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VICTORIA — At a campaign kickoff rally in the provincial capital this week, B.C. Green party Leader Andrew Weaver reminded a crowd of 800 or so enthusiasts “why I got into politics in the first place.”

Weaver was two decades into a career as one of the country’s leading climate scientists in 2007 when then-B.C. Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell recruited him to provide advice on a climate action plan.

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Drawn into the orbit of a premier who had “gotten religion” on the issue, Weaver helped shape an ambitious plan to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, including a pioneering carbon tax.

He also got a firsthand lesson in politics, as the Opposition New Democrats chose to fight the 2009 provincial election on an opportunistic promise to “axe” the carbon tax.

The New Democrats lost and the tax survived. But as Weaver recounted Wednesday of this week, he got another lesson in the vagaries of party politics after Campbell was forced to cut short his political career over a different taxation issue.