A "National Emergency" - Who's Kidding Whom?

Change is afoot. The latest report on climate change in Canada is unsettling. It's even ominous.

The only surprising part is that anyone would be surprised by the report or its findings. They closely mirror reports that we've been getting, at least weekly, for the past several years.

The CBC's Neil Macdonald says this time it's for real. This time the Trudeau Liberals will answer the fire hall bell.

To the Trudeau government, this is core-mission stuff. Last week, scientists from the environment department were brought in to the Prime Minister's Office for briefings. The report will be public and online Tuesday, and Justin Trudeau and members of his cabinet will be pushing the issue as something bordering on a national emergency, which is not an unreasonable way to characterize it.

Think of it this way. If your house was on fire and you wanted to save your home would you douse the flames with gasoline? I'll bet that wouldn't be your first choice. You would realize that could only make your problem vastly worse.

Okay, now let's consider climate change as a national emergency and it is. A national emergency is something that you expect the national government to fight with all of its strength and means. Only despite this gestural farce of carbon taxes, our government is actually dousing the flames with gasoline.

That Trans Mountain pipeline? Perfect example. We've been told that Athabasca tar sludge has to be left in the ground. Trudeau has said no, we've got to get it out, fast, as much as possible while we still can.  He even paid Kinder Morgan, the former owner and Enron alumni,  a massive profit to make that happen. He's already sunk 4.5 billion into that pipeline and he's got easily another 7 billion to go.

Does that sound like somebody who's worried about climate change?

He's still paying billions in subsidies to the fossil fuel giants. They admit to a couple of billion per year. The IMF has priced not only direct subsidies but also "in kind" benefits such as minuscule royalties, grants, deferrals and other benefits at a whopping $46 billion.

Does that sound like somebody that sees shutting down the highest-carbon fossil fuel projects as "core mission stuff"?

Cast your mind back to the heady days of early December, 2015, when the Trudeau Liberals had just been installed in office. Justin and his enviro-min, Dame Cathy McKenna, strode onto the floor of the Paris Climate Summit and proclaimed "Canada's back." The dark days of the Harper era when Canada was regularly rebuked as a climate change pariah were over. No, under new Liberal management, Canada was going to put its shoulder into the fight against climate change.

Perhaps Justin and Cathy were too busy fitting their wreaths of laurels to hear the warning from a climate scientist who was also at the Paris summit, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, then head of the prestigious Potsdam climate institute.

As the political types were high-fiving each other with bold promises to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, max, Johnny Schellnhuber said achieving that goal would require nothing less than the "induced implosion" of the fossil fuel industry. Not milquetoast carbon taxes, no, nothing short of petro-states shutting down their fossil fuel producers and hastening the transition to alternative clean energy.

Do you believe that Justin is undergoing some epiphany over the dire threat of climate change? If you do I sure hope you're right and I'm wrong. Even if he had the moral spine (and he doesn't) he lacks the courage to reverse course and steer Canada to another direction.

Like a Punch In the Gut

Five words that sum up a lawsuit underway against the European Union. Five words that perhaps should be a rallying cry for people around the world.

We Can't See a Future

Lawyers acting for a group including a French lavender farmer and members of the indigenous Sami community in Sweden have launched legal action against the EU’s institutions for failing to adequately protect them against climate change. 

A case is being pursued in the Luxembourg-based general court, Europe’s second highest, against the European parliament and the council of the European Union for allowing overly high greenhouse gas emissions to continue until 2030. 

The families, including young children, claim their lives have been blighted by the policy decisions in Brussels, and that the EU’s inadequate emissions targets will cause more suffering. 

The legal complaint asserts that the EU’s existing climate target to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels, does not protect their fundamental rights of life, health, occupation and property.

The litigants, from Portugal, Germany, France, Italy, Romania, Kenya, Fiji, and the Swedish Sami Youth Association Sáminuorra, say the EU should define a higher reduction target.

We Can't See a Future 

Be honest. Can you? Can you see a future for your grandchildren that protects their "fundamental rights of life, health, occupation and property"? Can you see that in the policies your government is pursuing today? Of course you can't because your government isn't making a secure future for our grandchildren its priority. If it was it would be saying, "Okay, there's the objective. What must we do to reach it?" 

Only your government isn't doing that, not even close. They're muttering about carbon pricing, a policy that is not connected to meaningful outcomes. How does a carbon tax, this far into the 21st century, secure future generations rights of life, health, occupation and property? It doesn't. It's window dressing and nothing more. What connects paltry carbon taxes to a livable future for the next generation? Nothing. There is no connection. It's merely a gestural response especially coming from a government hell bent on flooding world markets with toxin-laced, high-carbon bitumen.

Can courts force governments to change course?

In 2015, a court in The Hague ordered the Dutch government to cut its emissions by at least 25% within five years, ruling that its plans to cut emissions by 14-17% compared with 1990 levels by 2020 were unlawful, given the scale of the threat posed by climate change. The government has appealed the decision, which will be heard in The Hague on Monday.

Science has spoken, loudly and clearly. We must decarbonize our economy and our society as rapidly as possible. As in "now." We don't have another 20 or 30 years to screw around. It's not going to be easy and it's not going to be cheap but we have to do it, now.

People hit by drought, people hit by floods, people hit by severe storm events of increasing frequency, duration and intensity, people hit by sea level rise - these are real people, victims of our inaction. This is just the start. So why are we continuing to subsidize Canada's fossil energy giants to the tune of nearly $46 billion a year?

With the political parties we have today - Liberal, Conservative, New Democrat - we can't see a future. I wish so many of us didn't prefer it that way.

Is This Harper's Plan for Athabasca?

The Australian government is moving to protect steelworkers' jobs against the impacts of its own carbon pricing regime at a cost of $36,000 per year per worker.

In a report to be released today, the institute finds the steel industry - under pressure from the high Australian dollar - will make a windfall per tonne of steel from carbon tax compensation over the first four years of the scheme.

The institute also finds the government's commitment of a large swathe of free permits, and a $300 million adjustment fund for steel under the carbon price, will cost it over $320,000 per worker from 2012 to 2020, or on average $36,000 a year.

 

So the idea seems to be that you levy carbon taxes on the major carbon emitters and then refund the tax as job-saving "compensation."   That sounds like the perfect deal for Big Oil in Athabasca. 

British Columbians Support Carbon Taxes, What's Holding Up the Rest of You?

A FINE IDEA, BUNGLED - THANKS JACK

I'm republishing this because it's an important development and I sent it out last night and it appears to have gotten lost in the typical morning shuffle.   The story is important because it dispels the cynicism that the public won't support measures to combat global warming.   I've had my fill of that nonsense from reformatories and supposed progressives alike.

A solid majority of British Columbians surveyed by the Pembina Institute support their provincial government's carbon taxation.   Here are some of the findings:

"[BC'ers] are worried (69%) about global warming and support (70%) the province being a leader in takingaction to solve the problem.
• Believe that reducing greenhouse gas pollution helps grow (36%), or has little impact (44%) on,
British Columbia’s economy.
• Feel the carbon tax has had positive (33%) or neutral (41%) consequences for B.C.
• Support (69%) a carbon tax that is applied to all sources of pollution that cause global warming,
instead of only to fossil fuel combustion (as is now the case).
• Want to see at least some carbon tax revenue being invested in clean energy projects (49%) and
other priorities like health care and education (56%).
• Support (71%) carbon taxes as one of their top three ways for government to collect tax revenue
(second in popularity to corporate taxes) and have some support (29%) for post-2012 carbon tax
increases."

To get a solid, consistent 70 plus % popular support for a tax is profound.  We like it, we would like to see it extended to all pollution causing global warming, and we think that, next only to corporate taxes, carbon taxes are a great way to collect tax revenue.

The funny thing is the government hasn't really peddled the carbon tax.   There's been no hard sell, no manipulation.   People just seem to understand it's the right thing to do.   I expect most, if not all, of those same people also understand that Athabasca is the wrong thing to do and that running toxic bitumen-laden supertankers through the pristine but treacherous waters of northern B.C. is even worse.

I think prime minister Lardarse (along with the Libs and NDP) should take note of the Pembina survey results.   Maybe that would give him some idea of what lies in store if he tries to ram that Northern Gateway project down our throats.

The Pembina study shows that the old saw about public rejection of carbon taxes was just a straw man set up by an awful lot of dodgy pols on the right - and on the left.

Exxon Supports Carbon Taxes, Ignatieff Not So Much

Exxon Mobile's chief executive, Rex Tillerson has endorsed carbon taxes as the best way to fight global warming. From The Guardian:

In a significant shift in stance, Exxon's chief executive, Rex Tillerson, told an audience in Washington that he considered a tax to be a fairer route to curbing emissions than a cap-and-trade system of pollution allocations.

"As a businessman it is hard to speak favourably about any new tax," said Tillerson. "But a carbon tax strikes me as a more direct, a more transparent and a more effective approach."

"A carbon tax is also the most efficient means of reflecting the cost of carbon in all economic decisions - from investments made by companies to fuel their requirements to the product choices made by consumers," he said."

Carbon taxes are, of course, the proposal raised by Stephane Dion and mocked by the NDP and the Conservatives. So far Michael Ignatieff seems intent on gaming Liberal policy to maximize political advantage and has steered clear of the green shift initiative.

The head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, has written to Barack and Michelle Obama pleading for them to embrace carbon taxes and to reject cap and tax schemes. From ENN:

Hansen advocates a three-pronged attack on the climate problem. First, he wants a phasing out of coal-fired power stations - which he calls "factories of death" - that do not incorporate carbon capture. "Nobody realistically expects that the large readily available pools of oil and gas will be left in the ground. Caps will not cause that to happen - caps only slow the rate at which the oil and gas are used. The only solution is to cut off the coal source," the Hansens wrote.

Second, he proposes a "carbon tax and 100% dividend". This is a mechanism for putting a price on carbon without raising money for government coffers. The idea is to tax carbon at source, then redistribute the revenue equally among taxpayers, so that high carbon users are penalised while low carbon users are rewarded."

Gee Steve, gee Jack, gee Mikey - he's talking about a "green shift." It's not that Hansen is a radical. It's that he, like the head of Exxon Mobile and like Stephane Dion know it's the only effective way of curbing greenhouse gas emissions in modern, Western economies.

Carbon Taxes to Level Playing Field

It's an idea I've endorsed for some time - carbon tariffs on imports. Work out the carbon footprint associated with an import and then levy a tariff on it as the product arrives at our docks.

By fixing the tariff to the product, it becomes possible to circumvent the principal arguments that block progress on a meaningful and effective plan to combat global greenhouse gas emissions.

The more populous countries, China and India, have a sound argument that because their per capita emissions are just a fraction of a citizen of the West, they should get a pass until we lower our per capita emissions. This, of course, ignores the fact that they're largely poor, over populated, agrarian societies which gives them an enormous advantage on the per capita scale.

The smaller, Western countries also have a sound argument when they point to China having already emerged to become the top GHG emitter. Leaving aside issues of population, that's a powerful argument but it's no more powerful than the per capita argument so - stalemate.

Carbon tariffs levied on production cut through both arguments and break the deadlock. Those tariffs, however, must be applied to imports as well as domestic production. Then fair is fair.

CIBC World Markets has released a report endorsing carbon tariffs and noting they could even restore North America's manufacturing sector. From the Toronto Star:

"It becomes absurdly quixotic to ban coal plants in North America while at the same time China's got 570 coal plants slated to go into production between now and 2012, 30 plants between now and the Olympics," CIBC economist Jeff Rubin said.
"We're moving in opposite directions."

With some advanced countries enacting carbon taxes, carbon trading systems and other measures to lower emissions, CIBC believes the growing pollution from developing countries will provoke penalties against their exports.

That would benefit the environment, and will also bring certain jobs back to North America, since carbon emission taxes and high oil prices would offset the benefit of cheap labour, Rubin says.

"Chinese goods will have to pay for the carbon that they emitted and they'll pay for that when they enter our market place by paying that tariff," Rubin said in an interview.

"Once we impose the tariff on Chinese goods, some of those industries will be coming home, because . . . energy and carbon efficiency is going to matter more than labour costs."

We still have an edge on clean technology and we do the country no good service by failing to use that edge to our own betterment. We need to see carbon taxes not as something that will endanger our economy but something that can stimulate and restore our economy.

Oh Steve, Here's A Tax You're Going To Love!

The Globe & Mail reports that a federal advisory panel is going to recommend implementation of carbon taxes to fight global warming.

Carbon taxes aren't a new idea but haven't been widely adopted as yet. They work by making big emitters pay for the excessive CO2 they release into the atmosphere. When it comes to big emitters there's none quite like Big Oil and the Athabasca Tar Sands.

Imagine making Big Oil (primarily American oil companies) paying big bucks for the big pollution they emit to produce ersatz petroleum (primarily for the American market). The very thought of it would leave Harper needing a change of pants.

Carbon taxes operate on the carrot and stick principle. Big, bad emiters get the stick - the taxes - while industries willing to adopt clean technologies get the carrot - financial incentives funded out of the taxes collected from the bad guys. It's neat, it's tidy and it's effective - as effective as the political side is willing to make it.