue for the tax linked to a 2.34-cent rise in gasoline prices on Canada Day. By 2012, the tax will be at seven cents a litre.
"I've seen politicians reverse themselves before after reading polls, so I want to see a good public discourse out there," Prof. Jaccard said. "I would say this is not a done deal at all."
Prof. Jaccard is a member of B.C.'s Climate Action Team, which was formed to provide feedback to the province's plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions one-third by 2020. He is also a special adviser to the cabinet committee on climate action.
He did not disclose any insider information on the government's intentions, but said he thinks a reversal can't be ruled out as a possibility.
He noted that the Liberals are facing a provincial election next May. Mr. Campbell and his party will be seeking a third consecutive term, and the Premier has warned supporters that a loss of seven seats could plunge the party into opposition.
"If [the Liberal government] see that the NDP, by misinformation or whatever, have gotten hold of a policy that might just help them win an election, then I wouldn't be surprised if the government dropped it, and I think that would set us back a huge amount," he said.
Prof. Jaccard, a critic of the Liberals in the past, is a fan of the B.C. tax, calling it "the best carbon tax I have seen in the world."
Were he advising an NDP government, he said he would urge it to adopt the same tax. It will be applied to all fossil fuels, starting at $10 a tonne of carbon and rising by $5 a year for the next four years, capping out at $30 a tonne in 2012.
He described the opposition's objections, which have included an "Axe-the-Gas-Tax" campaign, as "political posturing" that has prompted him to speak out.
The NDP, which has decried the tax as developed without consultation and imposing an unfair cost on British Columbians, is calling on the Liberal government to withdraw it. NDP Leader Carole James repeated that suggestion yesterday in Williams Lake, where the mayor recently mused about having the community refuse to pay the tax on municipal energy bills as a form of protest.
But Mr. Campbell yesterday showed no signs of changing course.
The Premier took calls on Bill Good's morn