On February 19 British Columbia announced an escalating carbon tax on most fossil fuels, designed to ignite an environmental social movement in B.C. and across Canada to fight climate change – a bold move in the current incoherent muddle of provincial policies on the most pressing problem facing the planet.  The blame for this rests squarely with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, which has yet to take any concrete action or demonstrate real leadership on the issue.

Finance Minister Carole Taylor is also handing out $100 to each British Columbian as seed money to get them thinking green.  She said the B.C. government has decided to tackle the climate change issue despite concerns from Ottawa about patchwork green solutions that include carbon taxes and cap-and-trade emissions deals like the one British Columbia and other provinces are exploring, including an agreement with California and five other western US states.

An editorial in the Toronto Star emphasized that this highlighted the degree of disarray in Canada over global warming. B.C.’s new carbon tax comes only weeks after Premier Ed Stelmach of neighbouring Alberta (source of almost one-third of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions) walked out of a premiers’ meeting convened to discuss climate change.

Quebec introduced a form of carbon tax last year but the revenues return to government green technology initiatives, not taxpayers. Taylor said the B.C. carbon tax is "among the broadest and most comprehensive taxes of its kind in the world.”

Carbon Tax:
-Beginning July 1, 2008, British Columbia will begin phasing in a carbon tax on all fossil fuels including gasoline, diesel, natural gas, coal, propane and home heating fuel.
-The rate starts at $10 per tonne of carbon-equivalent emissions and will rise by $5 per year for the next four years.
-As of July 1, there will be a 2.41-cent increase per litre in gasoline. By 2012, it will be 7.24 cents per litre.
-For diesel and home heating oil, it works out to 2.2 cents per litre, rising to 8.27 cents by 2012.
-The tax will generate about $1.85 billion over three years.
-Two thirds of the money raised in the first year will come from business.
-The tax is to be revenue neutral and none of the money raised through the carbon tax will go toward program spending.
-Legislation will require a plan to be tabled in the legislature each year showing how the carbon-tax revenue will be returned to businesses and individuals.

Photo Credit: Flickr Ruth and Dave

In college, I often had to write 5-, 10- or 15-page papers. I had a lot of tricks up my sleeve to reach the assigned length – larger margins (right, left, top and bottom), a different font, and a bigger point size.  Now, I’ve come 180°.   I recently learned of an effort called Change the Margins with three main goals:

1. Convince Microsoft to change the default margin settings in Microsoft Word to .75 on all sides.
2. Persuade five corporations to reduce the default margin size of all company documents.
3. Challenge five universities to adopt narrower margin settings as the standard for their students and faculty.

How much paper will really be saved by reducing paper margins from 1” to .75”? According to Change the Margin, the smaller margin will yield a 4.75% reduction in paper usage. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but if everyone in the United States adhered to .75” margins, over 6 million trees would be saved (again, according to the Change the Margins site). And that does sound like a lot.  In addition to reducing my margin sizes, I’ve also moved to a more efficient font (Times New Roman takes up less space than Arial) and smaller point size (11 from 12). I’ve completely changed my college ways.  If you’d like to change your default margin, here’s how you can do it:

ON PCs: On your WORD screen, go to FILE, then PAGE SET UP. Click on the MARGINS tab, and fill in your desired settings. Then click on the DEFAULT button (it’s on the bottom of the Margins tab). You’ll be offered "Do you want to change the default settings for the page set up? This change will affect all new documents based on the normal template." Click YES.

ON MACs: On your WORD screen, go to FORMAT, then DOCUMENT. Once on DOCUMENT, click on MARGINS and you’ll be able to fill in the settings for your margins.

This small measure can be a boon for the environment and, just maybe, ophthalmologists and optometrists.

Who knew that working from home could do so much to help save the planet? 

Turns out that using electronics to telecommute is an effective climate change solution, thanks to technological advances in the energy efficiency of consumer electronics.

A recent study commissioned by the Consumer Electronics Association, a Fleishman-Hillard client, found that workers who use electronics to telecommute save the equivalent of 9 to 14 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year — the same amount of energy used by roughly 1 million U.S. households.

Just one day of telecommuting saves the equivalent of up to 12 hours of an average household’s electricity use.  The CEA study, conducted by TIAX LLC of Cambridge, Massachusetts, found telecommuting also saves 1.4 gallons of gasoline and reduces carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 17 to 23 kilograms per day.   

If that same worker, with a one-way commute of 22 miles, telecommuted five days a week, he or she would save about 320 gallons of gasoline and reduce CO2 emissions by 4.5 to 6 tons per year.  The amount of energy saved by this worker is comparable to the amount of electricity consumed by an average household in 4 to 6 months, the CEA study states.

It’s pretty amazing when you consider the power one individual can have on the environment just by using electronics to work from home.

For companies looking to implement sustainable business practices, it seems obvious that telecommuting is a no-brainer.  Companies can reap a two-fold benefit — strong employee appeal and more environmentally friendly business practices. 

Who knows, maybe the CEA study will serve as a rallying cry for workers across America:  PJ’s and Laptops for the Planet!

A couple of weeks ago the “European Union Sustainable Energy Week” took place in Brussels. Hundreds of officials from the EU Institutions, EU Member States, representatives from industry, trade, consumer associations and lobbyists gathered together. I was one of the lucky attendees.

The main goal of the event was to raise the level of understanding of the role that the Information and Communication Technology sector plays in positively contributing to sustainable energy. More specifically, the event helped explore ways in which these contributions can be replicated.

The main message I took out of the event is that ICT is part of the problem …and part of the solution. Some tips for the ICT industry include:

 The ICT industry should not only reduce its own footprint…
 ICT can also help to reduce the footprint of all other sectors/activities
 Moreover, by increasing awareness, the ICT sector will be instrumental to change consumers’ behaviour

In the words of John Suffolk UK Government CIO:  “The IT community must play its part in ensuring sustainable development. That means not only in moving to new, more energy efficient technologies such as thin clients and virtualisation, which have the potential of dramatically reducing energy and other costs, but also using information to allow people and business to operate in more sustainable ways”

Even the WWF representative (Denis Pamlin) praised the ICT industry for all the good work done so far and emphasized that the ICT sector is delivering an attractive low carbon economy (e.g. buildings, virtual presence, cars). It is now up to politicians to play their part.

Last week, London Mayor Ken Livingstone announced that he was increasing the congestion charge to £25 for the most environmentally damaging vehicles entering the zone.

Under his proposals, the new congestion charges would be introduced this October, and will target drivers of sports cars, some saloons, and 4×4s (already the target of greenies who criticize school mums and businessmen for clogging up London’s congested streets). In technical speak, all vehicles emitting more than 225 grams of CO2 per kilometer (g/k), plus those registered before March 2001, with engines larger than 3,000cc, will be forced to pay £25 to enter central London at certain times.  Under the ‘polluter pays’ principle, a 100% discount will apply to the lowest CO2 emitting vehicles to give drivers an incentive to use the least polluting cars available.

Critics were quick off the mark saying that motorists would be penalized without actually reducing congestion. London First, an influential business membership organisation, said “This is just daft…encouraging gridlock in the centre of London is no vote winner.  Band A and B cars don’t reduce CO2, they add to it. And they add to congestion which drives up CO2 emissions from the vehicles stuck in the queue behind them.”

This is likely to be a key issue at the upcoming London Mayoral Elections this May. Conservative Candidate Boris Johnson, who last month said that he would scrap the extended congestion charge zone if he won the election, described these new plans as being an “old-style, tax the motorist” policy and called for better alternatives in public transport to get motorists out of their cars. Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrat candidate, suggested that rich drivers could afford £25 anyway, and was at pains to point out that “hard-working families with people carriers who cannot afford to change their car or pay the charge will lose out."  However, Siân Berry, the Green candidate, welcomed the announcement after repeatedly lobbying the Mayor on this issue last year.

An estimated 150,000 cars enter the congestion zone in central London each day, of which 30,000 will fall under the new pollution charge. The mayor expects a 30% drop in the number of these vehicles with the revenue, predicted to be between £30m and £50m a year, helping to pay for radical improvements to cycling and walking.

The outcome and its subsequent popularity (or not) will certainly be a contentious issue in the forthcoming London elections – how each candidate communicates their policy on transport issues in London is as yet unclear prior to the start of the campaign in April. Congestion in London is a genuine problem, but taking more taxpayers’ money may not be the best way to encourage people out of their cars and into public transport.