A great weakness in the carbon tax sales job

I filled up the Neon on the way home Monday, saving about 70 cents by avoiding the carbon tax that kicked in Canada Day. The service station was doing a booming business.
Which suggests that the Liberals' carbon tax works. If people are topping up the tank on a sunny afternoon to avoid paying the 2.3-cents-a-litre tax, then maybe we'll make other changes. We'll bike to work or share a ride one day a week, or cut down on the number trips to the stores on a weekend.
The carbon tax is one of the most interesting public policy issues in a long time, exposing a lot of contradictions.
Premier Gordon Campbell has been cast as the green defender, the champion of social engineering and government's wisdom.
And NDP leader Carole James has aligned with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation in opposing the Liberals' carbon tax.
The NDP stance looks mostly like political opportunism. The NDP favours a carbon tax levied at the wholesale level, not retail. Instead of 2.3 cents at the pump, the tax would be hidden in the cost of gas. Not much of a difference.
The New Democrats are on stronger ground when they note that big industries that release greenhouse gases without burning fossil fuels are exempt from any taxes on their emissions. (Like energy companies that flare off gas from wells.)
That regulation is to come - sometime - under a new cap and trade system. It will set emission limits for industries and companies. If a company can't make its limit, it will have to buy credits on the market to offset its excess emissions.
Mostly though, it looks like the New Democrats have decided to ride the wave of public anger without worrying too much about policy distinctions.
It's a bigger wave than I expected. One of the arguments made by critics is that the tax is irrelevant. Gas prices have risen 45 cents a litre in seven months - what's an extra 2.3 cents?
But that's not the way a lot of people see it. They see the government piling on when they're already having a tough time.
You reap what you sow, St. Paul wrote. And the Liberals spent a lot of their first term sowing the idea that government was a bad thing. Campbell liked to tell audiences that one new deputy minister told him she could cut her staff by one-third - and do a better job.
The message was that government was self-serving or incompetent, certainly untrustworthy.
But the sales pitch for the carbon tax relies heavily on trust in government. And the Liberals are struggling in their efforts to win people over.
Ipsos-Reid surveyed British Columbians on the carbon tax in the week before it was introduced. A narrow majority - 53 per cent - agreed that putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions is a good idea.
It was an almost even split when people were asked if they would be willing to pay higher fuel taxes if they were offset by an income-tax cut.
And 61 per cent doubted the B.C. carbon tax would change peoples' behaviour.
The poll also found 82 per cent thought the government should be targeting major industrial emitters instead of bringing in the carbon tax.
And the poll found the public isn't buying the Liberals' claim that the tax is revenue neutral - that the $631 million to be collected next year in taxes on gas, heating oil and other fuels will be offset by other tax cuts.
Only 19 per cent of those surveyed said they believed that would happen. The sentiment that it's a straight tax increase was shared by 57 per cent of British Columbians.
That's a problem for Gordon Campbell. Right now, he needs people to trust in government.
Footnote: Support for the carbon tax is strongest on Vancouver Island, where 23 per cent of those surveyed agreed it was the best way to curb climate change. The north, where only 12 per cent agreed, and the Lower Mainland, at 15 per cent, were the least supportive.
The Liberals will be helped a lot if gas prices stabilize (and if heating fuel costs don't rise higher by fall). But if they keep rising, the public will likely be slow to let go of their resentment.