Angry in the Great White North

The Liberal Party is living the carbon tax dream.  In order to keep the Earth's oceans from boiling away (or something like that), the Liberals are buying carbon offsets to pay for the extra emissions being created by Stephane Dion's old campaign plane:

The Liberals found their campaign plane - a 30-year-old gas-guzzling Boeing 737 owned by Air Inuit - only 10 days ago. The Tories have had their plane - an Airbus 319 - on retainer since they lost the 2004 election.

The Liberal plane is 35 per cent less fuel efficient than the Airbus 319, which the New Democrats are also using. It costs between $18,000 and $20,000 an hour to fly.

Mr. Dion acknowledges the plane is not environmentally friendly, but said the Liberals will purchase offset credits through CarbonZero, a Toronto firm involved in measuring carbon emissions.

Pretend the carbon offset is a stand-in for the carbon tax.  We'll use the word "tax" for the rest of this piece.

But the Liberals do not want to actually pay the tax.  Nor are they willing or able to change their behaviour to compensate for the tax.  Instead, they want to pass that cost on to their consumers.  From an email from Greg Fergus sent out to Canadians:

However, these carbon offsets [ie, carbon taxes] are a campaign expense, so we need you to help us lead by example. Please make a donation to help cover these costs. One hundred percent of any donation you make today will go directly towards paying for our campaign’s carbon offsets [ie, carbon taxes].

Now if people give to the Liberal Party to cover the cost of the tax, then the Liberal Party won't learn the lesson of using more fuel efficient aircraft.  If the Liberal Party was forced to find room in the existing budget to cover the cost of the carbon tax, perhaps by reducing the election ad buy or by reducing the staff in the Liberal war room, then the message would be delivered that greenhouse gas emissions are expensive for the organization making them.

Instead, the Liberals are trying to pass the cost on, so that they can operate business-as-usual.

To me, a perfect example of why Stephane Dion's carbon tax won't work.

We should all thank Stephane Dion and the Liberals.  After spending a whole summer of trying, they have finally made is clear what is going to happen should this carbon tax be implemented.  Everything will get more expensive, including election campaigns.  And we'll be asked to pay for it.

Liberals who care for the environment ought not to answer this call with cheques.  If the Liberals find that they have to pay for the carbon tax themselves, perhaps next time they'll give more thought about the environment when embarking on an election campaign.

Addendum: Note that in this example, there is no revenue neutralizing income tax cut or special rebate.  If there was, there would be even less reason for the Liberals to do something environmentally constructive with regards to their travel arrangements.