British Columbia: Carbon Tax and Cap-and-Trade. Editorial, Montreal Gazette, April 7, 2008. "British Columbia's Greenhouse Gas Reduction (Cap and Trade) Act, announced Thursday, is part of the province's contribution to the Western Climate Initiative [in which last year] seven U.S. states, Manitoba and B.C. joined forces... to design a way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. B.C. already has in place an intelligently designed, revenue-neutral carbon tax [which is] expected to bring in $600 million a year... [of which] every dollar collected... is... to be returned... in the form of reductions in other taxes. In a sign of how difficult it is... to take on the biggest polluters, B.C. temporarily exempted from its carbon tax... the province's worst polluters... the same corporate actors that this week fought furiously against being included in the... cap-and-trade regime. The... plan [calls for] hard caps, actual emissions targets [not pegged to how much the emitter] produces or [its] projected growth. This is unlike the system the federal government is looking at, a so-called intensity-based... program, in which companies are... allowed to increase... overall emissions if total production grows... B.C. is taking the politically difficult but more responsible route. The question is whether it couldn't achieve the same goal more efficiently through a more widely applied carbon tax [which is,] by its nature, predictable, stable, transparent and easily understood."
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