According to the local newspaper today, Victoria gasoline prices seeping into record territory
Good. The only thing that is going to slow down the largest sector of greenhouse gas contributions in British Columbia (transportation) is higher prices at the pump. It's the only thing that most people will respond to. Ultimately, consumers of gasoline and diesel are going to face pricing that is driven by international demand well out of the control of any one government. It would be far better to accept this reality and work to change the core dependencies of our economy on carbon-based energy sources rather than continue to buffet hopelessly against this unstoppable force.
Fuel prices have been rising faster than inflation in Canada for some time. The rate that I've observed is about 3 cents per year since 1998.
http://climate.uvic.ca/people/ewiebe/gasoline_prices.php
Canada and some of our other industrialised, first-world neighbours have wasted the past two decades. Our governments should have been promoting research and development of non-carbon based energy sources and delivery systems. Instead, vast amounts of resources have been funnelled into further development of carbon extraction technology (Alberta oil or tar sands). This has apparently been part of an attempt to cash in on rising prices for this commodity at the expense of other sectors of the economy.
Our economy is going to be impacted by carbon fuel price increases sooner rather than later. The best way to manage this problem would be take control of what we can. I would like to see limits on emissions and a carbon tax. It will be interesting to see if the federal government's budget, to be released any moment today, will acknowledge this fact at all. I doubt it will. The folks in charge (at the moment!) seem to be wilfully ignorant of the larger scope of the problem and seem poised to introduce measures that will continue the easy course with little regard for the scale of the coming problems. The so-called SREX report, just released, goes into some detail on those.
http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/
Wilful ignorance is just stupidity by another name. Ignorance we can work with but this other problem, that's just not something we should tolerate in the leadership of a country.
[Edit: By the way, "seeping into record territory" seems like a stupid use of the words seeping. It seems to me that things seep downward not upward. Sigh.]