CanPol: National Unity and Climate Change Edition

[Asher]

Ontario also just recently announced they're going to miss their latest greenhouse gas reduction targets. And the single-biggest greenhouse gas producer in North America, the coal-fired power plant in Ontario, is getting a few more years of life.

Why Ontario and Quebec are spreading them and begging for more ambituous targets when they can't even make the current ones are beyond me.

[notyoueither]

I'm sure our FM would tell you we are broke. McGuinty and crew are currently engaged in their second major tax increase in an effort to pay the bills.

I am assuming they would be aware of the amount of spin off from the industry and have an idea regarding the amount of federal income that depends on the industry which gets churned into equalisation.

[KrazyHorse]

To quote Stephen Gordon on this issue "Talk is cheap and Canadians are bargain hunters"

[notyoueither]

I'm hoping Obama is a skin-flint, or at least the Senate is.

[Wezil]

I am assuming they would be aware of the amount of spin off from the industry and have an idea regarding the amount of federal income that depends on the industry which gets churned into equalisation.

And they will still tell you ON is broke. We have no money.

Hell, the Feds already had to pay the $4B bribe money for the tax changes in the province. I expect McGuinty & Co will oppose any measure that carries an additional bill to this province.

[Wezil]

I'm hoping Obama is a skin-flint, or at least the Senate is.

I doubt any binding legislation is coming in the US anytime soon. Obama just blew a ton of political capital on healthcare. He'd have to be silly to repeat the experience with environment which faces similar opposition.

[Heraclitus]

Balkanization

[Wezil]

You broke the thread.

[Asher]

Poor ****ing Ontario and Quebec. Demanding more ambitious climate targets while whining they'll have to shoulder the load.

They were just bragging about how they were 2/3 of the country's population when it served them then (listen to our demands for lowered GHG emission targets!), and now they don't mention it when it comes to who has to do what to actually reduce targets.

http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/environment/copenhagensummit/article/738400--ontario-and-quebec-fear-chill-over-climate-pact

Ontario and Quebec fear chill over climate pact
Two biggest provinces don't want to shoulder environmental burden for the sake of oil sands

COPENHAGEN–Canada's two largest provinces say the relationship between the 13 provinces and territories could become rocky if the federal government balks on committing to stronger emission cuts.

However, the environment ministers for Ontario and Quebec told reporters at a joint news conference they are confident Ottawa will agree to the cuts before the global climate change conference comes to a close here this week.

The dark side of their message was later reinforced by Quebec Premier Jean Charest, in Denmark for the UN climate convention, who condemned Ottawa for the potential economic consequences of its anemic fight against climate change.

Ontario and Quebec have long feared the federal Conservatives are planning to cut Canada's greenhouse gas emissions at the expense of the provinces and others that have taken early action in the fight against global warming in order that Alberta and Saskatchewan will have room to further develop their vast oilsands reserves.

"I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that ... they want to continue to develop those (oil sands) and obviously if they are developed there may have to be larger greenhouse gas emission (cuts) elsewhere in the country in order to meet our targets," Ontario Environment Minister John Gerretsen told reporters Sunday.

It may be hard for governments in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Manitoba to remain chummy with oil-rich provinces if they feel they're taking a hit for a tarsands boom. "Whether or not it's going to be the next national unity issue, I'll leave that to the columnists," Gerretsen said.

Gerretsen and Quebec Environment Minister Line Beauchamp will join forces this week to promote the work they're doing in their provinces and to push Ottawa to take a more ambitious stance.

Canada has pledged to cut emissions by 20 per cent from its 2006 levels over the next decade – a target that is less onerous than the Kyoto commitments the federal government signed up for in 1997.

Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice insists his government's target is close to that in the U.S., and Ottawa's target can't change because the two governments plan to harmonize policies and create a North American carbon cap-and-emissions system.

But Beauchamp said U.S. legislation goes much further than the Canadian target, mandating massive renewable energy investment and an offset system to give businesses emission credits for investing in sustainable development projects in the developing world.

The official U.S. pledge is a 17 per cent cut from 2005 emission levels within a decade. But a recent study by the Washington-based World Resources Institute – a respected climate think tank – says all the U.S. measures combined will push that country's emissions down by as much as 34 per cent from 2005 levels during that period.

"This is what we mean when we say we're disappointed with the Canadian position," Beauchamp said.

"But we think that here in Copenhagen ... things will change," she said. "We are cautiously optimistic that things will advance between now and Friday (when talks end)."

Quebec, taking a cue from the EU, announced plans recently to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent below 1990 levels.

For months, Prentice has ruled out a more ambitious federal pledge to cut emissions, warning it could devastate the Canadian economy to go too far too fast.

Charest, however, saw things otherwise Sunday.

"Commercial sanctions are a real danger for countries refusing to put in place tough targets," he told reporters. "We could be vulnerable."

Charest said Quebec's export-based economy could be an early victim should the European Union act on its threat to impose a carbon tax on products coming from delinquent countries.

As well, the World Trade Organization has declared it would be acceptable to impose taxes on imports from countries that fail to address climate change.

"We have to be on the lookout because we're so dependent on foreign markets," said Charest. "We should have stricter targets in Canada. They're too low."

Prentice sidestepped questions Sunday about the criticism aimed at Canada by environmentalists.

"What's critical here are the negotiations. We've been working on this for the past year, and we intend to be here to see this ... finish."

He was backed by Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner, who said Ottawa could have never got as far with former U.S. president George W. Bush.

"We now have some opportunities (for a continent-wide initiative)," said Renner, who arrives here on Tuesday. "That's critical. We can't have our principal trading partner on a different plane."

This ****ing enrages me. Ontario and Quebec want "Canada" to lower the greenhouse gasses far more than is planned, they just don't want to do it.

It should be patently clear that the two provinces who would suffer a FAR disproportionate burden to aggressive GHG reduction targets would be Alberta and Saskatchewan. Why the **** are they whining.

And for **** sakes, The Star, it's "OIL SANDS". Not "tarsands". Of course, one of these has a far worse connotation than the other. Guess which they use.

[Dinner]

I'm hoping Obama is a skin-flint, or at least the Senate is.

Cap and trade won't make it through the Senate. The Senate is bought and paid for by the highest bidder.

[Asher]

Yep.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/12/15/rudyard-griffiths-central-canada-s-capacity-for-self-delusion.aspx

Rudyard Griffiths: Central Canada's capacity for self-delusion
Posted: December 15, 2009, 10:00 AM by NP Editor
Rudyard Griffiths
As a born-and-bred central Canadian, I am well and truly fed up with my compatriots' mindless bashing of the oil sands in the run up to, and now during, the Copenhagen summit on climate change.

What has me ticked off isn't just the boundless capacity of fellow Torontonians to ignore basic facts about the oil sands. That they are responsible for only 5% of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. That the C02 released per barrel extracted from the oil sands has fallen by a third since 1990. And, that fourth-fifths of the emissions caused by each of these barrels comes out of tailpipes -- driving on Highway 401, for instance.

What leads me to despair about central Canadians is our wilful blindness to how the fundamentals of our own economy have caused the country's C02 emissions to soar in recent years, and will make any new reductions we pledge in Copenhagen extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

Consider: In much the same way that the oil sands fuel economic growth in Alberta, immigration drives the Ontario economy. The 150,000-plus newcomers who arrive in my province each year sustain our booming housing market, buoy consumer spending and fuel our service sector.

Immigration, or more precisely rapid population growth, has become a significant factor in Canada's surging C02 emissions. On a per-capita basis, we welcome more newcomers than any other nation -- on average, 300,000 each year. Part of the rite of passage for each new arrival is to embrace the Canadian-born's super-sized energy lifestyle, and emit, on a per capita basis, somewhere in the order of 18 metric tonnes of carbon annually.

Given that Canada's population grew by a whopping six million people since 1990, almost all through immigration, it is no surprise that we failed miserably to meet our Kyoto Protocol obligations. Indeed, population growth alone is easily responsible for half of the 30% increase in Canada's annual C02 emissions today as compared to 1990 levels.

The fact is that rapid population growth in central Canada is a far greater challenge to meeting the kinds of future C02 reductions Canada will commit to in Copenhagen than emissions resulting from oil sands exploitation.

Consider that if Canada formally adopts the pledge it has floated to cut emissions by 20% over 2006 levels by 2020, we will need to take some 125-million metric tonnes of C02 out of "circulation." Yet, between now and the end of the next decade, Canada's population will grow by 4 million people -- again, almost all through immigration. Even if we achieve a 20% per capita reduction in carbon emissions, these folks will still be producing 14.4 metric tonnes of C02 each, or 58 million metric tonnes of additional emissions over the 2006 levels.

To make matters worse for planet Earth, the vast majority of the newcomers who will settle in Canada over the next decade come from countries with very low per capita emissions. Our top three source countries for new arrivals have average per capita C02 emissions of only 2.2 metric tonnes.

These facts bear repeating if only to point out the hypocrisy of much of central Canada's climate change-borne assault on the oil sands. One could only imagine the braying on Bay Street and among the construction unions if big cuts in immigration levels became part of a national C02 reduction plan.

Central Canada needs to take a long, hard look at its own economic drivers, including non-environmentally friendly population growth, and fess up to its role in pushing Canada's emissions ever higher, today and into the future.

[notyoueither]

A 20% reduction in consumer CO2 would lead to a reduction with an additional 4 million people taken into account, but yeah, there is a lot of noise with little understanding.

Fer instance, I almost never see reported, and never see discussed, that a barrel of oil from Ft McMurray mines will have lower CO2 emissions than the average barrel from Nigeria or Venezuela used in the US.

The bottom line is that if Americans want the oil from the oil sands, it will be developed. If they decide they don't then there will be dramatically decreased or zero development. The Chinese will still probably want some as a secure source, but not a lot else if it is taxed at production while no other (almost) significant sources of oil are.

[notyoueither]

File under things largely ignored amid the noise.

Under Kyoto zero credit is given for standing forests. I have seen claims that mature forests no longer gain carbon.

Credit to the Guardian, but they quickly forgot about it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/29/canada-boreal-forest-carbon-vault

Canada sets aside its boreal forest as giant carbon vault
By banning logging, mining and oil drilling in an area twice the size of California, Canada is ensuring its boreal forests continue to soak up carbon

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 29 October 2009 17.34 GMT

In the far north latitudes, buried within a seemingly endless expanse of evergreen forests, the authorities in Canada are building up one of the world's best natural defences against global warming.

In a series of initiatives, Canadian provincial governments and aboriginal leaders have set aside vast tracts of coniferous woods, wetlands, and peat. The conservation drive bans logging, mining, and oil drilling on some 250m acres – an area more than twice the size of California.

The sheer scale of the forest conservation drive is somewhat of an anomaly for Canada, whose government has been accused of sabotaging the global climate change talks by its development of the Alberta tar sands and its refusal to make deep cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions.

Last week, a former adviser to Barack Obama urged Canada to do more to keep up with America's moves towards a cleaner energy economy.

In the latest addition to the carbon storehouse, the provincial premier of Manitoba, Gary Doer, this month announced a $10m (£5.6m) Canadian fund to protect a 10.8m acre expanse of boreal or evergreen forest. It was one of Doer's last acts as premier; he took over as Canada's ambassador to Washington this month.

The $10m will go towards efforts by indigenous leaders to designate boreal forest lands in eastern Manitoba as a Unesco world heritage site. The Pimachiowin Aki world heritage project, which straddles the Manitoba-Ontario border, extends efforts by Canadian provincial leaders to protect the wide swaths of pristine forests in the north. It also ensures the survival of one of the best natural defences against global warming after the world's oceans, environmentalists say.

A report by the International Boreal Conservation Campaign said the forests, with their rich mix of trees, wetlands, peat and tundra, were a far bigger carbon store than scientists had realised, soaking up 22% of the total carbon stored on the earth's land surface.

"If you look across Canada one of [the boreal forest's] great values to us globally is its carbon storage value," said Steve Kallick, director of the Pew Environment Group's International Boreal Conservation Campaign. "There is so much carbon sequestered in it already that if it escaped it would pose a whole new, very grave threat."

Canada's cold temperatures slow decomposition, allowing the build-up of organic soil and peat. The forest floors beneath its evergreens hold twice as much carbon per acre as tropical forests, such as the Amazon.

It is unclear how long Canada's forests can continue to serve as carbon vaults. "As the climate warms, the place is going to dry up. There will be a problem with insect infestation. There is going to be increased natural carbon release due to fire or wetlands drying up," said Sue Libenson, a spokeswoman for the International Boreal Conservation Campaign.

But she added: "The general premise is that there is still a hell of a lot of carbon in there." Its release would be a climate catastrophe.

Canada's 1.3bn acres of boreal forest store the equivalent of 27 years' worth of current global greenhouse gas emissions, a Greenpeace study found. The destruction of those forests, scientists warn, would be like setting off a massive "carbon bomb" because of the sudden release of emissions.

That threat appears to have concentrated the official mindset in Canada, which otherwise has a poor record on action on climate change. On a per capita basis, the country is one of the worst polluters on the planet, producing about 2% of the world's emissions even though it has just 33m people. It holds one of the worst track records among industrialised states for living up to its commitment under the Kyoto accords. By 2007, greenhouse gas emissions were 34% above the target Canada agreed at Kyoto.

Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, is resisting doing much more, committing to just a 6% cut over 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. "I see Harper's policy as a continuation of the Bush agenda," said David Martin, climate director for Greenpeace Canada.

A key advisor to Obama made a similar point last week, comparing Canada's current climate change policy to the inaction in America under George Bush. "The Canadians would be well served by keeping up with what's going on in the United States with respect to this push towards clean technology," John Podesta, who oversaw Obama's transition team, told a conference in Ottawa.

Environmentalists also fear that Harper intends to exclude the Alberta tar sands – the heavy crude deposits that have fuelled the rise in emissions – from any future greenhouse gas emissions regime.

But the Harper government did relent on forest protection, working with the Sahtu and Deh Cho First Nations to set aside 40m acres in the Northwest Territories.

Canadian provincial leaders have moved even more aggressively in recent years, with Ontario committed to protecting 55m acres, or about half of its forest, and Quebec committed to protecting 150m acres. "Canada is torn between wanting to promote the tar sands and make money off it now, and wanting to live up to its promises under the Kyoto accord. But as far as protecting carbon rich ecosystems, particularly the boreal forest, Canada is a world leader," said Kallick.

[HalfLotus]

Obama is poised to do an end run around Congress when the EPA declared C02 a bad bad thing.

[notyoueither]

Looks like it, but how much will that be able to accomplish? I've read that it would be more of an irritant, or a prod, to get action out of Congress. Coal state Democrats may not want to vote for legislation affecting their turf, but the EPA can go ahead and make life miserable for coal anyway. Better maybe to come to the table.

I don't think many Canadians are against constructive action on the environment. It has to make sense though.