Talking points on Obama’s speech

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, January 21, 2013 at 7:13 PM - 0 Comments

1. Surprisingly strong emphasis on climate change

I spoke recently with a Canadian politician who remarked that the words “climate change” had not come up in the presidential campaign. I noted that Hurricane Sandy, which hit at the very end of the campaign, has since changed the context and the public conversation in the U.S.. Today, Obama devoted a surprising amount of attention to the issue:

“We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries—we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure—our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.”

What will that broad statement add up to in the context of a Republican-controlled House of Representatives? Regulations out of the Environmental Protection Agency aimed at reducing emissions from power generating plants, especially coal-burning plants, are the most likely outcome. And the fiscal cliff negotiations preserved some tax breaks for renewable energy. Obama has also nominated a new Secretary of State, John Kerry, who has been an advocate for climate change policy and is expected to take a more aggressive role in international climate talks. What all this means for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline remains to be seen. In his first press conference after the campaign, Obama said he’d be doing more on climate change, but added, “If the message is we’re going to ignore jobs and growth simply to address climate change, I don’t think anybody’s going to go for that.”

Continue…

‘Let my carbon go’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 18, 2013 at 5:32 PM - 0 Comments

This Hour Has 22 Minutes takes on the cap-and-trade debate (such as it is).

How bout that weather?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 15, 2013 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Tim Harper wonders whether extreme weather and U.S. policy could put pressure on the Harper government to change its approach to environmental policy. The Washington Post’s editorial board notes that 2012 was the warmest on record in the United States and makes a suggestion.

Scientists can’t yet know to what extent man-made emissions influenced the heat and calamitous drought. But the result is nevertheless ominous, “a huge exclamation point on the end of several decades of fairly consistent warming,” as NOAA’s Deke Arndt put it. The year offers a vision of what will happen more often on a planet that is heating — slowly and fitfully, not every year warmer than the last, but inexorably.

There is still uncertainty. Though they have a range of estimates, scientists still do not know exactly how sensitive the global climate system is to human carbon emissions and exactly how steep the long-term temperature line will be. Predicting the consequences of a given temperature rise is also difficult. That’s an argument not for doing nothing but for managing the risks, spending now to avoid the likelihood of much greater costs later, as any good business would do in the face of certain threats of uncertain magnitude.

The smartest hedge would be a national carbon tax. It would marshal the market’s power to wring carbon out of the economy, putting decisions about the direction of energy and manufacturing in the hands of consumers and businesses that meet their demands, not Congress and interest groups that lobby lawmakers. When people must pay something for their pollution, they pollute less and invest in cleaner alternatives. A carbon tax would provide more certainty to industry and investors who currently can only guess at what climate policy will look like year to year.

Newfoundland on carbon pricing

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 21, 2012 at 2:38 PM - 0 Comments

Continuing with our survey of provincial policies, a response from the government of Newfoundland.

In 2011, the government released Charting Our Course: Climate Change Action Plan 2011 setting out the government’s strategy for reducing GHG emissions and enhancing resilience to unavoidable climate impacts. The Plan contains 75 economy-wide commitments. In the Plan, government reiterated its commitment on a provincial basis to the regional targets adopted by the Forum of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers in 2001, namely, reducing provincial GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2010, by 10% below 1990 levels by 2020, and by 75-85% below 2001 levels by 2050.

In view of the share of GHG emissions coming from the large industrial sector (51% in 2010), government stated in its 2011 Climate Change Action Plan that it would require the large industrial sector to contribute to GHG reduction efforts going forward. The sector encompasses electricity generation, mining, oil refining, offshore oil and large-scale manufacturing. In Plan, government committed to develop, and publicly release in 2012, a detailed approach to reducing GHG emissions in the sector. Government recognized the importance of ensuring any approach was both environmentally progressive and economically prudent.

Government has established good working relations with the companies in the large industrial sector, leading three rounds of bilateral consultations, engaging companies in technical work to assess GHG abatement opportunities and competitiveness considerations, and maintaining an ad hoc dialogue with companies on key issues as they arise. Government has discussed three main approaches to reducing GHG emissions with the industrial companies: regulation with market based alternative compliance (conceptually similar to Alberta and Saskatchewan), emissions trading (Western Climate Initiative), and carbon taxes. In early 2013, government will finalize which of these three approaches it will pursue. This timeline is a few weeks behind the public commitment to release its approach in 2012, however the issue is quite complex and government wished to ensure that a comprehensive assessment was completed.

Cap-and-trade is coming to Quebec

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 at 4:35 PM - 0 Comments

The Quebec government announced last week that it is moving ahead with plans to link with California’s carbon market.

“The cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emission allowances (SPEDE) is a major advance in the fight against climate change,” explained Yves-François Blanchet. “Europe, China, Australia and Japan are working in this direction. Québec and California are now leaders in this endeavour.” … “Discussions with our counterparts in California are extremely positive. I am confident that we will see a full linkage of the Québec and California markets during spring 2013 in anticipation of the first joint auction planned for August, 2013. Québec and California have agreed to work together closely so that Canadian provinces and U.S. states join the market. As a result of this agreement, Québec will be in a position to achieve its emission targets, and businesses will have an innovative and flexible tool enabling them to participate in the effort,” concluded Minister Blanchet

Why Canada won’t have an effective climate change policy anytime soon

By Stephen Gordon - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 at 8:28 AM - 0 Comments

Any effective climate change policy requires imposing significant costs on consumers and households. Canada doesn’t have an effective climate change policy because Canadians don’t want to pay those costs.

Or do they? This is from an article posted at the David Suzuki Foundation site:

While Canada’s federal representatives — including Environment Minister Peter Kent — were doing all they could to obstruct the talks, public opinion and social research institute The Environics Institute was conducting its annual check with Canadians on our thoughts about climate change.

The findings of the new poll couldn’t paint a starker picture of the divide between Canadians and their political leaders.

More and more of us are confident about the science that shows climate change is happening and that we are mainly responsible for it, largely through burning fossil fuels. The good news in the poll concerns what Canadians believe we should do to tackle this serious issue. Across the country and among all political stripes, most of us believe that governments need to do far more to curb emissions. As the pollsters note, “a clear majority believe the problem is real, that government must take the lead role through new regulations and standards, and that citizens like themselves must help pay for the necessary actions through taxes and higher prices for the goods and services they consume.”

Continue…

Q&A with Thomas Mulcair

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 14, 2012 at 2:38 PM - 0 Comments

I sat down with NDP leader Thomas Mulcair in the leader of the opposition’s office yesterday. Here is a transcript of our conversation, slightly abridged and edited.

How do you see the last year for you and the NDP? Do you feel you’re winning? Do you feel you’re getting somewhere?

We’re doing well. And the Abacus poll was confirmation of that … I dare say that we’ve been through a rough 18-month cycle. I mean, we started off in 2011 with a huge high, May 2. We realized then … It was interesting. I don’t think I’ve told too many people this story. I sat down with Jack shortly after, like two, three days after the election and when we became official opposition, he was asking me to become opposition House leader, it was a great feather in my cap. And then he said something to me that was quite interesting, he said, you know, this is a huge challenge. And I was just expecting him to be so effusive with the breakthrough and everything and he said, no, no, this is going to be a huge challenge. So then the huge challenge became all the bigger with his loss. And then we had to really work hard through a long, seven-month leadership  where we were missing a lot of our frontbenchers who were in the campaign and then we had to rebuild.

When I held the little press conference up in Toronto after the leadership, the next day, I used an expression that came to spontaneously, I said, we’re going to have a cascading transition under the sign of continuity. So I was so lucky, like somebody like [chief of staff to Jack Layton] Anne [McGrath] stayed with me long enough to hand off to [current chief of staff] Raoul [Gebert], overlapped with Raoul … So a couple of the other changes that took place were like that. We brought in a few people, the core team you still recognize when you see them around us. And so it’s been a huge challenge in terms of the structure and the organization, but some of the good points for me after becoming leader: in August I was doing my parish visit in Quebec, I would be in places like Vercheres—Les Patriotes, where Sana Hassainia is our MP, and be in a community hall on a Sunday morning with several hundred people who had all paid as part of a fundraiser, but she had municipal officials there, you know the mayors and the councillors, she had community groups, she had the schools and stuff like that. They’re getting settled in, they’re putting down roots. The same day I was at a corn roast for Helene LeBlanc and she had about 600 people and a lot of the cultural communities, so they’re setting down roots, they’re doing their fundraising, they’re getting well known in their communities, they’re in their local papers, so that part’s coming together.

Come this spring, we’re pivoting, right? We’re going to be entering the third year. And so the consolidation phase has to be finished. We’ve got to start the preparatory phase for the next campaign. Continue…

IPCC plus 20: a world warming but not frying

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, December 12, 2012 at 6:58 AM - 0 Comments

The CBC provided us with an interesting case study in science reporting on Monday as its “community team” blog trumpeted “UN climate change projections made in 1990 ‘coming true.’”

Climate change projections made over two decades ago have stood the test of time, according to a new report published Monday in the journal Nature.

The world is warming at a rate that is consistent with forecasts made by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 22 years ago.

Climate scientists from around the world forecasted the global mean temperature trend for a 40-year period, from 1990 to 2030—and at this halfway point the report authors have found the projections “seem accurate” after accounting for natural fluctuations.

These are absolutely all the numbers you are going to get out of this news item. And if you peruse the new assessment of the 1990 IPCC predictions, which was actually published on the Nature Climate Change website, what you find is a more nuanced picture than the CBC’s “They nailed it, no worries” interpretation implies.

David Frame and Dáithí Stone write that the 1990 IPCC report predicted a rise in global mean temperatures of between 0.7 degrees C and 1.5 degrees C by the year 2030; on a linear interpolation, we might have expected half the increase to have occurred by now. The actual observed warming during the past 20 years (almost all of it taking place in the first ten) has been in the vicinity of 0.35 degrees C to 0.39 degrees C, “on the borderline” of the range given in 1990. In other words, the IPCC’s point estimate was high, and the overall warming has been consistent with the outer confidence bounds of their stated prediction, but barely.

Frame and Stone think, with some justification, that this is a pretty good performance given the simplicity of the climate models available at the time. It’s especially good, they think, because the models could not predict what would happen in the economy, or below the planet’s crust. Their story is that the Earth caught a series of lucky breaks despite the substantive failure of greenhouse gas reduction efforts.

The highlighted [IPCC] prediction assumed a business-as-usual scenario of GHG emissions; three other scenarios were considered and in fact Scenario B (which assumed a shift to natural gas, a decrease in the deforestation rate, and implementation of the Montreal Protocol, all independent of global climate negotiations) was closer to the mark as of 2010, especially with respect to methane emissions… Of course, [even these Scenario B] predictions were based on idealized future scenarios that did not foresee the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, the collapse of the Soviet Bloc industry, or the growth of some Asian economies, so one could argue that the prediction is right for the wrong reasons.

The authors conclude by noting that predicting the future is a lot harder than predicting the past—and, unfortunately, the resolving power of crystal balls has not improved much since 1990.

…the 1990 prediction following [the IPCC's] business-as-usual scenario covered a full 0.4ºC range due solely to uncertainty in the climate sensitivity that has not narrowed substantially so far, whereas a larger range was implied by the examination of further scenarios of emissions and a larger range still should have been considered owing to uncertainty in the evolution of natural forcings and internally generated variability.

Believers in and skeptics of the threat from anthropogenic climate change will both find promising fodder in this paper for conversion into mountains of delicious hay. (Mind the carbon emissions, though.) I’ll resist the temptation to join in that exercise, but it is very clear that the authors’ “Well done” message to the IPCC carries a sizable asterisk. If the CBC is going to report on a scientific paper, why not show some indication somebody has read it?

The Conservative cap-and-trade plan: The same, but different, but still the same

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 11, 2012 at 12:32 PM - 0 Comments

The Prime Minister’s director of communications tries, in an exchange of tweets with Postmedia’s Michael Den Tandt, to explain the difference between the cap-and-trade system the NDP is proposing and the cap-and-trade system the Conservatives used to advocate for: specifically, why the Conservatives describe one as a “tax” when the other apparently wasn’t.

show me where we plan to raise 21.5 billion in revenue in our platform or Throne Speech

the NDP books 21.5 in gov’t revenue from plan. 2008 platform had no gov’t revenue associated with it. Not in 2011 platform or SFT

no revenue to gov’t. The NDP plan does – hence the tax

no, it’s a tax because the gov’t wld get the $. But, if you prefer, we’ll call it $ the NDP gov’t wld extract from Canadians.

At the risk of plagiarizing myself, I’ll again note that this argument about government revenue is irrelevant. At least so far as the Conservatives are concerned. As I have explained at various points, the reference to revenue is, by the government’s own logic, a red herring. The Conservatives have said that, in their present opinion, anything that establishes a price on carbon is a carbon tax. By this logic, it simply does not matter whether that price results in public revenue or private revenue.

If the Conservatives ever previously publicly and categorically renounced the idea of deriving government revenue from a cap-and-trade system, I’ve yet to see evidence of it. (For whatever it’s worth, the American cap-and-trade legislation that Canada would have conceivably partnered with would have resulted in government revenue from the auctioning of permits.) But when John Baird was championing his government intention’s to establish a price on carbon in 2008, he said that industries would pay into a “technology fund.” Here are the details of that proposed fund. Does that count as government revenue?

Regulations and carbon pricing can work together

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, December 8, 2012 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

On Friday, the Harper government’s new fuel efficiency regulations were published in the Canada Gazette, including the full cost-benefit analysis.

These costs are incremental to the baseline so, for example, technology costs add $195 million (present value) to the costs of the model year 2017 fleet, and add $2.4 billion (present value) to the costs of the model year 2025 fleet.

The incremental technology costs for model year 2017 are expected to be $127 for cars and $162 for light trucks, increasing to $1,856 for cars and $2,453 for light trucks in model year 2025 in order to meet the increasingly stringent standards of the proposed Regulations. In reality, relative changes in vehicle prices and performance may affect consumer choice; however, it is not within the capacity of the analysis to model consumer choice.

PJ Partington of the Pembina Institute defends the new standards and argues that a price on carbon would complement such regulations.

None of this is to say that carbon pricing doesn’t have an important role in tackling emissions from transportation. Carbon pricing would support these regulations by creating more demand for fuel-efficient vehicles and encouraging people to reduce their vehicle use. Carbon pricing would also provide revenues that governments could re-invest in clean transportation options like transit and electric vehicle infrastructure.

We don’t see it as a choice between carbon pricing and efficiency standards: they’re complementary, not alternatives. By ensuring that efficiency continues to improve across the board, standards like these help manage the impact of higher gas prices from carbon pricing, and ensures that they will have plenty of cleaner options to choose from. The Western Climate Initiative, which features a cap-and-trade system, also sees stringent vehicle standards as a key complementary policy to carbon pricing. An economic modeling assessment of climate policy options for Canada that we published in 2009 took the same approach. 

Jacques Gourde achieves government backbencher nirvana

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 6, 2012 at 1:09 PM - 0 Comments

The Conservative MP’s statement to the House yesterday afternoon.

Here again is a rough guide to the Conservatives’ carbon tax farce.

Reaching our GHG goals thanks to a price on carbon

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 at 1:32 PM - 0 Comments

Peter Kent addresses the UN convention on climate change in Doha.

Canada is halfway to achieving our national effort to meet our Copenhagen target. The combined efforts to date of federal, provincial and territorial governments, of consumers and of businesses will generate half the greenhouse gas reduction required to meet Canada’s greenhouse gas target by 2020.

This year’s report on emissions trends, surveyed the federal, provincial and territorial scenes thusly.

In this year’s report, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is projected to be slightly higher in 2020 than in the previous report (by 0.8%), while GHG emissions are lower (by 5.3%). The projected decline in GHG emissions is thus associated with a reduction in  intensity, implying greater de-coupling between GDP and GHGs. The improvements in  emission intensity are in part due to: i) increased contribution of the services sector,  which typically emits less emissions per dollar of GDP; and ii) actual emissions in 2010 were lower than projected, while actual GDP was higher. The decline in emissions intensity was also due to the fact that consumers and businesses are making more progress in reducing emissions. Government programs are contributing to this by helping to accelerate the adoption of energy efficient technologies and cleaner fuels.

Canada is moving forward to regulate GHGs on a sector-by-sector basis, aligning with the U.S where appropriate. The Government of Canada has started with the
transportation and electricity sectors – two of the largest sources of Canadian emissions – and plans to move forward with regulations in partnership with other key
economic sectors, including oil and gas. Last year’s report included emissions regulations for light-duty vehicles for the model years 2011-2016 as well as an
electricity performance standard to phase-out coal-fired electricity, Alberta’s Specified Gas Emitters Regulation, British Columbia’s carbon tax and Quebec’s carbon
levy. Provincial policies such as Ontario’s phase-out of coal-fired electricity also made important contributions. Projected emissions levels in the 2012 version of the report have further declined, in part through the inclusion of further federal actions on additional emissions regulations for light-duty vehicles for the 2017-2025 period as well as heavy duty vehicle regulations. Recent provincial actions (e.g., Quebec’s capand-trade, Nova Scotia’s emissions cap for electric utilities, increased stringency of building energy codes, equipment standards and requirements for capturing methane from landfill gas) are also included. Total emissions in 2020 are projected to decrease to 720 Mt.

Exchanging tweets with Rona Ambrose

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 at 10:31 AM - 0 Comments

Yesterday, via Twitter, I sought clarification on environmental policy in the province of Alberta.

Technical question: Does Alberta have a carbon tax, cap and trade or both?

Among the respondents was Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose.

Alberta’s policy prices carbon but funds are directed into a technology fund to reduce GHG’s not to general govnt revenue.

I followed-up with Ms. Ambrose.

Do you support that?

And Ms. Ambrose obliged with a response.

works for Alberta because money stays in Alberta and is managed by an investment board. Can’t comment on GHG reduction results.

This has been the second instalment of Exchanging tweets with Rona Ambrose.

The case for pricing carbon

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 at 12:22 PM - 0 Comments

Ontario’s environment commissioner makes the case for carbon pricing.

Some jurisdictions are responding to this existential threat by pricing carbon pollution. Australia has implemented a carbon pricing program that charges companies the equivalent of $24 for every tonne of CO2 they emit and intends to link this program with the European Union Emissions Trading System. Japan implemented a carbon tax in April 2012, and China has created seven different pilot carbon pricing programs with a view to rolling out the best Annual Greenhouse Gas Progress Report 2012 model nationally by 2015. In North America, several provincial and state governments are taking steps to enact domestic carbon pricing policies. California and Quebec have put a legislated cap on carbon emissions and will require large emitters to comply through the purchase and trade of carbon allowances starting in 2013. 

British Columbia has re-afrmed its commitment to a carbon tax program that has earned international recognition as an effective model for climate action. As evidence that smart climate action does not hurt economic performance, in the four years since B.C.’s carbon tax took effect (2008–2011), the province’s economic growth (as measured in gross domestic product) has outpaced the rest of Canada, and personal and corporate income tax rates have been reduced to among the lowest in the country. At the same time, per capita fossil fuel consumption in B.C. has dropped substantially – declining 16.4 per cent more than the rest of Canada – and hybrid vehicle adoption has been twice the national average.

While it may be premature to make a direct correlation between the carbon price and these trends, they are nonetheless consistent with experiences in other jurisdictions that have had a carbon price in place for over a decade (e.g., United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden). These benets have also been recognized by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, which has argued that a “price signal is the most powerful incentive for both industry and consumers to conserve energy and enhance efciency. Coupled with the appropriate overall policy framework, carbon pricing can lead to innovation and new technologies that have positive outcomes for consumers and position Canadian rms to be suppliers of less carbon-intensive products and services.”

The commissioner formally recommends that the Ontario government ”conduct an analysis of the environmental, social and economic impacts of alternative carbon pricing mechanisms and release it to the public for discussion.” The ministry responds as follows.

Ontario has been clear that we are not developing a carbon tax. Emissions trading is an alternative carbon pricing approach. Ontario is developing a greenhouse gas reduction proposal which includes working with our Western Climate Initiative partners and stakeholders to develop a regional emissions trading program.

Joe Oliver tries to explain the farce

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 29, 2012 at 11:54 AM - 0 Comments

On Monday, Vancouver Sun columnist Craig McInnes criticized that the the Harper government’s “carbon tax” attacks on the NDP. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver has now responded in a letter to the editor.

I am disappointed your columnist Craig McInnes has fallen for NDP leader Thomas Mulcair’s carbon tax boondoggle.

Novel opening gambit.

His plan would raise more than $20 billion in tax revenues from carbon – so it is not inaccurate to label it a carbon tax.

“Not inaccurate” is an interesting turn of phrase. But as we have explained at various points, the reference to revenue is, by the government’s own logic, a red herring. The Conservatives have said that, in their current view, anything that establishes a price on carbon is equivalent to a carbon tax. Therefore, it simply doesn’t matter whether that price results in public revenue or private revenue.

That said, if you want to play along with the idea of government revenue as an important distinction, consider that when John Baird was championing his government intention’s to establish a price on carbon in 2008, he said that industries would pay into a “technology fund.” Here are the details of that proposed fund. Does that count as government revenue?

President Obama recently joined Prime Minister Harper in opposition to a cap and trade system, which Mr. Mulcair supports.

Not quite. President Obama’s press secretary ruled out the possibility of the White House proposing a “carbon tax.” But the President previously proposed a cap-and-trade system. His press secretary’s phrasing—”would”—leaves open the question of whether the President sees a distinction between a carbon tax and cap-and-trade or if, as the Harper government is now trying to argue, Mr. Obama believes the two options are equivalent.

Eminent economists like Jack Mintz say the NDP plan could raise gas prices by 10 cents a litre.

There was some debate during the last election campaign over the precise impact on gas prices, but it’s interesting to see Mr. Oliver defer to the expertise of Mr. Mintz. The eminent economist thinks a carbon tax is the best approach to reducing GHG emissions.

Canada’s trucking industry also came out against a carbon tax because it would raise prices on the goods they transport. Mulcair’s NDP’s carbon tax will raise the price of everything, including gas at the pump, groceries at the checkout counter and electricity in your home. We simply can’t afford Mulcair’s NDP.

The regulations Peter Kent announced earlier this week will raise the price of cars. The government’s regulations for the coal-fired electricity sector will raise the price of electricity. And the Conservatives still have to announce their regulations for the oil and gas sector.

By the way, I remain happy—eager, even—to sit down with Mr. Oliver or Mr. Kent to discuss all this at the earliest opportunity.

(For whatever it matters: Craig’s column referred to my writing on the subject, but I don’t believe Craig and I have ever met, spoken or otherwise interacted. If we have crossed paths at some point in the past—and I’m simply forgetting that—I can categorically say that we didn’t speak or interact in regards to his column before it was published.)

See previously: Peter Kent tries to explain the farce

‘A $36-billion car tax’

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 at 3:50 PM - 0 Comments

NDP MP Glenn Thibeault’s statement in the House before Question Period this afternoon.

This is probably Stephen Gordon’s fault.

To Strathmore, Consort and beyond

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

Kevin Sorenson’s latest MP reports in the Strathmore Standard and Consort Enterprise conclude thusly.

While our government is working to balance the federal budget, in the House of Commons we continue to stand up against the NDP plan for a massive $21 billion job-killing carbon tax.

Meanwhile, last week, Rob Merrifield informed readers of the Mayerthorpe Freelancer, Whitecourt Star and Fort Creeks as follows.

 We will also continue to stand up against the NDP plan for a massive $21 billion job-killing carbon tax.

Here again is a rough guide to the Conservatives’ carbon tax farce.

Why does Peter Kent want you to pay more for a car?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 at 9:11 AM - 0 Comments

As a result of the greenhouse gas emissions regulations announced yesterday, the purchase price of cars will increase.

Officials estimated the cost of an average car would climb by $700 in 2021 and by $1,800 by 2025 when the rules would be fully phased in, though some industry analysts say the price tag could be as much as $5,200 per vehicle depending on the technology needed to achieve the efficiency gains. But Canadian officials also say the motorists would save $900 annually in fuel costs at today’s gasoline prices…

The Center for Automotive Research , an auto industry think-tank based in Ann Arbor, Mich., estimates the cost of the average new vehicle will rise by $5,200 in 2012 dollars as auto makers add expensive new technologies to meet the higher miles per gallon standard. “The [auto makers’] research and development departments tell us the true cost is more like $10,000 per vehicle by 2025,” Sean McAlinden, CAR’s executive vice-president of research and chief economist said Tuesday.

The new regulations follow current regulations that will also increase the purchase price. The Canadian regulations are modelled on the American regulations, which Eduardo Porter questioned in September.

What the government didn’t mention is that these improvements come at a high cost for drivers, automakers and society in general. They could be achieved much more cheaply by raising taxes on gasoline to a level comparable to that of pretty much every other industrialized nation. The new mileage rules are so expensive, in fact, that even if one factors in all the expected gains from the policy — like less damage from climate change and fewer deaths from respiratory disease — many economists think that the costs actually outweigh the benefits.

The reason is fairly straightforward. Fuel-efficiency standards do not really change drivers’ behavior in a helpful way. Gas taxes do. Consider how a gas tax would work. Because it would make gas more expensive at the pump, we would drive less. When time came to replace the old family S.U.V., we would be more likely to consider a more fuel-efficient option. As more Americans sought gas-sipping hybrids, carmakers would develop more efficient vehicles.

Peter Kent’s speech yesterday announcing the changes is here.

Putting a price on carbon will apparently take away everyone and everything you love

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 4:20 PM - 0 Comments

Further to John Baird’s warning that a carbon tax “would kill and hurt Canadian families,” Christian Paradis sought this afternoon—while responding to a question about foreign investment, mind you—to clarify the extent of the destruction.

It is not a responsible approach to try to impose a $21.5 billion carbon tax on the shoulders of Canadians and to have a plan to tax everything. Everything would be lost. The economy would be lost and family would be lost.

It is a good thing Mr. Paradis avoided reading the platform he ran on in 2008 and plugged his ears when the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister and successive environment ministers championed the idea of putting a price on carbon. He no doubt would’ve been horrified to know of the destruction his colleagues were openly advocating for.

Of course, it is perhaps to wonder why British Columbia and Alberta have not (as yet) been reduced to post-apocalyptic hellscapes.

Here again is a rough guide to the Conservatives’ carbon tax farce.

What will the Harper government’s regulations cost?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 12:19 PM - 0 Comments

Megan Leslie writes to the Environment Minister to inquire about what projections and analysis are guiding the Harper government’s environmental policies.

The very basis of your government’s decision-making on this file has been called into question by your inability to provide essential information on cost. Your government’s understanding of the risks to Canada’s economy and the well-being of Canadians has been called into question by your lack of transparency respecting the projected impacts of climate change.

Sound policy decisions must be based on good science and good accounting. You and your government have failed to show evidence that you are meeting this standard. Similarly to your decision to withdraw from Kyoto, your plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been roundly criticized as inefficient, ineffective and more costly over the long term than other plans. With the latest round of international climate negotiations taking place in Doha, Qatar this week, this information is even more pertinent.

See previously: By how much will Stephen Harper raise the price of your Thanksgiving turkey?

Preston Manning on putting a price on carbon

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 9:54 AM - 0 Comments

In September, Preston Manning was linked vaguely to a new call for a carbon tax—he was said to support the idea of full-cost pricing “in principle.”

For the sake of clarification, I passed along a question to him through his office: “Do you support establishing a price on carbon, either through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system?”

Here is the response I received via email yesterday.

“I support the concept of moving towards full cost accounting with respect to energy production – which means determining the negative environmental impacts associated with any energy project, adopting measures to avoid or mitigate those effects, and ultimately integrating the costs of those measures into the price of the product.

As you know, the two principal approaches to accomplishing this, with respect to the production of energy from hydrocarbons, are through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system. I believe that the carbon tax involves less interference by governments in the marketplace than the cap-and-trade approach.

However I also believe that the carbon tax is misnamed, as the public’s idea of a tax is a levy on income or the sale of a good or asset, the proceeds of which go to the government to pay for public services – which is fundamentally different from the economist’s idea of using a tax to internalize an externality. It is the communication of the carbon tax concept to the public which I feel was hopelessly bungled.

I also believe that if you are going to apply full cost accounting to the production of energy from petroleum sources, then the same concept should be applied to every other energy source, since none is environmentally neutral. For example when the oil sands producers tear up several hundred square kilometers of forests in northern Alberta, the cost of mitigating that activity are incorporated into the cost of the operations through reclamation bonds. But where then is the reservoir tax on the hydro producers of this country who have flooded forest areas in Canada the size of lake Ontario? And similarly, where is the radiation tax on nuclear power producers, and where are the environmental levies on wind and solar producers?

In my view the application of full cost accounting and pricing to hydrocarbon producers should be conditional upon the simultaneous application of this concept to all other energy producers.”

‘It’s the producing provinces in Alberta and British Columbia that are leading the way’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 26, 2012 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Bob Rae talks to Tom Clark about putting a price on carbon.

Tom Clark: But I want to move on to one other thing here and that is the question of whether we should be putting a price on carbon so that at some point down the road the government can move towards either a cap and trade system or a carbon tax. What do you think? What would you encourage your party to decide on that? Should Alberta…some form of carbon tax?

Bob Rae: Alberta and British Columbia have already indicated that they’re pricing carbon. That’s what BC is doing, Alberta is doing it. There are other provinces that are considering doing it. I thought Mr. Harper was in favour of that. I’ve heard Mr. Harper and many ministers; John Baird when he was Energy Minister, others saying that a price on carbon was a good idea. To me, I don’t know how we send signals to the marketplace about how we need to conserve energy going forward unless we have a coordinated approach to carbon pricing. Ironically now, it’s the producing provinces in Alberta and British Columbia that are leading the way in terms of saying yes we need to send a signal, so is Quebec saying the same thing. I think there is a very powerful consensus growing in the country that we need to have a national federal-provincial approach to the pricing of carbon. I hope it very much that the premiers and the prime minister can agree on this in the months and years ahead.

See previously: Bob Rae steps up to defend carbon pricing

Climate financing fund will be empty unless Doha talks find solution

By The Canadian Press - Sunday, November 25, 2012 at 4:52 PM - 0 Comments

OTTAWA – A $100-billion-a-year promise from rich nations — including Canada — to help poor countries deal with climate change is still unfunded as of the end of 2012, a new report shows.

And a second fund, meant to jump start the promise, will run dry by Dec. 31.

Canada has given $400 million a year for the last three years to the latter climate fund to provide a down payment for poor countries to begin the work of cutting emissions and adapting to the inevitable effects of global warming.

But that fund drew only three years’ worth of financial commitments from donor countries, for a total of $30 billion that will be drained by year’s end.

Much of this money was recycled from other aid programs, says the study by Oxfam, an international non-governmental organization.

The larger promise made by rich countries in Copenhagen in 2009 to raise $100 billion a year by 2020 remains in the wind.

“After a year of extreme weather, developing countries face a climate ‘fiscal cliff’ at the end of 2012, as fast-start finance expires and the Green Climate Fund remains empty,” Oxfam said.

When environment ministers, including Canada’s Peter Kent, meet in Doha for United Nations climate negotiations next week, they will need to figure out how to come up with the rest of the money, said Christiana Figueres, the top UN climate change official.

“Governments have agreed it is imperative to stay at least below a two degree average global temperature rise to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,” she said in a statement to set up the talks. “But they know this cannot be achieved without further dramatic transformation in energy production and use and without effective support to developing nations so they can build their own sustainable futures.”

At the widely watched climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, rich countries agreed to a 10-year financing plan to integrate developing countries into the global effort to reduce emissions and handle climate change.

Donors came forward to provide $30 billion for the first three years of the plan. But Oxfam’s analysis shows they did not live up to their commitment to provide new funding that would be balanced between efforts to mitigate climate change on the one hand and adapt to climate change on the other.

Instead, only 33 per cent of the financing was new money, raising concerns that donors siphoned off money from other needy causes.

Only 21 per cent of the funding went to support adaptation to global warming.

That’s troubling, because the poorest of poor countries have very low emissions but bear the brunt of extreme weather events increasingly caused by global warming, said Mark Fried of Oxfam Canada.

He said only 10 per cent of Canada’s money went towards adaptation.

Canada has yet to earmark $183 million of its $1.2-billion pledge for the fast-start program, and Fried wants Kent to put it towards adaptation efforts.

But the larger problem is the lack of funding starting in 2013.

As ministers hash out ways to sign a meaningful climate agreement by 2015 that would go into force in 2020, they also have to deal with raising $100 billion a year, Figueres said.

Oxfam says it will be a tough discussion since so many rich countries are dealing with fiscal problems. In Canada, the federal government has shown no indication it will find more money for the climate financing fund after the end of this year.

That’s why countries should be looking at a tax on international shipping or on financial transactions, said Tim Gore, Oxfam International’s climate change policy adviser.

“If leaders come to Doha with no new money, the Green Climate Fund risks being left as an empty shell for the third year in a row,” he said.

Peter Kent takes a stand against mischaracterization

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 at 9:23 AM - 0 Comments

The NDP quizzed the Environment Minister yesterday on the cost of the government’s regulatory approach to GHG emissions.

Anne Minh-Thu Quach: Mr. Speaker, in committee yesterday, the Minister of the Environment responded to one of my questions with a trivial statement. When I asked him about the cost of the ineffective sector-by-sector approach adopted by the Conservatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the minister said that the figures were not important. Let us be clear: either the minister has no idea of the cost of his policies, or he wants to hide it. Since I like to be courteous, I will give him another chance. How much is the Conservatives’ sector-by-sector approach going to cost taxpayers?

Peter Kent: Mr. Speaker, that is a slight mischaracterization of our exchange yesterday in committee. Our sector-by-sector plan to reduce GHG emissions started with the regulation of the two sectors that contribute the greatest number of megatonnes every year: tailpipe emissions and coal-fired electricity. The cost-benefit estimates of those regulations can be found on the Environment Canada website with the regulatory impact assessment statement.

Megan Leslie: Mr. Speaker, a mischaracterization? We have the transcripts. The minister seems to know a lot more about made up NDP policies than he does about his own portfolio. Experts confirm that his sector-by-sector approach is not working. It is the least effective and the most expensive approach to GHG reductions. Six months ago we asked the minister how much the plan costs. There was no answer. Yesterday, he said that to him the numbers really are not that important. Is the minister hiding the answer or does he really not know the cost?

Peter Kent: Mr. Speaker, obviously my colleague was not listening to my previous question and was not in attendance at the committee meeting yesterday. The first two sectors have been regulated. The cost-benefits are available. A total number cannot be given until we regulate all of the other sectors in our sector-by-sector plan. The number that Canadians are interested in is the proposed $21 billion carbon tax that the NDP would pick out of the pockets of hard-working Canadian taxpayers.

We looked last month at the costs known so far. Below is the exchange between Ms. Minh-Thu Quach and Mr. Kent at Monday’s meeting of the environment committee. Continue…