What should I do with my $100 climate change dividend?
Well, some of you might have heard that the wise accountants in the Legislature have decided to give everyone in B.C. a $100 buy off, I mean, climate change dividend (a $440 million delivery).
Given that it is supposed to help us all make better choices to help the environment, I thought I’d take a moment to consider on what I am going to spend my $100 on.
Let’s start with what Finance Minister Carole Taylor suggested she would do with hers. She said she is going to use it to buy a new pair of running shoes so she could walk more. Now, I haven’t seen her closet, but I’d be mighty surprised if she doesn’t already have a pair or six of sneakers in fine shape for walking. I know this idea won’t do me much good since I’ve been walking without a $100 “incentive” for quite some time.
The David Suzuki Foundation has a neat little tool it uses to judge the effectiveness of any action taken to fight climate change. It is called “additionality.” The concept of additionality is used primarily to judge carbon credits. An action only meets the additionality criteria if it makes an action successful that otherwise, wouldn’t have gone forward. So, if I was going to walk whether I got $100 from the government or not, then the climate change dividend is wasted if I put it towards running shoes (which, like the Finance Minister, I already have).
So, my climate change dividend, if it is going to be effective, should be put towards something I wouldn’t have done without it. So what should I do?
Although I could, as some environmental organizations have suggested, simply donate it to one of them to do my good work for me, I would like to have a greater hand in my climate change action. I think that if this dividend is going to be anything but mad money, I need to be closely involved in making it work towards a better environment.
Obviously, $100 won’t go very far towards a new, more energy efficient appliance, or solar panels for my house, or anything exceedingly large, so I’ll have to content myself with a small change.
At the moment, food security is an issue that is very important to me, as is making the city I live in more livable and less environmentally damaging. So I think, at the moment, that the best way to spend my climate change dividend is by either supporting a community initiative, planting a garden of my own, or putting the money towards buying a tree to plant somewhere in the city. Maybe I can even plant a fruit tree, and increase food security as well as helping sequester carbon in the city. I hope everyone in Prince Rupert, and the province, enjoys figuring out how to put their climate change dividend to good use.