Yesterday I received a bizarre letter sent to a list of undisclosed recipients - presumably people who had been members at some time, like me, of Canada's National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE).
When Stephen Harper's government announced the upcoming closure of the NRTEE, Minister John Baird defended this by saying that the advisory body should stop calling for a carbon tax. (In fact, it called for cap-and-trade, like the Harper government at one point, but never for a carbon tax - I have read every one of its reports in this area and contributed to a few.) So the Harper government's desire to kill this 25 year old advisory body, originally created by the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, is understandable - unconscionable, but understandable.
Now it seems they even want to prevent access to some of the final material produced by the NRTEE, in this case the reflections written by past chairs and a retrospective essay by Bob Page, the last chair. It's difficult to imagine a more controlling and mean-spirited attitude.
If you feel as I do, please let other people know about this. Here is the letter:
Dear colleagues;
We are writing to follow up on our parting email of a couple of weeks ago. At that time we advised you of an initiative we had underway to transfer a legacy NRTEE website to Sustainable Prosperity, who were to host the site under an NRTEE domain name, in a static manner going forward, to ensure Canadians had ready web access to this valuable body of work.
This plan has now changed. We were directed in writing by the Minister on Friday March 22nd that we were not to proceed with the transfer of the NRTEE domain name to Sustainable Prosperity, but to transfer it to Environment Canada along with the contents of our external website. He advised us that Environment Canada then intends to make the information publicly available. At this time it is not clear how this will be accomplished in the very limited time remaining before we close our doors March 28th.
At the same time we were instructed that no new content was to be added to the website. In an email from Environment Canada’s legal services unit in advance of the formal notification from the Minister, it more specifically referred to not uploading the Reflections document (from past Chairs and CEO’s) onto the website. Neither the Reflections document nor the retrospective essay on the Round Table by Dr. Bob Page had been uploaded to the web at the time of the Minister’s notification, nor have they been since.
We cannot provide any explanation for this decision – none was provided in the letter or subsequent discussions with the Department.
We apologize for the fact this communiqué is in English only but the NRTEE is in the very final stages of preparing to close its doors and translation was not possible.
As we had made this undertaking to you all, we felt it important to clarify the change in circumstances and direction going forwards. As the NRTEE goes permanently off-line tomorrowmorning we will not be able to acknowledge any replies you might make to this email.
Once again, thank you for all your support over the years.
By Mark Jaccard
Originally published in Alternatives Journal, 2011
In 1997, then-prime-minister Jean Chrétien committed Canada to dramatically reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2010 by signing the Kyoto Protocol. This helped him win re-election in 2000. It mattered little that most independent policy experts claimed Chrétien’s modest climate policies would not stem the growth of Canada’s emissions. Their arguments proved true, but since Chrétien was no longer in office in 2010, there was little interest by then in learning from his failed climate policies.
Or maybe someone was learning.
In 2007, Prime Minister Stephen Harper committed Canada to dramatically reduce its GHG emissions by 2020. This helped him win re-election twice, including a majority government this year. It mattered little that most independent policy experts claimed Harper’s modest climate policies would not stem the growth of Canada’s emissions. Harper is unlikely to still be in office in 2020 should he fail to fulfill his promise to reduce emissions by 17 per cent. And, barring a miracle in human and political longevity, he is definitely not at political risk for his promise to reduce Canadian emissions 65 per cent by 2050.
The parallels are uncanny. But is the comparison fair? Perhaps Harper is not a Chrétien disciple, carefully learning the master’s recipe for a successful climate politics that matches do-little policies with a heroic commitment to a safely distant deadline. So how can we know, in the case of climate politics, if Harper is Chrétien redux?
Actually, the question is easily answered. When governments are faced with skepticism about their commitments and policies, they can commission independent assessments. This is a frequent practice. In 2007, for example, the Harper government asked me, as well as four other independent economists, if we agreed with its analysis that a last-ditch effort to reach Chrétien’s 2010 Kyoto target would be devastating to the Canadian economy. We all concurred, an assessment the Harper government quickly made public.
Thus, the Harper government could commission independent analysts or the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy to assess its climate policies for their likelihood of achieving the government’s 2020 promise. In fact, it did just that, albeit inadvertently, when it asked the roundtable to explain how to achieve its 2050 target. This analysis led to the 2009 report, Achieving 2050: A Carbon Pricing Policy for Canada. I say inadvertently because, while the government did not ask the roundtable to analyze the 2020 target, that date is on the path to 2050, making it a trivial task to extract from the report the approximate emission pricing and regulatory policies needed to achieve Harper’s 2020 promise. One can easily see that the government’s current policies will not achieve the 2020 target.
Because 2020 is nine years away, Harper benefits from an assumption that we cannot yet know if his policies will or will not achieve his promises. As the case above illustrates, however, independent climate-policy experts actually can tell well in advance if a target will be achieved. This is because many of our GHG emissions are associated with long-lived investments in energy supply, industrial facilities, buildings, vehicles and equipment. We know what needs to happen today for an emissions outcome 10 years hence. We already know that if government was serious about its 2020 promise, there would be no new investment today in oil sands development and oil pipelines, industries would face a rising price for GHG emissions, and regulations would be forcing a rapid transition to zero- and low-emission vehicles. But none of this is happening. While Jean Chrétien cannot be blamed for the actions of politicians who follow him, it appears that in the art of climate politics, he was a great teacher – and Stephen Harper an excellent student.
By Mark Jaccard
Originally published in the Vancouver Sun December 14, 2009
At the Copenhagen climate negotiations, environmentalists from Canada and abroad repeatedly vilify the Canadian government for refusing to adopt an aggressive target that would require an eye-popping 50 per cent reduction of our greenhouse gas emissions in just 10 years. As my grandmother used to tell me: "Be careful what you ask for."
At Kyoto in 1997, environmentalists likewise urged the Canadian government to adopt aggressive targets that matched those of Europe, even though European emissions had recently plummeted with the rapid closure of coal-burning plants in eastern Germany and the U.K.
Even when subsequent independent analysis showed that achieving Canada's Kyoto commitment would require a carbon tax or emissions permit price of $150 per tonne of CO2 (equivalent to an immediate jump in gasoline prices of 40 cents per litre), environmentalists insisted on Canada ratifying the Kyoto Protocol.
In 2002, the Chretien government complied, ratifying Kyoto to loud applause from environmentalists. But those who were close to Chretien now publicly admit the government had no intention of passing the compulsory (hence politically difficult) emissions pricing policy and technology regulations that were essential for achieving the target.
An aggressive commitment effectively resulted in policy paralysis.
Environmentalists do not seem to have learned anything from this experience. Their criticisms of Canada's emissions target -- a 20 per cent reduction from 2006 levels by 2020 -- may yet convince the Harper government to follow the Chretien strategy of adopting an unattainable target.
Perhaps the resulting plaudits from environmentalists will be just enough to push the government's popularity into majority government territory. (Upstaging even the benefits of playing piano with Yo Yo Ma.)
Loudly criticizing governments for not setting unattainable targets might seem like an attractive strategy for environmentalists. But if they really want Canada to contribute to the global response to the climate risk, they should consider switching their focus to the more mundane task of critiquing our climate policy, or lack thereof.
Since gaining power over three years ago, the Harper government has repeatedly promised to implement effective climate policy, but actually has done nothing.
What it should have done is very simple. Canada desperately needs an economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions cap with tradable permits issued by government.
The cap should not be too constraining at first, but it would be tightened in accordance with the commitments of other countries and with consideration of Canada's particular circumstances (the fossil fuel intensity of our economy, our rate of population growth, etc.). If the government were serious about its own targets, it would simply set the cap to match its emissions commitment for 2020.
The trading price of the emission permits would make it increasingly expensive to emit greenhouse gases, thus having the same effect as British Columbia's carbon tax.
This would affect technology choices over the coming decades for industrial processes, buildings and vehicles. It would gradually reduce our emissions at a modest economic cost.
The policy can be designed so that there is no transfer of wealth from fossil fuel rich regions to other parts of the country, thereby avoiding another federal-provincial crisis.
The policy I am describing is identical to the one suggested earlier this year in the report, Achieving 2050, by Canada's National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, an advisory body whose members were appointed by the Harper government.
Getting this policy in place is a thousand times more important than setting unattainable targets for 2020. Moreover, as soon as the policy is in place – even at a modest cap initially – we will begin to learn more about what greenhouse gas reduction is really costing our economy, while scientists continue to learn more about the character and magnitude of the climate risk. If we do need to intensify our efforts in future, it is relatively easy to tighten the cap, just as the European are doing with the cap they have already implemented and as Americans are determining through discussions between the US Congress and the US Environmental Protection Agency for their proposed cap.
If environmentalists don’t switch strategy soon, their inability to learn the lesson of Kyoto could set us back another decade in the effort to effectively address the climate risk.
