One of the most telling things about the conservative government of Canada's newest try at fixing a policy to deal with climate change - they are currently on a second try - is the dearth of information that accompanied the announcement of this major initiative.
You might think, that since the global warming issue is of key importance to many Canadians and, since the conservative party is hoping, sometime in the near future, to call an election and this time to get a majority of the seats in the House of Commons, that they would provide evidence that their policy will actually result in a reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG). In other words you might expect that the conservatives might try to prove that their policy initiative will work.
There has been little attempt to provide the public with any analysis of the major elements of the new policy. In fact, the information packages on the new policy seem to be very light on real "information" but heavy on declarative statements. It is, almost as though, the generally loud and aggressive Minister of the Environment, John Baird, believes that simply announcing a target of a 150 mega tonne reduction of GHG by 2026, in his angry voice, to the goddess Gaia, means she'll make sure it will happen.
This leaves me certainly wondering whether any real work has gone on behind the Environment Department's closed doors since Ambrose was dumped on January 4, 2004 and Baird took over. The department must have been able to do something in 112 days. But the April 26th announcement may simply be another policy smoke screen from prime minister Harper and his Environment Minister Baird.
Both these politicians, in the very near past, were champions of those opposing Kyoto and in a real sense global warming deniers. So, I think its natural to wonder if they are really serious about their new policy. If they are, shouldn't they be making every attempt to convince me that it will work to actually reduce Canada's CO2 emissions.
One way to do this would be to publish some of the Environment Department's analysis. I agree it would be then open to scrutiny by other analysts but if the policy is really robust then be damned the other views.
As it is, individuals are stuck taking a politician's word, a very silly thing to do, or trying to figure out potential outcomes themselves.
Me, I've been fiddling around trying to think through the potential implications of the newest conservative policy initiative.
The first thing to be aware of is that the policy will impose mandatory GHG intensity reductions on a firm's output. The key word in that last sentence is "intensity".
Stating that the reductions would be linked to a decrease in "intensity" of GHG emissions prompted Al Gore, on a speaking engagement here, in Canada, shortly after the conservative announcement of the new policy, to call it a fraud. Baird, the Canadian Minister, of course, shot back with an ad hominem attack on Gore and avoided any defense of the "intensity" targets.
There is an inherent flaw in using "intensity" reductions instead of straight forward mandatory absolute decreases. The flaw is that adjusting "intensity" downward may not actually result in a reduction of total GHG. Harper, the prime minister, later said that the fact that the conservatives decided on regulating "intensity" rather than actual reduction factors in effect wasn't an issue because the levels set for the targets are high enough to make sure they have a real effect.
Hmm I'm not convinced.
If a firm's output is static over time than the "intensity" targets will have the effect advertised by the conservatives. Better still if a firm is actually in decline - i.e. output falls over time - the targets will be meet and then some but output that is growing just lowers the possibility of hitting the target.
Since the economy's total production will be the sum of output across all firms, some of whose output is declining, some remaining constant and some growing at various rates, whether the conservative "intensity" targets are meet is what - a guess?
Gads, the policy presented on April 26th must be based on some assumptions of the number and type of firms and how they are expected to be producing over the next crucial years.
So what is it? What's the range of possibilities? What are the probabilities with each case? Public servants must have been doing something for the 112 days of the new minister's stay over there in Gatineau, née Hull, at 10 Rue Wellington.
I'm tired of being considered a sucker. The issue of global warming is much too important to be used as a political football. Christ if you have a policy that you think will actually help Canada reduce emission and won't send us to the poor house prove it to us. Let me or the voters as a whole evaluate the trade-offs between potential slower economic growth and getting our emissions house in order.
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Now for 2 of my charts
My first one resulted from me trying to get an overall picture of the new conservative government plan. It is very broad bush. In the information packages the conservatives say that they expect their new initiative will result in 150 mega tonne reduction in GHG by 2026. This would mean that over the next 19 years Canada would get back to what it was emitting in the year 1990.
I'd say that's a bit slow and if everyone else follows our example then, using IPCC terminology, the world is "very likely" - greater than 90% probable - to be screwed.
The first chart, below, shows actual and projected greenhouse gas emissions for the period 1990 to 2040 in the form of an index - i.e. carbon dioxide equivalent (kt CO2 eq) emissions per year divided by kt CO2 eq emissions in 1990.
I used the March 2007 Canadian submission to the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change for the historical (actual) emissions which were up to date as of 2004. For 2005 and 2006 I escalated the 2004 levels by the average annual emission growth rate over the period 1990 - 2004 (about 1.6% a year). Beginning in 2007 I decreased the 2006 level by the average annual reduction in emissions that would be required to reach the conservative government's stated goal 150 mega tonne reductions in GHG (about 1.5% a year) by 2026. For the remaining years out to 2040 I followed the same trend.
There isn't much to say about the pattern unless in the beginning years, that is the first 3, the slope needs to be steeper. But I suspect the real goal of this new initiative is, in effect, to reach or get as close as possible to Canada's emission level in 1990 by 2026. This sort of tells me that the Environment Department has really been "fucking the dog" now for quite sometime in terms of developing strategies to deal with this problem or it could mean maybe that Harper and Baird are still "skeptics", "deniers" or as John Quiggan prefers, and I think I agree, "delusionist".
My next chart was simply done for me to see the possible effects for a single firm of different growth rates in output over the period that is specifically talked about in the conservative government's initiative - 2007 to 2026.
The red line, on the chart, represents the reductions in output "intensities" to be made mandatory by new conservative government regulations - TtC is short for "Turning the Corner", the snappy title given to the new policy.
These targets will be meet by firms that do not change their production output from their 2006 levels and these firms will theoretically have cut their emissions in half by 2026 as indicated on the chart. The targets will be surpassed if the firm is a dying entity and its output falls as shown by the curve below the target line. In my example above, I've assumed a firm declines by cutting its output by 10 unit annually. So, it starts out producing 1000 widgets in 2006 and ends up in 2026 with only 800 orders.
Here's a table that shows my assumptions for the various output growth patterns.
So, although, I'd like to believe that this new conservative government initiative will help in reducing GHG emissions by some significant amount they are doing very little to actually convince me that their new policy of mandatory "intensity" reduction targets on output will perform any tricks.
I wish this wasn't the case but it is now what I've come to expect from PM Harper and crew - no substance, only words and endless finger pointing at a former government that hasn't been in power now for 15 months. I can't imagine what the likes of this crew would have done if they had taken over the federal fiscal mess from the fumbling Mulroney - oops I forgot about Kim Campbell's nano-second at the helm - we'd still be running record breaking annual federal deficits and be North America's Argentina.
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