I noticed that a number of my friends have joined a Facebook group called “Boycotting Major Oil Companies One at a Time”. The gist is this: “major oil companies think along with the government that it’s OK to suck the hard earned cash from our pockets. Well I don’t think it is right and it’s time we really do something strategically.” The founder choose Petro-Canada to boycott first noting that “I am not fully sure how much of a stake the Canadian government still owns in Petro-Canada but this seems like a good place to start.” (FYI, Petro-Canada is fully private company as of 2004).

I agree that these companies are making record profits at our expense. Of course, the same can be said about banks, hydro companies, airlines, or any other industry controlled by monopolies or oligopolies. Since they have no competition, they can set prices at whatever they want. So why not boycott Air Canada? or the Royal Bank? or Quebec Hydro? and so on. Any of these monopolies/oligopolies are just as deserving. In reality, gas prices have followed the price of oil pretty consistently. So the “record” profits are because of a combination of scarer resources and us using more of it, not because the differential between the cost of oil and the cost of gas is increasing, as you can see in the graph below:

But people really get angry at high gas prices because we’ve been led to believe that it is our god-given right to have unlimited access to cheap gas. It’s long since time that we re-think that position. I think it’s a cop-out to simply sign up for a Facebook group in protest (and boycott one company) and yet make absolutely no changes to your lifestyle, in the face of rising gas prices. Unless we find new sources (and we may find a few), the question isn’t if but when we run out of oil. I’d suggest you read The End of Oil by Paul Roberts if you doubt that claim. We cannot depend on oil forever.

Even stilll — and this is hard to come to terms with since we only know that we’re being gouged at the pump — gas prices in Canada are low compared to the rest of the world. Take a look at this chart (produced by the Conservative government) — as you can see Canadian gas prices are lower than all other G8 countries, except the U.S. (of course) — and note that this difference is a choice (i.e. the amount that we tax it), since the actual costs are the same.

Instead of copping out and thinking you’ve done enough by simply joining a Facebook group and “boycotting one company at a time”, you might start taking responsibility for your own choices. Think gas prices are too high? Then don’t use as much gas.

For example, I choose to live in a central location, with less space rather than live in the suburbs and have more space. I have a car, it gets average mileage. But my wife and I share it. We live 4 blocks from my wife’s office, so she walks to work. I can take the bus door-to-door to UCLA. We coordinate so when the other needs the car, I can take the bus, or she can take the subway downtown (where she often goes on business) or bikes. Errands and non-work trips? Things are close by. Grocery store is 5 blocks (and a farmers’ market is next door on Sundays), the theatre is across the street, and there are lots of shops and restaurants within a couple blocks of us. So we don’t drive much — about 4500 miles/year or about $700/year in gas.

But you’re thinking to yourself, “yeah but they are just yuppies, they can live in the city because they don’t have kids.” Well, not quite. We could have choose to buy or build a place in the suburbs, but we are currently in the processing of building a new house for ourselves less than a 1/2 mile from downtown L.A. — a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2-car garage, 1800 s.f. single-family that I designed myself. It has a good-sized back yard for future kids, it’s on the corner of a park with a lake, 200 feet from a farmers market, 300 feet from my bank, 600 feet from a fresh bakery, a block from the drug store, a block from a new grocery store, 4 blocks from a new elementary (K-to-6) school, and 5 blocks from 600-acre park, and yet, I can be downtown in 3 minutes. We will have what the average family in the suburbs has, but we don’t have to drive all over the place to get it. So it’s all about choice.

You can choose to live in a more central location, where you don’t need to drive for every errand. The trade-off is of course that you will have less space in a central location. Either way, you pay. But paying for gas is part of the choice that people make when they choose to live in the suburbs. If you live/work in a big city, you have choices of where to live and how to get around.

But obviously, not everyone lives in a big city. I grew up in small-town Eastern Ontario, where you had to drive an hour (to Kingston) to see a movie and many people make that trip everyday for work. But even here, you can make better choices. First, carpool. Get 3-4 of your friends together and take turns; you drive once a week. Second, instead of driving that Ford F150 to Kingston everyday, get a more fuel efficient car for commuting. Hybrids (Civic Hybrid, Prius) get over 50 MPG, but are pricey, so aren’t worth it for most people. But a regular Civic gets almost 40 MPG. Don’t like paying the $2,000 more up front for a Civic instead of, say, a Chevy Cobalt? Think again. The Cobalt averages 24 MPG, the Civic averages 36 MPG — 50% better. At 15,000 miles/year and $3.25/gallon you save $675/year in gas — which makes up for the higher up-front cost in 3 years (so every year you keep it after 3 years is money you’ve saved — and being a former Civic owner myself, I can tell you it will last forever!). Moreover, Civics have unbeatable reliability and hold their value much better (which means the Civic costs less than the Cobalt). And with new tax incentives in Canada to buy high-efficiency cars, it costs even less. Better yet, Civics are made in Canada (Alliston, Ontario). Need an SUV? Buy a Ford Escape (25 MPG) instead of, say, the Dodge Durango (15 MPG) — again, you make up the cost difference in about 3 years and it has better re-sale value, and with tax incentives, it actually costs you less.

The point is, you can do a lot more than signing up for a Facebook group if you are upset at paying too much for gas. You can carpool. You can buy more fuel efficient cars. You can try getting by with one car instead of two. You can live closer to work (or closer to amenities for non-work trips). It’s really up to you.

Is it just me or has the reporting on the Conservative climate change plan been just terrible? I continue to read that the Conservative plan will meet Kyoto targets by 2025. No, it will not. Kyoto targets are based not on reductions from greenhouse gas levels from today (i.e. 2007), but rather on reductions from greenhouse gas level from 1990. The Conservative plan calls for a 20% reduction from today by 2020. That actually represents a 5% increase from 1990 levels, not the 25% reduction from 1990 levels that Canada has committed to. The charitable explanation is that the Conservatives are trying to “spin” their plan as meeting Kyoto only a little late. But that’s patently false. They are in fact, lying; their plan does not meet even our 2020 targets (let alone our 2012 targets which are virtually unattainable).

It’s hard not to see this plan as anything but political cover. The defense is at once brilliant and underhanded, demonstrating that the Conservatives have never stopped campaigning and will not stop until they get their majority government. The Conservative defense? We can’t be blamed for Liberal inaction. In other words, its not our problem that the Liberals didn’t do anything. There’s no question that the Liberals didn’t get it done. But the Conservatives aren’t getting it done either. And they are using the Liberals inaction to cover for their own inaction. Yes, it’s bizarre. You can see that the purpose is not to reduce greenhouse gases, but rather to demonstrate that the Liberals couldn’t get it done (which is true). It’s merely fodder for the next election campaign — political football. Meanwhile, we aren’t reducing our greenhouse gases.

The fact is, the Conservatives are not committed to reducing greenhouse gases — indeed, the Conservatives own numbers show that Canada will be 5% above 1990 levels. They fail to understand the vast untapped jobs and economic benefits of developing and exporting green technologies. They fail to understand that Canadian companies that emit less will gain a competitive advantage over their American counterparts.

The thing is — somebody always pays for pollution. It doesn’t just go away. The Conservatives, however, have decided that polluters don’t need to pay; in the Conservative plan, consumers and taxpayers will pay. It’s all well and good to encourage consumers to buy more efficient, low-emissions vehicles and ask them to replace incandescent light bulbs and older energy-consuming appliances with more efficient alternatives. But if you look at the numbers, these are tiny fractions of our CO2 emissions. We’re not dealing with the giant 300-pound gorilla in room — which is this: one-third of our carbon dioxide is produced by just 10 coal-fired power plants, 7 of which are in Alberta and 2 in Ontario. In total, 40% of Canada’s greenhouse gases are generated from by the power industry. The sum total of every house and apartment in Canada is at best 4%. So even if every single house and apartment in the country improved its energy efficiency by 25%, that would only result in a mere 1% reduction in greenhouse gases.

Quite simply, the Conservatives are giving the richest industries — the oil and gas industry and the power business — a free pass at our expense. The Conservative plan has no hard carbon dioxide targets for industrial polluters. Instead, the more producers pollute, the more they are allowed pollute (on a per unit of production basis) — this is what they mean by “intensity-based targets”. That means that those 10 big coal-fired plants that produce one-third of Canada’s carbon dioxide will be allowed to pollute more, not less. Instead, we need to put a price on pollution and every producer given hard targets. If producers pollute less, they can sell their unused allowance to companies that pollute more than their fair share. What does this do? It gives green producers a competitive advantage and punishes those that pollute. That’s what a cap-and-trade system does. It’s a market-based system that is a highly effective. How do we know? We used it to combat acid rain back in the 1980s.

That’s the cold hard truth about the Conservative climate change plan. The question is whether Canadians will be fooled or not.

After denying that human actions have contributed to the current climate change crisis for years, Conservatives are now poised to not only recognize reality, but are now proposing to reduce greenhouse gases (and even surprisingly backed an opposition motion that committed the government to meeting its Kyoto obligations). Moreover, they have committed to several measures that will be very visible for everyday Canadians: a couple examples include banning incandescent light bulbs (which use a lot of energy) and taxing gas-guzzling vehicles while providing rebates on fuel-efficient, low-emissions vehicles. So from the perspective of the average voter, the story goes like this: the Conservatives are doing something that the Liberals didn’t do in 13 years (although fair-minded folks might recognize that current Liberal leader Stephane Dion gained the respect of environmental groups for his work as Environment Minister in the last 18 months of Liberal rule).

And yet, environmental groups (Sierra Club, Suzuki Foundation, etc) have rounded criticized the Conservative plan. So the average voter is left wondering: who the heck am I supposed to believe here? Are the Conservatives committed to reducing greenhouse gases or not? Well, let’s take a look at the details.

The Conservative plan commits Canada to meeting half of its Kyoto obligations, 10 years later (i.e. reducing greenhouse gases by 150 megatons by 2020 instead of 300 megatons by 2010). Let’s recap what Kyoto means: in signing Kyoto, by 2050, we must reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from our 1990 levels; there are several benchmarks along the way and by 2020 we are supposed to achieve a 25% reduction. Instead, by 2020, the Conservative plan would leave Canada at 5% above 1990 levels. So the punch line is this: the Conservative plan doesn’t actually reduce greenhouse gases, it holds them more or less constant, but not right away, only by 2020. So the devil is in the details — on the surface it appears that the Conservatives want to reduce greenhouse gases, but their own projections show their plan will not do so.

The question that Canadians face going forward is: who is best placed to ensure that real action will be taken on climate change? The Conservatives’ credibility is obviously in question — they’ve long been what Dion calls “climate change deniers” and their plan merely promises to hold greenhouse gases roughly constant, not reduce them. The Liberals’ credibility is also damaged — on the one hand, they “didn’t get it done” in 13 years as Michael Ignatieff famously told Stephane Dion. But on the other hand, they have a new leader who is respected among environmental leaders and clearly committed to the environment. The NDP claims to support reducing CO₂ emissions, but is also compromised because strong environmental action means putting union jobs (particularly in the auto sector) at risk. And while the Liberals and Conservatives can and should be criticized for their lack of progress in the last 13 years, the NDP, which has held the balance of power for much of the last 3 years, has never made its support contingent upon reducing greenhouse gases (which it should have done if they claim to represent the interests of average working Canadians — poll after poll shows the environment is now Canadians’ #1 issue). Quebecers have another option — the Bloc — which has been a strong supporter of reducing greenhouse gases, but it too is compromised; like the NDP, it has had the opportunity to make their support contingent on reducing greenhouse gases, but instead fought for more equalization payments for Quebec.

So, there is reason for Canadians to be skeptical that any of the three major parties will “get it gone” on their own. Perhaps that explains why more and more Canadians are willing to back the Green Party, which in the latest Strategic Counsel poll (showing the Greens at 12%), is running ahead of the Bloc Quebecois (9%) and virtually tied with the NDP (13%). With the Greens running 33% higher than the Bloc, and running a full slate of candidates (except one in Saint-Laurent due to the Liberal-Green arrangement), it begs the question why Elizabeth May — the country’s only female party leader (at least of parties with more than 1/10th of 1 percent!) — should be barred from participating in the leaders’ debates.

But Green support is spread out across the country and our election system requires a concentration of votes in one electoral district to elect MPs, which suggest that even if the Greens are running ahead of the Bloc and NDP, they still could be shut out. So clearly the Greens have an uphill battle to win seats under our current system. Unlike the major parties, the Greens don’t have deep ties to corporate and union players, and thus rely heavily on public money given to parties based on their previous election performance (see how money influences party performance).

Most Canadians appear committed to Kyoto, with 61% wanting to still meet Kyoto targets and just 32% saying those goals are unattainable. Moreover, 60% of Canadians do not believe Environment Minister John Baird when he says that meeting Kyoto targets will cost 275,000 jobs.

So Canadians are in a pickle. Despite the environment being the #1 issue concerning Canadians, there is no obvious choice of which party to vote for — all three major parties are compromised in some way on the environment and the one party that you can guarantee will make their support contingent upon reductions in greenhouse gases — the Greens — face structural impediments to electing MPs (i.e. no funding base and broad support vs. corporate/union donors and concentrated support that the other parties have). Where does that leave the average Canadian concerned about the environment?

In his editorial “Beyond Kyoto” in Friday’s National Post, it is clear that Michael Ignatieff prefers a carbon tax (”direct tax”) to control greenhouse gas emissions. But after his tortured explanation of how he would bend over backwards to ensure that nobody is treated unfairly, he floats a much wiser alternative:

“One proposed alternative to a direct emissions tax that needs to be evaluated is a program to allow carbon-emitting industries to trade emission allotments among themselves under a gradually reducing cap. Under such a regulatory regime, industry would be required to buy permits for emissions above their permitted amount. Like the direct emissions tax, a cap-and-trade program puts a price on the cost of industrial emissions. It also requires, over time, the development and adoption of non-emitting technologies, thereby creating business development opportunities in this field.”

Ignatieff is right to raise cap-and-trade as an alternative. As I’ve argued here and here, It’s a fair system — it puts the onus on business to reduce their CO2 emissions. And better than a carbon tax (which taxes everyone), it actually transfers money from dirty to clean producers, rewarding good behaviour while punishing bad behaviour. A cap-and-trade system acknowledges that the problem isn’t anyone that produces any CO2, but rather only those that produce more than their fair share. An intelligent program to tackle CO2 must begin with this premise. I hope Ignatieff and others do look at cap-and-trade more seriously.

Power plants and Oil Sands: Canada’s CO2 Bad Guys
By Gregory D. Morrow

Information can be a powerful thing if people collectively act upon it. Take for example, Environment Canada’s recently released Greenhouse Gas Inventory. Armed with this information, it should be clear that gaining control of our CO2 emissions is well within reach, if only we had the political will and intelligent program to do so. An intelligent program already exists: the same cap-and-trade system we used to control SO2 can be used to control CO2. All we need are politicians willing to promote it.

I thought it would be interesting to compare provinces’ emissions with their population, to get a sense of which provinces produce more or less than their proportion of population. The results are remarkable. Alberta produces over 40% of Canada’s CO2, despite only 10% of its population — four times its population share. Saskatchewan is also a heavy polluter — generating more than 2.5 times is population share. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland & Labrador also generate more CO2 than their population share. Four provinces stand out for their relatively low CO2 emissions: P.E.I. (which generates almost nothing), Manitoba, Quebec and British Columbia. Ontario is slightly better than its population share. Here’s the summary:

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Cap-and-Trade Works; Carbon Taxes, Regulation and Voluntary Measures Do Not
By Gregory D. Morrow

It is imperative that Canada reduce its greenhouse gases, and given that 80% of the human production of said gases are due to CO2, that means first capping, then, second, reducing CO2 levels. Doing nothing — such as the Conservatives head-in-the-sand approach, or conversely, simply touting Kyoto targets without a credible plan to achieve them — will ensure that greenhouse gases continue to rise. And, therein lies the problem. We can all agree that reducing CO2 emissions is important (if you take the Tories on face value), but we disagree on how to do it. Typically, those on the left want to regulate emissions; those on the right want voluntary reductions. So far, neither approach has produced results.

But neither will Michael Ignatieff’s naive call for a carbon tax. And he should know better, based on what his adopted country — the U.S. — tried to do several years ago with its BTU tax. Bill Clinton tried a carbon tax and it didn’t get off the ground because of political opposition. Neither will Ignatieff’s carbon tax proposal. It’s dead on arrival. Already, you see the Conservatives pouncing on Ignatieff in parliament, likening it to the loathsome National Energy Program of 1980 (introduced by Pierre Trudeau). Ignatieff — already in hot water with the Liberal membership over his embrace of Stephen Harper’s sham Afghanistan vote — has done himself no favours by proposing such a controversial and untenable proposition as a carbon tax.

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If Action on Climate Change is What Harper Wants, Where is it?
By Gregory D. Morrow

By now, Stephen Harper’s borrowing from the Republican playbook is not news. Each day is a new example. This fact may be lost on many Canadians who are not political geeks, but for those of us who follow both American and Canadian politics, Harper’s strategies have already been tried and tested in the United States by the Bush administration. Harper is counting on Canadians responding like Americans. And so far, they have.

The latest Bush mimickery, of course, is on climate change where Stephen Harper is counting on rhetoric to substitute for real action. What is the best way to make non-action credible? Well, you accuse your opponents of exacting that — of talking instead of doing. This is a brilliant deflection tactic since it puts your opponent on the defensive for the very thing that you are trying to conceal. Unfortunately, the strategy is deceptive - intended to mask the intentions of government. Thus, yesterday Harper said this in response to Jean Charest’s call to honour Kyoto: “There’s lot of people around the world who have bold and ambitious statements about limiting greenhouse gases, but I am more interested to see what actual effective actions are undertaken.” So, he prefers action to bold statements. OK, fine. So where’s the beef? Where is the action that Harper prefers? The current government is so obsessed with fulfilling its five priorities (accountability, tax relief, crack-down on crime, enhanced baby bonus, wait times health guarantee) and only its five priorities, that it has no plan for climate change. And I do mean no plan. They cancelled all the Liberal global warming programs, without replacing them with anything. The sum total of Harper’s environmental program is a tax credit for transit passes, which every self-respecting observer will tell you will have zero impact on greenhouse gases, because it is simply not enough to convince people to switch from driving to transit use. The fact that the Conservatives are trying to pass off transit tax credits as a credible action plan on global warming is shockingly naive.

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Made-In-Canada Climate Change Policies or Not?
By Gregory D. Morrow

Cracks in the Tory spin machine are beginning to appear. Despite Stephen Harper’s autocratic grip on the government bureaucracy, or perhaps because of it, briefing notes of the Tories plan to scuttle Kyoto talks have been leaked to the press.

Beyond the obvious breach in government protocol, there are also signs of confusion more generally as to the direction the government plans to take on climate change. Is it the “made-in-Canada” solution that has become a substitute for real action? Or is it now that Harper’s government prefers the not-so-made-in-Canada proposal being forwarded by the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate? Made-in-Canada or not? One day the government is for made-in-Canada policies, the next day it is not.

The rogue nations of the Asia-Pacific Partnership (China, India, the U.S., Australia, Japan, South Korea) favour, not suprisingly, “voluntary measures”, which is code for no regulations.

That the debate is now being set up between Kyoto on the one hand (now being positioned as a failure by the Tory government) and voluntary measures on the other hand is deeply misleading and wrong-headed.

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Two-for-one: Tories Block Environment and Free Speech
By Gregory D. Morrow

I love when I can combine two recent rants into one. Today, the Tories displayed disregard for both democracy/free speech and the environment all in one. Not only did the Tories eliminate 15 Kyoto research projects but also prohibited Environment Canada scientist Mark Tushingham from giving a lecture about his new fiction book “Hotter than Hell,” which is based on a not-too-distanct future affected by global warming.

Due process for this event was not followed and that’s why it was cancelled,” said Ryan Sparrow, a spokesman for Environment Minister Rona Ambrose. Due process? You mean they didn’t ask permission from the Prime Minister’s Office? No, because Tushingham was billed as an Environment Canada scientist. Well, duh, that’s what he is.

Meanwhile it appears the 15 programs eliminated today are just the beginning. As reported yesterday, the Tories plan to cut 80% of funding on global warming in favour of tax cuts. I have to agree with Scott Brison on this one: “It is clear the Conservative government has no plans to listen to expert advice from their own department and is willing to sacrifice sound environmental policy to partisan ideology,” said Brison.

Tories Cut Environmental Funding for Tax Cuts
By Gregory D. Morrow

So a Conservative government is funding its tax cuts by cutting environmental funding. Where have we heard this before? That’s right, it’s straight out of the George W. Bush playbook. I’m beginning to wonder if the Tories have any original ideas of their own, or whether they plan on governing Canada using the detritus of Washington. Well, folks, you get what you pay for. The question is, did Canadians know that they were getting a government that is proposing to slash the budget for environmental programs by 80% when they cast their ballot on January 23?

Among the proposed measures are:
- a 80% cut in the Environment Canada global warming programs
- a 40% cut in climate change programs in all other ministries
- clawing back $260 million to support UN climate change programs
- funding for wind power is ‘uncertain’ (a euphemism for ‘cut’)

Despite the proposed cut-backs, the document states that “no process has been put in place to determine next steps on climate change or to develop the new ‘made in Canada’ climate plan.” So, the Tories have no environmental strategy. All they know is that it is not worth the money. Moreover, the documents say, “while the Tories are trying to save money by cutting the programs designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, they won’t cut government staff positions, so most of the money earmarked for climate change will be going to salaries for bureaucrats.” And this is a government that is concerned about waste? So these people will be working on what, exactly, now that most environmental funding has been cut?

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