It is spun in government press releases as a "first" for any jurisdiction in North America, an achievement that places British Columbia "on the leading edge" of efforts to combat climate change.

But scratch the surface just a little and questions arise about the legitimacy of Environment Minister Terry Lake's recent claim that "from this point forward, every government building in our province will be carbon neutral."

Besides the carbon tax, one of the most important B.C. government climate action initiatives has been the adoption of Carbon Neutral Government. That is, count emissions from public buildings and travel, reduce them as much as possible and pay for carbon offsets to negate the rest. As of the 2010 calendar year, the B.C. government announced mission accomplished, at the end of June.