Canada’s disgraceful behaviour at the recent Global Warming talks in Bali was embarrassing. Our Conservative federal government is trying to convince us, and anybody else who will listen, that we simply can’t reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The truth is that Canadians create 2.3% on the world’s greenhouse gases. That makes us the seventh largest producer in the world. We do this with ½ of 1% of the world’s population. Great Britain, with 60 million people produces less GHG emissions than us. Other industrialized countries have substantially reduced their emissions through dynamic government action. From what I’ve read the simplest way to turn things around is to simply place a value on greenhouse gas production. The current average price being discussed is $50.00 per metric tonne. For example, if you burn one litre of gas in your car you would pay 13 cents to offset the CO2 that you produced. If you produced 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity by burning coal in the least efficient way you would have to pay 5 cents for that 1 kw. hour. A price would be attached to everything from producing synthetic oil from the oil sands to the methane produced on a pig farm. Since methane is seven times worse than CO2 the pig farmer would have to pay $350 per tonne.
Where does the money go? The money that the pig farmer or the oil sands producer paid for their greenhouse gas emissions would go into separate funds. Suppose the pig farmer decided to collect all of his manure and use it to produce bio-gas to heat and cool his barns. He would borrow the money he needed from the fund and then have his debt reduced based on how much greenhouse gas he didn’t emit. Assuming that he eliminated 100% of his emissions his debt would eventually be forgiven and he would no longer be paying into the fund.
If this plan is in place by 2011 when oil sands production hits 3 million barrels per day the oil companies will be required to put over $4 billion per year into the fund just to pay for the amount of CO2 spewed into the air through the process of making synthetic crude oil. They have all kinds of ideas about how they could reduce the 800 million tonnes of CO2 that they will be producing but they haven’t yet had the financial incentive to try any of them. If they have access to a multi billion dollar fund that both they and their competitors are paying into, one assumes that the financial incentive would become evident. Keep in mind that the fund only loans the money, repayment is only forgiven if the mitigation strategy is successful. I’ve read that they have the technology now to reduce their emissions by 70% but they haven’t done it because it would cost $1.50 per barrel. There is little doubt that just the plan to charge for CO2 would dramatically reduce the problem. Of course there will be areas of the economy where this plan simply won’t work. International air travel is a good example. Fuel is a large percentage of costs and market incentives for reducing fuel consumption are sufficient to force airlines to do all that they can to cut back. On top of this is the fact that if you raise the costs for your companies, foreign companies will simply put yours out of business.
On the other side of the discussion, you can certainly apply the $50 per tonne on imports. In Canada we have reduced our pollution by buying manufactured goods from China. We could charge an import duty on Chinese products based on greenhouse gas emissions produced during manufacture. The money from that fund would then be invested in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in China. Major Chinese exporters may want to borrow money from that fund to enhance their environmental image when selling to Europe. Programs that move around large amounts of cash stimulate economies. A program such as this would assist all kinds of new businesses and help Canada to become competitive in emerging green technologies.
One might say that a plan as all encompassing as this would be bigger than Medicare or as difficult to administer as income tax. Who knows? It will be as complicated or elegant as the minds of the bureaucrats and politicians that administer it. I know that’s a scary thought but the truth is that we simply don’t have a lot of choices. If we continue to do nothing we’re really going to feel stupid in a few years. If we wait for the perfect plan we’ll be surfing in Abbottsford before anything happens.
{ 4 } Comments
First of all your statement about the Harper government trying to convince us that we simply can’t reduce our GHG is simply not true. What in fact they have been saying is that we can not meet our 2012 Kyoto targets was is far different then what you have stated. In fact Harper has stated that he will reduce GHGs by 20% by 2020.
Even Dion, Mr Kyoto himself has admitted in the Summer of 2006 that he could not meet the 2012 targets if he was in office. This is far far different then what you have stated. Here is the National Post link to what Dion position was in 2006. http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=fe14e961-1324-4cc9-9cf6-1fc6fc0b00cd
According the following website 2002 data we are in fact 9th and our share is 2% which btw is only .1 (point 1) % higher than the UK. It would be very interesting indeed to see where the UK and even the rest of EU stood if their winters were as cold as ours. So comparing us to the UK is like comparing apples to oranges. A fairer comparison would have been Canada and Russia which is similar in land mass as well as climate.
http://pdf.wri.org/navigating_numbers_chapter2.pdf.
In fact it shows the US, China, EU25, Russia, India, Japan, and Germany has the top 7 polluters in the order written with Brazil 8th and Canada 9th.
Finally, I happen to think that Canada was right in demanding that countries such as China and India should also be required to set and meet targets and that their stance was not disgraceful at all for the simple reason that while Developed Nations contribute 52% of GHGs, the Developing Nations contribute 48% of it. Under Kyoto as it now stands give the developing nations a free ride especially China, Russia and India who are 2nd,4th and 5th. Btw EU hasn’t nothing to brag about because when the 25 are added together they are 3rd on the list of polluters.
Don’t you think that the countries who are contributing 48% of the GHGs should also be doing something about their pollution as well as the developing countries such as ourselves.. I happen to think they should and I applaud Harper for stating that position very clearly at the Bali Conference and sticking to it even under all kinds of pressure.
Hi Van, thanks for your comments.
“GHGs have jumped by five tonnes per person in Canada since 1990, a rise that far surpasses the total per-capita emissions of China.”
That pretty much says it all. Canada is increasing GHG emissions while most industrial countries are cutting them. What we are doing not only looks bad, it is bad and completely, totally, absolutely indefensible. Our government’s philosophy seems to be that we can’t be bothered saving the world. We’re making far too much money destroying it. And that is the image of Canada that was conveyed loudly and clearly in Bali.
I am posting this comment for John Lang. I lost his first one and subsequently received this e-mail.
Murray
The gist of it was an attempted rebuttal of your comment that Harper had embarrassed us in Bali. I agree that we need to clean up but do not think that our economy, which is closely integrated with the US economy, can afford to depart very far from US environmental standards. It’s not following Bushitler, it’s common sense.
Kyoto, signed by Al Gore in 1997 (only after he was certain the Senate would not ratify it — he could afford to be super generous), is more of a wealth equalization scheme and an excuse for a UN super-bureaucracy than an environmental solution. I think we would be better to spend a few billion in Canada to clean up our act, rather than follow the Kyoto prescription and send the money to China to help them pay for the 500 new coal-fired power plants they intend to build over the next 10 years. More than three years later, Bush found Al’s document in his desk drawer and, on learning that the Senate was still 100% opposed, threw it away. Bush, as everyone now knows, “refused” to sign Kyoto.
I was still with Foreign Affairs in 1997 and talk around the cafeteria that year was that our team in Kyoto would offer a 2% reduction in CO2. When Al offered 5%, Chrétien immediately ordered us to offer 6%, an amount impossible to attain. Besides hiring Rick Mercer to harangue us, Chrétien and Dion did not do very much to achieve any reduction. In fact our CO2 output increased by about 30% during their watch.
The Goreacle is rumoured to have made about $100 million from his “documentary” — biggest grossing film in Paramount history — and will probably make much more now that he has joined Kleiner Perkins. I suspect they are hoping to be in on the ground floor of a carbon trading scheme, should one be mandated. But perhaps I am too cynical.
But this is all old stuff. What is newer is the indication that real scientists are not all in agreement with the IPCC. See this,
for example. I think we will see more push back of this type. I understand that global temperatures have not increased since Al’s “hottest year on record”, 1998. In fact, 1934 was the hottest year, according to NASA.
I know I sound like a “DENIER” but I agree that global temps have increased since the last ice age — I would have 2 km of ice over me (Ottawa) had it not. It’s the anthropogenic part I mainly disagree with. We have had warmer periods before the industrial age; the Martian polar icecap is melting, etc.
Anyway, this is already a screed so I’ll stop. Good on you for running a Bowen blog. Keep up the good work.
Regards,
John Lang
The Kyoto accord, for better or worse, was Canada’s commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions. We didn’t do it. We reneged. We lied. We failed to meet an international commitment. Now our government acts like this is nothing. We have abandoned our role as an honourable member of the international community. We are saying that our international commitments are meaningless if we happen to elect a different political party. This level of political instability is normally reserved for very poor emerging nations who flip flop between extremist regimes. Harper embarrassed us in Bali.
Your assertion that we must tailor our environmental standards to those in the US or suffer economically may or may not be true. But our choice has always been between being a puppet state and following our own conscience.
I read some of the articles you linked to. The bottom line is that we have burned one trillion barrels of crude oil in the last 125 years. We will burn the next trillion in 30 years. We can’t stop solar flares or volcanoes at the bottom of the ocean but we can slow the rate of CO2 emissions. You are a “DENIER” John, one of the last of a dying breed.
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