paid $3.64 for diesel today, what are you payin?

[BU1]

Glad I've got the S 10 for commuting. 2.2 four banger with a 5 speed. Gets about 24 mpg or so at $2.85 / gal.

 

[graveler]

About a month ago..... I paid $1.479/L in northern BC..... thats around 5.62/gal.

Paid 1.139 in Canmore AB last night.... around 4.33/gal..... I fill up every day at least once for around 60 ~ 70 dollars every time..... I'd take the 3.65/gal in a heart beat!!

I hear your getting a carbon tax which should raise it up a bit more

 

[IMSICK]

I hear your getting a carbon tax which should raise it up a bit more

Great...... Just what we needed. Another bullchit tax! That's gayer than a 3 man sandwich! I say we are getting bent over and taking it dry..... but I think they have to spit on it at least to be able to apply some sort of stupid tax to it.

Just went looking for it....

What is a carbon tax?
In truth, it could be any number of measures designed to increase the cost of burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal. The idea is both to change consumer behaviour and set aside a fund to help smooth the transition to a cleaner economy.

The most talked about proposals are either a direct across-the-board levy on these fuels or a tax based on CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions, which would largely be aimed at industry and which is much more rare. (Norway may be the only country to have anything approaching this: It enacted a tax in the early 1990s to encourage the sequestering of CO2 emissions from its North Sea oil operations back into underground chambers deep underneath the ocean.)

Quebec is going for the direct levy on all non-renewable fossil fuels sold in bulk to retailers. It has asked the Quebec Energy Board to help work out the exact tax rates and perhaps a sliding scale in which home heating oil might be taxed at a greater rate than natural gas, which is less polluting, in order to encourage homeowners to switch.

Trumpeting this as an environmental measure, Quebec says it will be the first province to impose a specific carbon tax and that it expects the oil and gas companies, which have been enjoying huge profits of late, not to pass these added costs along to consumers.

But the fact is, all provinces already have some consumer taxes in place on fuels and gasoline: Quebec's is one of the highest, which explains why it often posts the highest gas prices in the country. And Quebec-based energy companies have, at least so far, bluntly refused to absorb the extra costs themselves.

Some proponents have called for a "revenue-neutral carbon tax" in which any levies that would be extracted from a particular sector, transportation for example, would be given back in some other form of subsidy or tax break, that would reward more fuel-efficient behaviour. The most common form of this, albeit only scratching the surface, has been the fairly modest tax breaks on small and hybrid cars.

The arguments in favour
Most environmental groups have long been in favour of a carbon tax as a way of changing consumer behaviour and getting industry to be more energy efficient. The more sophisticated among them have also argued that only with a carbon tax will you get any kind of trading system for emissions or pollution credits, which would in turn challenge already competitive corporations to do better on the environmental front.

Most economists are skeptical of the merits of a carbon tax but there are notable exceptions. Among them, the internationally acclaimed Jeffrey Sachs, of Columbia University, who has long argued for a global carbon tax, to be designed and administered by the UN so as to keep countries on an even footing.

Sachs says such a tax, of up to 35 cents a gallon in richer countries, would raise $750 billion US for the UN and could be used to eliminate Third World poverty and disease. More recently, he has also argued that a carbon tax would help change destructive environmental behaviour and that it would be welcomed by privately-owned utilities in particular so they can justify clean technology to their profit-demanding shareholders.

Sachs is not just theorizing about this. Some large utilities, notably Duke Energy Corp., a giant gas pipeline and utility operator in the U.S., has publicly called for a national carbon tax as a way of sharing the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of the economy.

The arguments against
The main ones are that so-called green taxes are really just a revenue grab by desperate governments, that they create artificial winners and losers in the economy and that, if they are not at least done in step with other countries, they will simply drive jobs and business offshore to cheaper locales.

In Canada, the notion of a carbon tax also has deep-rooted political undertones. Alberta, in particular, sees it as an updated version of the National Energy Program and a direct attack on its way of life. As the county's biggest, by far, oil and gas producer, Alberta can't help but be affected by any commodity-wide increase in energy price. A national carbon tax, if it came to that, could have a direct impact on big projects, like in the oil sands, that are pegged to projected demand and tight schedules.

The other main argument against a carbon tax at this juncture is that it would probably be inflationary; and why add to the cost of a commodity that is already at historical highs and changing consumer-buying habits anyway (fewer SUVs being sold)?

If it is not passed along to consumers (as Quebec seems to want), then how does it modify behaviour? If it is, it could be a hardship for those who already have trouble heating their homes or using their vehicles for work or competing against cut-rate products from places like China and India.

Ontario's long-running Fair Tax Commission in the early 1990s took a hard look at carbon taxes and decided against them, arguing they would distort too many key sectors of the economy, manufacturing and transportation in particular. Proponents had argued that shifting hauling from trucks to rail would represent a large-scale energy savings. But the tax commission concluded the savings would be much more limited and that in today's just-in-time economy such a shift could be counterproductive.

Who likes the idea and who don't
Well, apart from Quebec Premier Jean Charest, environmental groups, economists like Sachs and possibly Ignatieff (he has since qualified his support, saying he was merely putting the idea out for discussion), there have been other prominent backers of a carbon tax over the years.

Some European countries have versions of them and the European Union came close to adopting a broad carbon tax a few years ago. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton introduced one early in his mandate, in the mid-1990s, but Congress wouldn't adopt it. In Britain, Tony Blair's Labour government introduced a special "climate change levy" in 2001.

A few years ago, New Zealand was all set to introduce a carbon tax as a way of raising funds specifically designed to combat global warming. But then an election intervened and a new government, with new minority backers, abandoned the idea. Australia also had a hard look recently but its federal environment minister, Ian Campbell, has apparently ruled it out: He just called the idea "stupid."

Here at home, Stephen Harper's Conservative government wants no part of a carbon tax, and neither does Alberta or any of the prospective candidates vying for the premier's job there. Paul Martin's former Liberal government also ruled out the idea, according to former deputy premier Anne McLellan.

But some of today's Liberal leadership candidates are clearly flirting with the notion, if not the name. Both Gerard Kennedy and former environment minister Stephane Dion reject the idea of a carbon tax but both could be said to be dealing with the concept at least.

Kennedy wants to see punitive taxes on gas-guzzling cars to offset tax breaks for hybrids and other energy-saving vehicles, which is a kind of micro-version. Dion says he plans to introduce a variety of industry-wide polluter-pay taxes, the revenue from which would be plowed back into the respective sectors to help pay for clean technology and emission controls.

That's the revenue-neutral model and no doubt it will be called some kind of green tax. In political circles, carbon is much too dirty a word.

 

[IDAHDOO]

3.42 today Boise,Id

 

[snopropanther]

around 4.50 but thats lower then last month

 

[rasp112]

What the he!!.. I thought USA gets some of its oil from Canada? Even if thats not the case dont we buy oil from the same place (OPEC)? Why do canadians pay more? Are there more taxes added in the price of fuel than there is here? I dont get it haha story of my life

 

[Super B]

3.59 in mpls. I have a Honda Civic HX that getsd 41 mpg, and it sits in the driveway. I much rather drive my Duramax on a daily basis then the tin box Honda..

 

[Blacktooth]

We are finally seeing some competetion here. Ranges from 3.19-3.41/gal. For the past few years every station in town has been the same price. Now we are seeing daily price changes. I hate that I think 3.19 is cheap, but I do.

 

[snopropanther]

What the he!!.. I thought USA gets some of its oil from Canada? Even if thats not the case dont we buy oil from the same place (OPEC)? Why do canadians pay more? Are there more taxes added in the price of fuel than there is here? I dont get it haha story of my life

well sh!t if its like that raise the american price to 4.50 a gallon. but then again thats still cheap

 

[graveler]

saw it yesterday in Cle Elum Wash for 3.98 at the Shell station that jeff from sportlands owns, he has a good little deal going there. everything cost more

 

[H2SNOW]

spent close to 10 grand so far this month .............

 

[graveler]

3.87 here in north bend today

 

[REV414]

2.59 the other night here in fort collins, gas station had screwed up and it rang up at 2.59, in the 20 minutes i was there saw 250 gallons pumped. Word spread fast and i had seen about 20 diesel trucks before we left, ran 2,500 gallon tank dry in 5 hours, someone's loosing their job

 

[IndoubtGASIT]

Thats why I drive the 2.2L 2wd To work and school.. Saves HUGE!

 

[Beels]

What the he!!.. I thought USA gets some of its oil from Canada? Even if thats not the case dont we buy oil from the same place (OPEC)? Why do canadians pay more? Are there more taxes added in the price of fuel than there is here? I dont get it haha story of my life

First off, some people are converting to imperial gallons instead of us gallons. Most of the difference is tax, but some of it is just the refiners charging what the market will bear.

 

[Colorado Diesel]

I paid 3.49 a gallon today. I got 130 gallons. 453.00 dollars just to fill her up.

 

[chrispy]

Went from $1.08 to $1.17 in the interior of BC on the weekend. Mmm, tax...