This week saw the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest report, and the news is pretty dire.  We're already seeing one degree of change in the world's climate, and if we want to halt it before 1.5 degrees a point where the effects are still manageable we have a lot of work to do when it comes to decarbonizing before 2050, but it is doable.  And the most effective tool remains a price on carbon somewhere in the range of $135 per tonne by 2030, which has been calculated as around 50 cents per litre of gasoline, which would put our prices on par with Europe.

In the midst of this are the growing number of provincial premiers (and some opposition leaders) who have decided they're going to thumb their noses at the federal government's carbon price plans which isn't deterring Justin Trudeau, and he's largely shrugged and said that these provinces will be subject to the federal carbon backstop plan, and the proceeds will be returned to families in the form of rebate cheques.  While economically inefficient the better course of action would be to cut other taxes like provincial income taxes instead it has the benefit of sending federal cheques to people in advance of an election, which the Liberals hope will ameliorate the backlash, particularly if it's true that most people will get more back than they paid into it, once corporate and business carbon taxes are included and redistributed.

But amidst this populist uprising by these premiers and opposition leaders, we keep hearing the refrain that they'll find "better solutions" to meeting our climate targets than taxing ordinary citizens.  Of course, they won't actually articulate what those are in any great detail, but they keep insisting that trust us, we'll meet those targets really!  That is, when they're not assuring us that those targets are really just aspirational, and if we don't meet them, then well, that's just fine because hey, Canada is a small player emissions-wise globally, so it doesn't really matter.  But we need to start unpacking these statements more, and pushing back against these false assurances because they're coming from the mouths of hucksters, trying to sell us carbon reduction snake oil.

Let's start with the notion that what we do doesn't matter.  While it's true that we're a small share of global emissions, we tend to emit four times as much per capita as we should, and that's not something to shrug about.  It's also a collective action problem, which we can't ignore either.  We all have a role to play, and our work to reduce emissions can not only provide leadership, but we can also develop better technologies and processes that can be monetized to our benefit.  One economist used the analogy of football: "Since place-kickers on their own cannot defeat the other football team, we've decided to cut all our kickers since they are a waste."  You see the logic there?

There has been a raft of other bafflegab about how much better these provinces can make their targets without a carbon price, and they go on to list things like "remediation" and "recycling," which don't really have anything to do with carbon emission reductions.  It's like how creating new national parks doesn't actually do much to reduce emissions, because while forests can act as a carbon sink, it's not actually achieving reductions.  We also need to remind these premiers that the logic behind a national carbon price is because industry demands a level playing field and comparable rules between provinces.  I'm sure that a premier would love to advertise that they have a lower carbon price in order to incentivize businesses to move there, but that doesn't solve our overall problems.

We also need to deconstruct the notion that simply replacing the output of other countries' industries with Canadian exports will somehow fix the problem, such as Canadian aluminium being produced with fewer emissions than those from other countries, or using our oil or natural gas to displace other countries' fossil fuels and yes, this is an argument that Andrew Scheer has used frequently.  These are marginal gains at best that won't do anything in the longer term, and while sure, they may be good on a temporary basis for our economy, it doesn't deal with the longer-term goals of emissions reductions without any other kind of pricing mechanisms to ensure that our industries are incentivized to come up with even more reductions in their processes hence carbon prices.

More than anything, we need to start calling bullshit on these politicians who insist that they can find a solution to decarbonization that won't cost consumers.  Without a broad-based carbon price that's transparent to consumers, the costs associated with achieving reductions, either through onerous regulation or by imposing prices on big emitters, will get passed onto consumers regardless.  And if the de facto policy is to not actually do anything about emissions reductions (while mouthing support for things like "technology" that is usually code for magic), those costs will still be borne by consumers in the form of things like higher insurance rates as they deal with the damage caused by extreme weather, crop failures, and population migrations from areas that are hardest hit and that will absolutely affect government coffers as they are forced to deal with it on a broader basis.  There will be costs one way or the other, and simply telling people that there won't be if the federal carbon tax gets scrapped is the height of political dishonesty made worse by the fact that this very serious issue is being used as a simple wedge for partisan jousting as these leaders look to do battle against Justin Trudeau for their own gain.  Not that we can let the Liberals off the hook on this either their communication around this issue has been woefully lacking, and simply saying "the environment and the economy go together" ad nauseum is not selling people on why this is necessary.  We need some honesty from these leaders, and we're not getting it, which is why we need to call them out.

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics