Kyoto and Canada: I’m so ashamed
Thank goodness for Quebec and its Liberal government, led by Premier Jean Charest. Despite attempts by the federal Conservatives to back Canada out of Kyoto — even sabotage the international agreement — Charest said today that Quebec is willing to act alone if the federal government reneges on its commitment.
Bravo! Now, wouldn’t it be great if Ontario, B.C. and the other provinces and territories (Alberta likely excluded) refused to accept Harper’s position and, following Quebec’s lead, separately maintained their commitment to meeting Kyoto targets on a regional scale? I think this is a perfect opportunity for Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty to get back at Harper for his open hostility to the province. Plus, as McGuinty is fond of saying, “It’s just the right thing to do.” While this might not be considered Canada’s official position on the international stage, it would keep Kyoto efforts alive long enough for Harper to take the hint or for his “fragile” minority government to fall.
For those non-Canadians who haven’t been following this issue, the federal government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper is reportedly working behind the scenes to water down the Kyoto Accord. The Harper government has already said Canada can’t meet the first phase of its Kyoto obligations and is now allegedly trying to replace the agreement with a less strict, voluntary agreement that would give special breaks to energy exporters like Canada. Essentially, Canada is aligning itself with the United States. Ironically, our Environment Minister Rona Ambrose is leading the latest round of Kyoto talks in Bonn, Germany, that have been taking place since May 15 and last until the 26th. Many of her counterparts from Europe are not pleased.
Shameful.
Even more shameful is that the Conservatives, in supposedly keeping with their pledge to come up with a “made in Canada” solution — whatever that means — is trying to deflect attention away from its Kyoto game-playing by touting its efforts to hammer out a national ethanol standard. The feds are reportedly close to announcing that 5 per cent of gasoline/diesel must contain ethanol/biodiesel by 2010. In other words, the Conservatives are merely following through on one of three “environment” related election promises, and one that it copied from the Liberals before they were turfed.
As one spokesperson from the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association said, “It’s better than nothing.” And this would be true. But let’s also put this into perspective: Ontario has set a much more aggressive 5 per cent mandate by 2007 and 10 per cent by 2010. Manitoba and Saskatchewan have similar mandates, and I imagine B.C., Quebec and other provinces have plans in the works. So really, the majority of the country is covered or will be soon by provincial rules.
All the federal standard does is try to harmonize the country by creating a baseline standard, making it easier for the petroleum producers to follow. There’s not a single industry that likes a situation where they’re forced to comply with a patchwork of regulation, so when the writing is on the wall they always push for federal baseline standards. Hopefully, the long overdue and less aggressive federal standards to be introduced won’t water down Ontario’s more aggressive plans.
If you’re a skeptic like me, the feds are arguably acting more in the interests of the oil industry by setting a national standard. Again, not a bad thing, but so far just a tiny token effort by the Harper government to look Kyoto-friendly.
Yes, I agree with Ambrose that Canada needs to be a cleantech leader and focus on developing exportable technologies that can help combat pollution and global warming. But this alone is not an environmental strategy, this is an economic strategy. Investment in and promotion of clean technologies should be part of a big-picture effort that includes targeted mandates, adoption incentives, carbon-trading schemes, and creative tax polices that shift the behaviour of industry, businesses and homeowners.
But in Ottawa these days, it seems nobody can — or wants to — see the big picture.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca
May 24th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
It’s good to see the big picture, Tyler, but it’s also good to remember that big pictures are made up of little people. Which truck driver somewhere in Canada or the Midwest — probably scraping by on minimal profit to support a family he doesn’t see as much as he’d like — are you going to tell can’t have his job any more because of a government treaty (signed nine years ago by people he didn’t elect) which isn’t working?
Because that’s the truth: Kyoto not only isn’t working — GHG emissions are higher now worldwide than they were in 1997 — but would never have worked, not as long as China, India and other developing nations weren’t held to the same standards as the West. What few reductions some European nations have achieved are more than outweighed by the increases elsewhere, and the socio-economic cost of those reductions in Europe is already becoming apparent; check out the stagnant economies, freefalling birth rates and job-related riots in France, among other places. (Economies are just like the environment: Everything connects, and everything affects everything else.)
I’m not glad we’re dumping Kyoto because I want us to stop reducing GHG emissions; I’m glad we’re dumping it because in its current form, it costs far too much in return for far too little. If nothing else, the science behind Kyoto is nine years old at least by now, and some of the treaty’s base assumptions are probably significantly outdated at this point. And if we want to encourage looking at the big picture, hammering on a single treaty honoured more by most politicians as a sop to green voters than as a serious social or economic initiative might not be the most effective tactic.
May 24th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Kyoto merely sets targets, but it’s up to each country to figure out how to meet those targets. That’s not a failure of Kyoto, that’s the failure of the country. I don’t think you can blame problems in Europe, whether economic or related to riots, on Kyoto. That’s a huge stretch. What’s often forgotten in this discussion is that investment in Kyoto obligations can create new industries, new jobs that replace old industries and old ways of doing things. The narrow view that complying with Kyoto means simply spending money but not creating anything is exactly that: narrow. So I agree, don’t throw money at a silly program like the One-Tonne challenge, but do some of the things I mentioned — create incentives, be creative with tax policy, support a carbon trading system, etc. Tell me how doing any of those things kills jobs? It might kill specific jobs in specific industries, but those jobs will emerge in new industries. There will be growing pains, yes, and I feel sorry for the truck driver, but I also feel sorry for the generations of people — all people — who must deal with the consequences of global warming left unchecked by our own self-centred generation who can’t seem to see the world beyond quarterly and annual earnings reports, or even the four-year election horizon.
May 24th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
What’s the significance of the nuclear cooling tower picture? Are you saying that nuclear is a SOLUTION toward meeting Kyoto targets because its main output is only water vapour?
May 24th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Actually, I was just looking for a cool picture and didn’t realize those were cooling towers. Oops. No significance there — though, of course, there are those who argue nuclear can help meet Kyoto commitments. I’m not sold on this idea.
May 24th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
I am not surprised by Stephen Harper’s cutback on the Kyoto
protocol. It goes against his home province’s economical interests and in his view it’s political suicide. Maybe the provinces
should come up with their own Kyoto protocol initiatives like
wind power ,hydro power and promote the use of electric cars
and plug-in hybrids…
May 25th, 2006 at 12:27 am
I think the number is now around 217, US cities that have already banded together as the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, passed unanimously by the US Conference of Mayors in 2004.
It commits cities to meet or beat Kyoto, to urge state and the Feds to do likewise, and to urge Congress to pass greenhouse gas reduction legislation and establish a national emissions trading system. See also the World Mayors and Municipal Leaders Declaration on Climate Change.
May 25th, 2006 at 12:33 am
I appreciate the shot of the nuke with billows pluming and the refinery in the background. I think its simply a display of the greenhouse gas emissions that “clean” nuke power entails, and the oil that’s necessary to keep the system running. (Mining, transportation, processsing, securing, dealing with the spent materials, etc)
May 25th, 2006 at 9:20 am
For me the real shame is the time that was squandered by the previous Liberal government that ran around puffing out their chests on how green and Kyoto compliant they were while our emissions actually went up. They put us all against a wall and meeting Kyoto now will be a lot more painful to the economy that it needed to be.
I am not sure if this government “gets it”. However, if they can be convinced, it seems they are willing to act, not simply to chair conferences and hire Rick Mercer for some silly TV ads.
May 25th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
“Kyoto merely sets targets, but it’s up to each country to figure out how to meet those targets. That’s not a failure of Kyoto, that’s the failure of the country.”
It is a failure of Kyoto if the targets set are unrealistic or impossible to meet while still maintaining a reasonably healthy economy — and even if they aren’t, given that the current science seems to indicate Kyoto’s formal targets simply won’t be enough anyway, why tie up resources and investment clinging to a treaty that isn’t being honoured by the worst GHG contributors, and wouldn’t do enough to address the problem even if it was being honoured?
“What’s often forgotten in this discussion is that investment in Kyoto obligations can create new industries, new jobs that replace old industries and old ways of doing things. The narrow view that complying with Kyoto means simply spending money but not creating anything is exactly that: narrow.”
This is true, but the problem is that having (insufficient) reduction targets mandated as policy by a government only creates the assumption that meeting those obligations and no more will be sufficient. Kyoto has always been promoted, even by its supporters, as a necessary sacrifice rather than an opportunity, and that kind of marketing doesn’t stimulate interest.
New industries and new ways of doing things only succeed when they are directly profitable. The single biggest incentive to the current investment in new transport fuels and technologies wasn’t anything any government did in the name of Kyoto, it was the market-driven price of gas. Governments have been known (rarely) to interfere with the free market effectively — but the Kyoto Protocol isn’t an example of it.
“So I agree, don’t throw money at a silly program like the One-Tonne challenge, but do some of the things I mentioned — create incentives, be creative with tax policy, support a carbon trading system, etc. Tell me how doing any of those things kills jobs?”
Tell me how doing any of them has enough impact on GHG emissions to justify the money spent on them? They might work (and I actually think they’re all good ideas), but it’s a roll of the dice whether they’ll do enough to meet Kyoto’s targets — and if they don’t, both the environmental fanatics (who’ll claim it’s proof that only unfeasible compulsory restriction will work) and the political opponents (who’ll have all manner of better ideas what to do with the money) will both make it that much more difficult to keep working.
On the other hand, take Kyoto’s targets out of the picture as an arbitrary make-or-break success threshold, and we can realistically assess each measure on its own ground and in its own context for results.
“There will be growing pains, yes, and I feel sorry for the truck driver, but I also feel sorry for the generations of people — all people — who must deal with the consequences of global warming left unchecked by our own self-centred generation who can’t seem to see the world beyond quarterly and annual earnings reports, or even the four-year election horizon.”
As do I; I’m just very cautious of that mode of thought which contends that what might happen to people not yet born is empirically more important than what will happen to people who are alive right here and now. The man who never looks farther than his feet will inevitably walk into a brick wall; but the man who never looks down from the horizon will inevitably trip badly over something.
As I said, I applaud Kyoto’s principles, and I do believe that achieving a sustainable GHG emission threshold needn’t require unbearable economic sacrifice. But Kyoto’s shortcomings as policy have already been enumerated: Its targets are not enough, its cost is too high, and its exemptions render it ineffective anyway. That the Conservatives refuse to follow the Liberal example of throwing good money after bad merely for the sake of appearing to be doing something — however ineffective in reality — doesn’t strike me as a bad thing.
If GHG reduction is an economic opportunity, let’s let the party dedicated to maximizing economic opportunities take the reins and do it their way.