Greg, I’ve been a long-time reader and supporter because your commentaries are generally accurate, insightful, and academically laid-out. This particular comment, however, struck me as rather uncharacteristically unfair of you.

In my experience, almost any sentence that begins with “Such-and-such is ideologically opposed to” is false, and uses such inflammatory language only in order to mask its own indefensibility (unless, of course, that sentence ends with the word “genocide.”)

Anyway, I don’t want to beat you over the head with it, but I know that you know better than to mask gross overstatements in inflammatory language.

1. Direct Ownership/Operation: when the government runs something itself (example: Provincial Parks).

2. Regulation: mandates others to do or not do something (example: land-use zoning)

3. Incentives/Disincentives: offers carrots or sticks to encourage or discourage others to do or not do something (example: parking tickets)

4. Information: provides information in order to encourage or discourage action (example: publishing a list of the contaminated sites allows citizens to make informed choices about where to locate; a sex offender registry is another example).

Deploying the full range of government tools necessitates using all four. Naturally, parties of different political ideologies prefer some tools more so than others. Conservatives tend to like incentives/disincentives and information more so than direct ownership/operation and regulation. The reverse tends to be the case for the NDP. It is my belief that limiting your choices to a narrow range of government tools, based on political ideologies, necessarily leads to some spectrum of a given problem not being addressed. I would argue that all societal problems require all four tools — which is not to say that all problems will have the weighing of tools.

To only rely on regulation to encourage more energy efficiency, which the NDP document does, is to only seek a partial solution. Regulation is part of the answer, but so too are incentives and disincentives. So, too, is information — for example, helping people to understand the implications of their daily choices and hopefully encouraging them to change (i.e. to conserve energy)

In the building industry, regulations are often part of the problem, even though we cling to them because of untested assumptions of their effectiveness. For example, zoning regulations mandate minimum lot sizes, maximum lot coverages, maximum heights, etc — far from suburbia being market-driven, low-density sprawl is actually *created by* the regulations. Developers are all too happy to build more compact cities, just as they are happy to build more energy efficient buildings, if we provide incentives so that it is a zero-sum game.

I wish the NDP was willing to entertain the full spectrum of government tools to solve problems, just like I wish the Conservatives would do (in the opposite direction). [The Liberals are willing to deploy the full range of tools, but they have had a hard time picking priorities, so the end result is the same] Practical problems require practical solutions. When political ideologies limit entire ranges of public action (rendering some tools off limits), problems will only persist.

Anyway, I appreciate the response and look forward to reading more of your articles.

Retrofit community, commercial and institutional infrastructure through a loan and tax incentive program. This program would help existing businesses, hospitals, churches and schools to reduce their energy consumption. Low-interest loans would be provided to public institutions such as hospitals, and tax incentives and write-offs to corporations. Energy savings would cover the cost of loan repayments.
Install 100,000 solar thermal building systems (rooftops or walls), as is done in Sweden, with a federal grant for 50 per cent of the material costs and loans for the remainder. This is a crucial step in reducing energy costs for both commercial and residential building owners, and assisting in the introduction of new solar technology.
Provide funding for community capacity building. Funding would be used to support the development of community groups and non-profit organizations to promote activities which promote greener use of energy and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Provide support for local co-operative and renewable power production using wind, biomass, and other renewable sources, and small scale cogeneration to reduce reliance upon centralized power plants. Ensure that there are fair and equitable interconnection standards across the country that can promote small scale energy producers. Non-wind renewable energy such as biomass and small scale hydro would receive the incentives already available to wind power.
Enlarge the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Green Fund to drive further infrastructure investment by communities towards green house gas reductions.
Provide incentives to communities to reduce emissions from land fills. The main green house gas released from land fills is methane, dramatically more harmful than CO2.
Help large industrial companies make the transition to sustainability with energy audits paid for by the government, resulting in permanent reductions in energy bills; and assist these companies in making sustainable change by using funds collected through the auction of emission credits. Support and utilize Industry Associations to ensure that best practices of these industries are shared and promoted. Additionally, introduce tax incentives for large emitters to use today’s technology to reduce emissions.
Give fair notice to large emitters that, starting in 2008, permissible emissions will be capped and the cap will be annually reduced with an eventual goal of a 50 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030.
Introduce a market-based auction for available emission credits in 2009, with credits divided among sectors. At the outset, the auction will cover less than 10 per cent of available credits, with a goal of all emission credits sold by auction by 2030. Proceeds from the sale of emission credits will go to sustainability projects.
View the industrial sector as a source of energy, and invest in co-generation, with special emphasis on biomass, with a priority given to provinces without a surplus of hydro-electric power.
Mandate the petroleum industry to meet World Fuel Charter standards and improve the cleanliness of petroleum and diesel; work with the auto and petroleum industry to ensure that access to alternative fuels expands with the availability of alternative fuel vehicles.
Stop tilting the marketplace towards unsustainable energy and, over four years, stop government subsidies and tax breaks for unsustainable energy.
Establish minimum standards for efficiency in the use of fossil fuels for electrical production, including co-generation in order to improve Canada’s generation efficiency from its current 30%.