VANCOUVER – Nobody's talking about the carbon tax.

Environment Minister Barry Penner made that observation Wednesday at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention, where only a year ago the imposition of North America's first tax on fossil fuels was a raging controversy among local government officials from around B.C.

At a panel discussion on resource industries, concerns raised by delegates ranged from the need for mining jobs to exporting gravel to controlling bears with specialized dogs.

On climate change, the discussion centred on how to salvage vast tracts of beetle-killed trees dead too long to use for lumber, the first-ever suspension of a rancher's water licence due to drought, and whether B.C.'s targets for greenhouse gas reduction are aggressive enough.

Penner noted his recent decision to restrict irrigation water taken from the Nicola River is the first time the B.C. government has ever taken such a step. It was to maintain flow during fish spawning, and he said it's the latest sign that drought, fire and pests are the result of a century and a half of human carbon emissions.

UBCM president Robert Hobson said this year's forest fires around West Kelowna have brought the issue home for many people. Smoke hung over the B.C. Interior for weeks and thousands of people were evacuated from the Pemberton area by other fires.

"[The West Kelowna fires] were primarily within municipal boundaries, they weren't on Crown land, and very close to subdivisions," Hobson said in an interview. "So it's an ongoing issue as long as we have pine beetle, and now we have fir bark beetle and tussock moth and other things killing trees. It's going to continue to be an issue with climate change and drought throughout the Interior, I think."

He identified two areas where B.C. needs to take more action.

"First we have provincial parks where we need to have trees taken out that can lead to an ongoing hazard," Hobson said. "We have large private land holdings around communities, where somebody has 10 to 20 acres of pine beetle-infested timber, and there's no market for that timber. The cost of taking that timber down is very high."

Forests Minister Pat Bell and Energy Minister Blair Lekstrom agreed with Penner that B.C.'s target of a 33 per cent cut in greenhouse gases by 2020 and an 80 per cent cut by 2050 is aggressive enough.

Bell noted that while many efforts are being made to reduce emissions, there is enormous potential for removing more carbon from the atmosphere by overhauling the way the province grows and manages trees on its vast regions of Crown forest.