Warning, totally off-topic and slightly political.
Well, you’d think I’d be happy. Our family got cheques from the BC provincial government totaling $400 as a Climate Action Dividend. So why am I annoyed?
Here’s a quote from the fancy “yay, we’re green” flier that came with each of the cheques (one for each adult):
By using 40% post consumer recycled paper for this project we saved… 262 trees, 10,780 kilograms of solid waste, 98,876 litres of water, 34,105 kilowatt hours of electricity, 19595 kilograms of greenhouse gases, 50 cubic meters of landfill space
Anyone else see anything wrong with that statement? Here it is in other words:
By using 60% non-recycled paper we… killed 393 trees, generated 16,160 kilograms of solid waste, wasted 148,467 litres of water, burned 51,157 of electricity, released 29,392 kilograms of greenhouse gases, and used up another 75 cubic metres of landfill space.
And that’s assuming (incorrectly) that the recycled portion of the paper came at zero environmental cost, and doesn’t take into account things like inks, electricity costs for printing presses and computer processing, etc, etc.
If you really want to give me money to help the environment, next time just set up a refundable tax credit for the following year. But I have a feeling that this was more about political marketing than a genuine desire to enact change.
-J
1Darrell Wright on Jun 24, 2008 at 12:41 pm:
Best part is that most people will use it to buy gasoline for their car/truck.
2Jason Birch on Jun 24, 2008 at 3:10 pm:
Yeah; it’ll be eaten up by next month’s increased gas tax within a few months
3Dale Lutz on Jun 27, 2008 at 11:24 pm:
Jason,
I’m glad to find someone else that thinks sending out cheques is a bit hard to justify given the well oiled mechanisms in place to collect income tax and distribute refunds. 100% agree with the tax credit idea.
Aside — as a young lad, I once had the chance to meet with the then-finance-minister of Canada in his office (I was working in Ottawa at the time and the minister was my MP from rural Alberta — the Maz for those who may remember him), and in my couple of minutes I suggested the same thing for the then GST-rebate cheques that were being issued. Producing exactly the same effect as I suspect this blog posting and comment will have on policy.
4Jason Birch on Jun 29, 2008 at 12:09 pm:
Hehe.
I think I’ll have to change my blog title to Macbeth
a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing… or something like that