Some Distance Emerges

...between Harper and Iggy on Carbon Trading:

Ignatieff called for a common cap-and-trade system to be negotiated with the United States that would set a hard cap on emissions and define specific reduction targets.

Since the idea of a national carbon tax is dead, the only game in town is C&T. And the only halfway effective version of C&T calls for the setting of hard (rather than soft or intensity-based) caps. This statement a) places Iggy a bit left of Harper, who is still hemming and hawing over hard and soft caps and, b) moves him towards a popular, progressive American President.

Not an earth shattering bit of political positioning. Significant nevertheless.

Obama's Election Pays Off Immediately For Canada

OTTAWA — Canada hopes to achieve a North American climate-change deal with U.S. president-elect Barack Obama and will begin working on the file within weeks, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Wednesday.

Meantime, officials told The Canadian Press the Harper government has been waiting for the departure of President George W. Bush to work with his successor on an integrated carbon market.

I believe that Ed Stelmach has come out against even a national, let alone international carbon trading regime as being against Alberta interests. Certainly, Alberta companies will have to buy the lion's share carbon credits if anything like this goes through. Tory on Tory violence?

CPoC Should Make Its Campaign Carbon Neutral

Blogging Tory Erwin Gerrits asks: How does buying [carbon] ‘offsets’ save the environment?

He then cycles through the standard list of denialist talking points: CO2 isn't a pollutant, Kyoto a Socialist plot, carbon offsets don't work, Gaia worshipper Maurice Strong wants to give our money to the Chinese.

And he concludes that, because Global Warming is all baloney, the Conservative Party shouldn't really worry about buying carbon offsets in an effort make their own campaign carbon neutral.

Naturally, asking the wrong question leads you to the wrong conclusion. The question he should be asking is: Will the Conservatives live up to the principles of their own environmental plan?

Because the Tories have insisted that Global Warming is not all baloney. And because buying carbon offsets is central to the Tory's own Turning The Corner initiative. In fact, what they have proposed--their environmental plan--is a standard issue national "cap and trade" system, albeit one with loose time-lines and inadequate (because intensity based) emissions caps. It even allows Canadian companies to participate in the CDM, the international carbon trading system developed under the Kyoto accord. Conceptually, it is not a lot different from the NDP's proposals, and not a whole lot different from Stephane's Dion's Green Shift. For example, even under the Tory cap and trade system, money will flow East from Alberta.

But that aside: the Tories believe in it. Therefore they have given the stamp of approval to a means of reducing the carbon footprint of their campaign to zero but are not using it. Why not? Are they suddenly running out of money? If so, why not take all the money they've saved from shutting down their $1,000,000 website and its pooping puffins and redirect some of that cash saving the planet from their own hot air?

Ontario And Quebec: Capping and Trading

From The Eco Libertarian (by day, Ottawa Citizen writer and editor David Reevely), the full text of the McGuinty/Charest cap-and-trade deal. As Mr Reevely notes, it is a fairly substantive document:

...the commitment to absolute rather than intensity-based targets is significant, and so’s the commitment to link up with other carbon trading systems, which should lead to money finding its way to the most economically efficient emissions cuts, over time.

Reevely has this esp. nice bit on Harper's rather desperate flailing over the issue:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper criticized the plan for not establishing a regulatory mechanism and suggested the new Montreal Climate Exchange will have to fill that void.
[...]
They’re going to leave the details to a privately operated market and that’s a problem? Remind me — who are the conservatives, again?

To Whom Did CTV Cave?

Nice that John Baird has taken up Jim Flaherty's role as Ontario-Basher in chief. Making statements like "only Alberta is forcing the big polluters to cut their emissions" will surely endear the Harper Tories to us Central Canadian folk.


But what's most interesting is how CTV castrated its own story during the course of Sunday afternoon. The origonal title, "Baird sneers at Ontario-Quebec carbon trading plan", was later amended to "Baird dismisses Ontario-Quebec carbon trading plan". You can see both in the screen-cap above.

So who strong-armed 'em? Or was it an honest reconsideration? I didn't see "Question Period", where Baird made his remarks. Was he sneering? He sneers alot. Can anyone tell me, did he give 'em one of these:











Or was he merely dismissive:

The stuff of conspiracy, this is.

Economist Weighs In On Dion's Environmental "Plan", Slams Harper, Slowly Debones Layton

Probably best not to call it a "tax", though not really a plan yet, either, just the shadow of one. But whatever. Stephen Gordon is a professor of economics at l'Université Laval in Quebec City, Canada. Its all a good read, but he is especially cutting with respect to Jack Layton's reaction.

On Jack's support of "cap-and-trade" over a carbon tax:

As far as the consumer is concerned, cap-and-trade will have exactly the same effect as a carbon tax, namely, to increase prices. The only potential difference is who is on the receiving end of that extra spending: with a carbon tax, the government gets the money, and with cap-and-trade, that money is rent for those who own the permits. If the permits are auctioned off by the government, the two programs are essentially equivalent.

How true, how true.

On Jack's claim that "big corporations" should bear the lion's share of Canada's climate-change tab, and that there should be a federal ombudsman should ensure those costs aren't passed on to consumers.

Could someone please explain to Jack Layton that corporations don't pay taxes? Only people pay taxes, and corporations are not people. And the people who pay corporate taxes are not the owners of the corporation, either: the people who really pay those taxes are workers (in the form of reduced employment opportunities) and consumers (in the form of higher prices).

The Liberals and Conservatives understand this point. The CPC is targeting the people who don't want to pay those costs, and Stéphane Dion is going after those who do. The NDP's niche appears to be voters who want someone else to pay the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Also true, but I think Jack Layton does understand this. He also understands that a federal ombudsman can only ensure that costs are not passed on to consumers is if he has secret magical powers. Jack is simply pandering to the common sentiment: Don't tax me, don't tax thee, tax the man behind the tree.

By the way, Mr. Gordon's blog title, "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative", is considered by some to be the "most boring headline that could possibly be imagined". Quite clever, in this context.

A National Carbon Trading Market?

No carbon tax, international carbon trading, Baird says:

But Baird said he is moving toward a carbon trading market in Canada. This would allow a company in one part of the country to invest in green projects somewhere else in Canada and be given credit for reducing its emissions.

Its safe to assume this is just empty gesticulation on Baird's part.

Because if an international carbon trading market proves unacceptable to Canada as a whole, a nation-wide market will almost certainly prove unacceptable to Albertans.

For, as the CIBC's Rick Rubin makes clear, under the initial conditions of any type of carbon regulation scheme, oil sands producers will have to be huge purchasers of emission credits. And these will have to be purchased from companies in other provinces. So there will be a "huge"outflow of money from Alberta to, if this map of Canadian emissions is accurate, places like Quebec and maybe even Ontario.

Sell that to Ed Stelmach.