Finance Minister Victor Boudreau's discussion paper on reforming New Brunswick's tax system includes a carbon tax proposal to cut greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. The theory being that you tax what you want less of - in this case oil and gasoline consumption - and remove taxes from what you want more of - income. New Brunswickers should not be fooled. This is not an emissions-reducing tax. It's a revenue-generating tax to finance objectives that are definitely not of the environmental kind. Painting it green is just a tactic to make a new consumption tax more palatable. There is little evidence that a provincial carbon tax in and of itself will actually reduce emissions. People and businesses are already making adjustments to cut energy use to the extent that this is possible and affordable. The grants and loans offered by Efficiency New Brunswick are enabling this.

Adding a carbon tax on top of sky-high energy bills will only punish the poor, seniors and those who struggle from paycheque to paycheque. It's supposed to cause them to burn less gas and oil, but they can't. You need disposable income to buy a more efficient furnace or car. Experience has shown that it takes a huge jump in energy prices and the expectation that prices will continue to rise to convince those with the money to replace their furnaces and cars with more efficient models. No politician is going to slap a carbon tax that big on the voting public. A provincial carbon tax will only reduce emissions if government spends the revenues for that purpose. But that's not the plan. The plan is to funnel the money - estimated to be $100 million a year - back into the government's bank account to make up for the lost revenue from the cuts in corporate and personal income taxes Boudreau proposes. (An additional $250 million would be raised by increasing the provincial portion of the HST from eight per cent to 10 per cent, which would further increase the cost of electricity, furnace oil and gasoline.)

If the government was serious about fighting climate change, we would join Ontario and Quiec in setting a legally binding cap on industrial emissions, just as we did for acid-rain causing pollution 20 years ago. Premiers McGuinty and Charest announced Monday that they will establish a cap-and-trade system to cut industrial greenhouse gas emissions and invited other premiers to join them. Premier Shawn Graham should sign up. If we were serious about fighting climate change, we would invest in a public transportation system to provide a convenient and affordable alternative to driving. And rather than allowing truck trains on our roads, we would ensure the freight gets shipped on real trains. To successfully combat climate change, we need to make the shift to a low-carbon economy which requires large-scale change now - a kind of a New Deal for a low-carbon future. This large-scale shift can only be driven by correspondingly large investments supported by regulation.

Our entire building stock needs to be retrofitted to consume less energy. Our heating systems need to be converted to burn wood pellets and to harness the energy of the sun and the earth. And we need an industrial strategy that helps business re-tool to reduce its carbon footprint, while assisting workers to make the transition from the old carbon-intensive economy to the new one. In its recent report, the United Nations' scientific advisory group on climate change, the IPCC, drew a direct line from the extraordinarily high greenhouse gas emissions in our world to crop failures and hunger in Africa and Asia. With one of the highest per capita rates of greenhouse emissions in the world, we have a moral obligation to take effective action against climate change. A carbon tax fails that test. At best, New Brunswick's proposed carbon tax is just a cop out to avoid regulating industry and investing in public transportation. At worst, it's a callous effort to raise tax revenue to pay for political agendas that have nothing to do with creating a liveable future for our children, wherever they live in this rapidly warming world. David Coon is the policy director for the Conservation Council of New Brunswick.