(h/t to Sharon) B.C. [British Columbia] is about to be hit with new taxes to achieve the government’s greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goal of 33% below current levels by 2020. But the BC Liberals were elected to reduce taxes and burdensome regulations, not increase them.

So just how did the premier come up with this goal and what is the outlook for B.C.?

While in Hawaii for his Christmas 2006 vacation, the premier is said to have read a couple of books on catastrophic climate change, including Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Tellingly, the British High Court ruled showing the movie version of that book, and misleading students into believing it accurately represented climate science, was in violation of the political indoctrination section of the country’s Education Act. The experience in Europe goes beyond propaganda, however. The experience in Europe is one of job losses with little, if any, GHG reduction.

European governments have imposed a garden variety of GHG reduction measures since the early 1990s. Nevertheless, GHGs went up in Europe by 5% between 1991 and 2005.

What did go down in that same period were manufacturing jobs. Norway, Sweden and Germany, for example, saw manufacturing jobs fall by 5.6%, 18.5% and 30% respectively.

Did emissions fall as well? GHG emissions increased a whopping 62% in Norway and 11.3% in Sweden but fell by 8.6% in Germany. It appears the drop in manufacturing jobs must be massive to get much of a fall in GHG emissions.

Given how GHG reduction policies in Europe haven’t done much to reduce GHGs — but plenty to reduce the number of jobs — surely plenty of analysis went into B.C.’s moves to ensure the same thing wouldn’t happen here.

Maybe not.

The results of freedom of information (FOI) requests and the premier’s own statements indicate that little, if any, analysis took place.

A response to an NDP FOI request showed “no records” of correspondence to and/or from the minister of the environment and/or deputy minister on the GHG reduction goal before it was announced in the throne speech. In other words, it seems the minister and his deputy had no documented discussion with anyone on how or what to develop as a target.

Another FOI request for the studies that went into the development of the GHG reduction goal was denied by the premier’s office. Too complex for the little people to see, it seems.

Even more damning was the level of scientific input the premier had on the GHG reduction goal. In November 2007, in a conversation televised on Vaughn Palmer’s Voice of BC television program, Premier Campbell said, “I don’t want to pretend this was some... that I asked a scientific panel about how to get there. I didn’t.” Premier Campbell went on to say, “We felt that 10% below 1990 was a reasonable and achievable target for us to reach. That was 33% below 2007 and that makes sense to me.”

So now “feelings” determine important policies in British Columbia, not science or evidence?

It’s time to face facts: The global warming Pharisees do not have our best interests in mind.

The premier has an obligation to cast an eye to the experience of other jurisdictions (as he did for health care) and balance his perspective with the ever-increasing volume of scientific data suggesting man-made global warming is a hoax — another Y2K panic — that will do more to bilk taxpayers than save the planet.  Source

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