The Feb. 29 edition of the 100 Mile House Free Press had a number of items dealing with the B.C. Liberal 2012 provincial budget.
Each tackled direct interests, including education, health, seniors, but no one spoke of the underlying cause.
Not even Cariboo-Chilcotin NDP candidate Charlie Wyse suggested any alternatives. He only questioned the balancing of the books by the next election in 2013.
The need to balance the books is self-evident and is only achieved through more revenue or less expenditure.
What is not addressed by the legislature is the effect on our economy of ever-higher energy costs and climate change.
Current thought in many circles is that we will be rapidly approaching 2008 prices for energy, possibly by summer. That is an economy changer.
Current information on climate change indicates that if we don’t begin to reduce carbon
inputs by 2015, we will be unable to mitigate the problems that will result. Unless these issues become part of government and individual thinking, we cannot hope to solve budget issues.
The idea of alternate green energy possibilities to drive our economy is simply an idea.
There are currently a billion vehicles on the roads of the world and the shear logistics of replacing these vehicles with green energy vehicles can’t be done in the time required to ensure our economy can grow and prosper.
The current objective of jobs and growth, in the light of high-energy costs, is probably a myth. We are on the leading edge of a fundamental change of the same magnitude of the start of the industrial revolution.
All this to say the government fears driving business out of province by adding additional taxes may be real.
However, it is equally true the general population, facing ever-increasing costs, driven by basic energy increases, is hardly in a position to see much in the way of tax increases.
So if you can’t increase income, then we have to decrease expenditure.
But, and it is a big but, there are certain absolute needs in our society: education is the key to the future and to our children’s and grandchildren’s ability to survive in a very changed world from the one most of us have known all our lives.
Another absolute is health care, for all of us need help to maintain good health.
Some would argue that roads and bridges need to be in the must category, but with energy costs rising, this may begin to lose its priority.
As one looks at the number of responsibilities of government (of any stripe) and all the things we have to pay for, we need to ask if we have to do everything we want to do.
In the end it is time we all took extreme energy costs and climate change into account and recognize that the days of perpetual growth and keeping up with inflation may be a dream from yesterday.
If I were in a position to effect policy, my priorities would be clean water, basic food, health and education.
All else would take second place.
Jack Witty is a 100 Mile House Free Press reader.
