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No, the forest fires that have lately engulfed the cities of the eastern United States and Canada in smoke are probably not the result of global warming. This year might be on track to set a record for wildfires in Canada, but the Canadian National Fire Database shows a declining trend over the past 30 years, even as global temperatures have continued to rise.
But so what? It is not necessary to believe that climate change is responsible for any particular climatological event to agree, as a general proposition, that it is happening, that it is harmful, and that it is mainly caused by human activity, the evidence for which is overwhelming. If climate change is not responsible for this particular spike in wildfires, that does not mean it will not lead to more, on average, in the years to come. Or to more extreme weather events in general, which is really the point.
So we are, at the very least, being given a glimpse of the future – and of the stakes. Talk of climate change in abstract or general terms – for example, of holding the increase in average global temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the official goal of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – and people have a difficult time visualizing how serious the consequences can be, for specific groups of people in specific places at specific times. If the current disaster, whatever its cause, helps mobilize support for serious policies to address the threat of climate change – both to limit it and, as important, to adapt to it – well, Paris is worth a mass.
The problem, as far as Canada is concerned, is that the situation is largely out of our hands. Whatever climate change might portend for us – and the consequences for some other parts of the world are far worse – there is little we can do on our own to avert it. Climate change is a global problem with global causes and global solutions: It is the total concentration of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere that counts, not the amount that any one country might be emitting, or have emitted. The critics are right on this point: At 1.6 per cent of global emissions, Canada is a bit player, next to the Chinas and the Indias of the world. We could cut our emissions to zero, and it would make next to no difference to the Earth’s fate.
But the advocates are right to respond: every little bit helps. If every country adopted this line of thinking, and used it as a pretext for inaction, the problem would never be solved. Whereas if every country pitches in, it can be. What is important to the world, then, is that we do our part, not only for its own sake but for the example it sets to others.
What is important to this country, however, is that we do so by the least expensive means possible. Whether or not we meet our targets for emissions reductions is of far less consequence, to the world or ourselves, than whether we cripple our economy in the process. That’s by no means inevitable. It depends on how we go about it: on the policy choices we make. Specifically, it depends on whether we rely on prices, in the main, to bring about the needed reductions, or whether we use subsidies and regulations to get there.
The evidence for this is as overwhelming as the evidence for global warming itself. The most striking single study on this remains that conducted by Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, a group of environmental economists and climate experts, in 2019. It compared the costs of a relatively “pure” carbon pricing approach, with any revenues collected used to lower other taxes – generally calculated at about one-20th of one percentage point off of annual economic growth, when fully phased in – with the costs of various mixes of subsidies and regulations. It found the latter to be in the range of one-quarter to four-fifths of a percentage point: from five to 16 times as high as under the pure carbon pricing scenario.
This would not matter so much if the economy was perking along at a robust rate: like the 5-per-cent real growth we averaged in the postwar years. But given current and projected annual economic growth of 1.7 per cent or less, it is calamitous. Where a pure carbon pricing regime might only shave that to 1.65 per cent, a subs-and-regs-heavy approach could cut our economic growth rate by as much as half. We are in deep enough fiscal trouble as it is, with an aging population and soaring health care costs. Getting it wrong on climate change could really land us in the soup.
And yet we are getting it wrong. The Liberal government talks a lot about carbon pricing, and its virtues. But it is not actually the focus of its climate policy: By my calculations, carbon pricing accounts for a third or less of actual and planned emissions reductions. Rather than replace existing subsidies and regulations with a carbon tax, they simply layered the tax on top – then added new ones on top of that. With more yet to come: The emissions cap to be applied to Alberta’s energy sector, the untold tens of billions to be lavished on foreign battery manufacturers, and more.
(These are not only costlier, but more divisive. A carbon tax that applies evenly across the country was a hard enough sell in Alberta – though the province was among the first to put a price on carbon. But how much more odious must it be to Albertans to see their major industry singled out for its own unique emissions cap?)
And the Conservatives? They would abolish the federal carbon tax altogether – or say they would, at any rate. Of course, by the time they are in government there might not be a federal carbon tax, as such: Six provinces now apply their own levy, in place of the federal tax, with more likely to follow. The Tories might run into some unexpected opposition, to boot: Having made investments based on the carbon tax, business might not be particularly friendly to proposals to abolish it.
Still another development might seal the deal. A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate this week, with support from both parties, would apply a border tax to imports from other countries based on their carbon intensity. A cynic might point out the hypocrisy of the United States slapping a carbon tax on other countries that it refuses to apply to itself, but never mind: The effect of such a tax will be to add to the cost of failing to reduce our emissions, and increase the imperative of doing so by the most transparent and least costly means available.
The hour is late, in other words. The world is continuing to warm. And yet most of the world’s countries are not on track even to meet their commitments at the Paris climate conference, let alone the greater reductions that scientists say will actually be necessary to keep global warming to within target range. Canada, needless to say, is among the worst offenders. We were nowhere near to meeting our targets before this spring; the massive fires across our north and west – more carbon dioxide, fewer trees – are likely to push us further back.
My fear is that this will lead to even worse policy misfires: As the target year 2030 draws nearer, and it becomes apparent that we are going to suffer the embarrassment of welching on our commitments, will governments of whatever stripe be tempted to resort to even costlier measures to get us in under the wire?
And yet it is all so unnecessary. The knock on shifting to a pure carbon-pricing approach is that it would require pushing the price to astronomic – or at least politically impossible – levels, even with the rebates. Not so. As it is, the federal carbon price is scheduled to rise to $170 a tonne by 2030 – a level that was itself once predicted to be politically impossible. What level would be required to replace other policies? I have calculated it at about $250; the Parliamentary Budget Office puts it at $261. If we also eliminated the system of “output-based pricing” for large emitters – basically, it excuses firms from paying the tax below a certain threshold level of emissions, currently set at 80 per cent of the industry average – it might not even have to rise that high.
The really frustrating part of this is the blinkered position of the Tories. It’s often pointed out that carbon pricing was originally a conservative idea, and indeed it is: a market-based, non-regulatory approach that harnesses the ingenuity of individual businesses and consumers rather than the prescriptions of planners. But I get how political tribalism works. If the left is fer it, the right feels obliged to be agin it.
Only the left isn’t for it. The Liberal embrace of carbon pricing is half-hearted and incomplete. The Conservatives wouldn’t have to capitulate to the Liberals, or adopt the same policy as them. They could leapfrog over them. Sure, it would mean swallowing their previous opposition, but when has that stopped political parties in the past? And if it meant scrapping a lot of other policies Conservatives hate even more, wouldn’t that be a price worth paying?
Or put it this way. The lesson of the past three elections is that carbon pricing has become table stakes in federal politics, at least among voters in the regions and demographics the Conservatives need to reach: the sign of whether you’re serious about climate change, and therefore fit to govern. After this season of fire, that is only likely to be more true.
For the Tories, then, to have any chance of repealing the “no more pipelines” bill or the Clean Fuel Regulations or the emissions cap or any of the rest of the litany of Liberal awfulness, they are going to have to come to terms with carbon pricing. Surely the best way to do that is to make it their own.