Daily Score Blog

Last week, BC’s New Democratic Party put a misleading attack on the province’s world-leading carbon tax shift at the center of its long-shot campaign to regain control of the province's government in the May 12 elections. The campaign officially kicked off today.

As I said in October, I hope this argument won't work.  The NDP—a party Sightline proudly advised and collaborated with during its last term in power—is playing fast and loose with the facts. Some people I respect in the province are steaming mad. Here’s BC conservation advocate Tzeporah Berman in today’s Globe and Mail: "There is no question that environmentalists should be punishing the NDP for their regressive position on climate change. . . . Many environmentalists, like me, feel betrayed by Carole James." Berman campaigned for the NDP four years ago. Why the enmity?

Because the NDP has taken aim at what is perhaps the single most progressive and environmentally responsible climate policy in the province--and one of the best in the world. The first specific complaint the party  platform levels against the governing Liberal Party’s policies (on page 3) is the assertion that they “increase taxes for average families by tripling the gas tax.” This claim is demonstrably false, as I'll show.

“Gas tax?!” Hmmph. NDP leaders surely understand that BC’s climate policy is a carbon tax, not a "gas tax." A carbon tax covers gasoline, it’s true, along with all other fossil fuels. A gas tax only covers gasoline. By the NDP’s logic, a retail sales tax would also be a gas tax if it covered gasoline (along with other things). The party is using "gas tax" to unfairly incite voters to opposea a smart policy.

In fact, the first legislative priority listed in the platform--also given pride of place in party leader Carole James's op-ed in today’s Vancouver Sun--is to scrap the carbon tax shift: “Gordon Campbell’s gas tax is unfair and it doesn’t work. Working people pay, while big polluters are let off the hook and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. The NDP will scrap the tax.”  .

Let’s pull that apart:

Via Andrew Sullivan, here is a fascinating study (pdf) in academic psychology that appears to show the presence of a fairly distinct Northwest personality. The researchers ranked the 50 states plus DC according to the presence of each of five personality traits: extraversion; agreeableness; conscientiousness; neuroticism; and openness.

Northwest states are among the most open and least neurotic places you can find, but we are also among the least extraverted. Not surprisingly, Oregon and Washington perform almost identically on every measure. More interesting, perhaps, is that Alaska, Idaho, and Montana are also very similar in some respects (though quite different in some others).

First, the bad news. If you're looking for extraverts, you've come to the wrong place. Oregon is the most extraverted state in the region, but it ranks only an unfriendly 44th most extraverted. Remember, this is the state who's governor famously said: "Come visit us again and again... But, for heaven's sake, don't come here to live."

The authors of this study, published in The Journal of Urban Planning and Development, quantified the emissions from building materials and construction, home heating and power demands, and transportation energy, in both urban suburban neighborhoods in the Toronto metro area.  And they found that downtown residents use radically less energy, and consequently emit about two-thirds less climate-warming CO2 than their suburban counterparts.  Take a look: