Thank you. That's an excellent question. There are so many pieces to it and so many responses I could give.
I think the first and most prominent step we need to take as a nation is to put an appropriate price on carbon emissions. We did this in British Columbia in 2008 as you may know. We brought in the world's first broad spectrum, legislated carbon tax that was revenue neutral. That has been internationally praised as a “template for the world“ in the words of one famous environmental economist at University College London.
What we did in British Columbia was to say we'll start with a tax that's low, but it's on almost all forms of carbon combustion. It's low, but it has an upward scheduled ramp that will continue in this case for five full years, rising each year incrementally. Every penny of tax revenue is recycled immediately back into the economy through personal income tax reductions, corporate income tax reductions, and critical support for rural and northern people who need to heat their homes and that sort of thing.
We put supports in place for the less advantaged in our society, and we lowered our overall tax rate. It's been tremendously successful. We lowered our per capita fossil fuel consumption in British Columbia between 2008 and 2013 by 19% relative to the rest of Canada, and we all suffered from the same post-2008 recession. If we take the recession out of it, we lowered our per capita consumption substantially.
More importantly—