In contrast, at the federal level, the Harper government (as it likes to be called), has only committed to reduce Canada’s GHG emissions by 17% by 2020 (below 2005 levels). And at the moment it remains entirely unclear how even this completely inadequate goal will be achieved.

But check out what another Conservative government is doing: across the pond, the UK Conservative coalition government has taken a very different approach to tackling climate change. The UK government recently committed to reduce its GHG emissions by 50% by 2025, below 1990 levels (see here for details), and that target will be embedded in legislation.

Note the different base years: 1990 for the UK vs. 2005 for Canada and 2007 for BC. Than means that if Canada did reduce its GHG emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, our emissions would still be well above our 1990 levels.

Nice to know how much more ambitious other industrialized countries with Conservative governments are prepared to be.

The issue is receiving much less attention than it did in the last federal election (the Dion factor?).  Yet the science tells us that the situation is more urgent, not less.

Last weekend, Bill McKibben (founder of 350.org, and author most recently of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet) gave an outstanding talk in Vancouver (to a capacity crowd of 500). Twenty years ago, McKibben’s book The End of Nature was the first to introduce the coming reality of global warming to a general audience.

Today, McKibben reminds is that that future is now. Climate change is happening. In the last year alone we have seen temperature records shattered, terrible droughts and fires in Australia and New Zealand, and because warmer air holds more water vapor, disastrous flooding, most notably in Pakistan.

McKibben also highlights the cruel global irony that the poorest countries that have contributed least to global warming are experiencing the brunt of climate change. And he sadly noted Canada’s ignominious role in scuttling meaningful progress in global negotiations.

McKibben also had a little fun with the concept of “conservative”. A direct action he recently helped organize in Washington asked participants to come “in their Sunday best.” The point was to emphasize that the radicals in all this are those willing to recklessly dump ever-increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere without consideration of the consequences (that’s crazy stuff), while the true conservatives are those who want our planetary systems to maintain some semblance of what we have hitherto known.

McKibben concluded with what should be an obvious observation: the governments we elect may get to re-write tax laws, the criminal code, or immigration laws – but they do not get to re-write the laws of nature. We need a government whose policies and global negotiating position are governed by science. Rising to the challenge of global warming is the defining issue of our generation. The climate cannot afford four more years of inaction.

Winning public support (particularly in tough economic times) also requires that our policies are structured equitably and are seen to be fair. That’s what the CCPA’s BC office is modeling in our Climate Justice Project (for more on that, see here).

Most of my research these days has been on the big topic of what aggressive change looks like: where we need to get to and what the justice issues are in the transition. This is the essence of our SSHRC-funded Climate Justice Project. We did some early research on greenhouse gas targets for 2050, and found that BC needed a 94% reduction to get to an emissions level that was sustainable and equitable globally.

But these days I’m loving the logic of zero. The City of Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Team made such a recommendation of zero fossil fuels by 2040, and so I’ve tried to adopt that as a goal for projects. One could certainly argue it is not aggressive enough, but it is definitely realistic. Most of the capital stock of society turns over within a 30-year time span, which means a lot of action could be addressed with minimal impact by setting strict marketplace standards. Beyond this are some major structural issues that have to do with housing, neigbourhoods and transportation, but with good planning this too seems do-able.

For example, in the UK all new homes built after 2016 must be zero carbon. This means, according to a Q&A in the Guardian:

Three words are key in the zero-carbon world: insulation, insulation and insulation. And maybe “airtightness” too. Most of Britain’s housing stock is what’s called “leaky” in the sense that buildings lose heat through badly insulated walls and roofs as well as through draughty windows. In zero-carbon homes all that changes – walls are heavily insulated, floors and roofs keep heat in, and triple-glazed draught-proofed windows stop warmth flooding out. … Many have heat exchangers in the loft through which the warm, stale air from in the house is expelled while fresh air from the outside is drawn in, picking up the heat on the way to avoid wasting it. This means the building can pretty much heat itself from the body warmth of its inhabitants, cutting heating bills virtually to zero. This is all in winter, of course. If the house feels too warm in the summer, you just open the window.

For vehicles, I’d suggest something like banning the sale of new vehicles with internal combustion engines by 2025 (with some targets for hybrids and electric vehicles along the way), and banning them from the road entirely by 2040. In the interim, urban planning will need to be supercharged to reduce the need for cars in the first place by developing more compact communities where it makes more sense to walk or bike for the vast majority of trips, but also a more aggressive deployment of public transit.

As in vehicles, eliminating fossil fuels means finding sources of clean electricity to power what we do, in particular the heavy industry that makes stuff we like. There are massive efficiency gains to be had from our existing suite of appliances and gadgets that can get us some breathing room, but new sources will be needed, from the small home/neighbourhood scale up to the regional/provincial. This is all do-able — what is standing in the way are the vested interests of the fossil fuel industries.

Then again, perhaps zero is not completely attainable. There will inevitably be need for back-up supplies and some transportation services (airplanes and ships) that need energy dense fuel. Technically, there is small bit of greenhouse gas emissions that can be absorbed by the Earth, which might give us some wiggle room, but there is also evidence that those sinks are getting clogged, and if scientists like James Hansen are right we need those sinks to reduce the absolute level of GHGs in the atmosphere.

The best hope for flying and shipping is biofuels, but they will be competing with food supplies and other potential uses of land, so real reductions in air travel and shipping seem inevitable (goodbye, one-week golfing trip to Mexico). That dynamic may well happen sooner rather than later due to escalating prices from peaking oil supplies. While a lot of the changes need for climate action need not affect our quality of life, and may in fact improve it, reductions in air travel and shipping may be the hardest ones to swallow.

The government’s policy here is a simple one. First, force BC Hydro to buy more power than it needs by ignoring its ability to import power when extreme drought conditions reduce the generating capability of its major hydro stations. And ignoring the downstream power benefits that are returned to (and owned by) the province under the Columbia River Treaty — an amount of power equal to the potential output from Site C. And most recently by pretending the Burrard Thermal plant doesn’t exist — that it can’t provide any back up in emergency drought conditions even though we have to maintain the plant to be able to meet peak winter capacity requirements.

Next, artificially increase the demand for electricity with what I like to call a buy high-sell low policy of charging new electric intensive mines less than half the cost of the new electricity supply BC Hydro must acquire to meet their requirements — an effective subsidy of tens of millions of dollars per year per mine.

And finally, force BC Hydro to look only to the private sector to develop new sources of energy, no matter how costly and low in value many of these sources are or what cumulative environmental impacts they have.

You do, in this process, create an artificial private power producer (IPP) industry. And politically you reap the rewards of mindless consulting reports, uncritically regurgitated in the mainstream press, touting all the investment and jobs that will be created. And there is the green veneer — the suggestion that building more power plants and transmission lines than you need, and encouraging more electric (and GHG)  intensive mines with effectively subsidized power rates is somehow good for the environment.

But of course the investment and jobs in the IPP industry and electric intensive mining industry don’t come for free. They are being paid for by BC Hydro, which in turn passes on the extraordinary costs it is being forced to incur to you and me.  The bill for all this, by which I mean not the total cost, but the extra costs due to the unnecessary, inefficient and, I would argue, environmentally unfriendly government policy is well over a billion dollars — easily heading for two. A billion or two we don’t have to spend, that you could spend in other ways, generating jobs and investment just like the IPPs. A billion or two that essentially strips BC Hydro of the net benefits we all could have shared in.

Not once through all the announcements and media spin (sadly spun by the mainstream media reporters themselves) has there been any analysis of the benefits and costs of what the government is forcing BC Hydro to do. Simple measures, for example the amount and cost per tonne of any net reduction in GHGs, or the effective subsidy per job, would be not too much to ask. But there is no justification, only slogans and press releases.

It is, as I said to my right wing friend, either corruption or stupidity. Except for the obvious influence of election support, I’m not a conspiracy theorist myself — I think it’s stupidity. But either way it still is a disgrace — much worse than anything I saw in the Clark or Harcourt governments or the Socred governments that preceded them.

Some people seem prepared to take the lack of 100% agreement as a legitimate justification for inaction. That’s illogical.

I’m a parent, and I look at it this way: if, as a parent, someone said to you that there was an 80% chance of something terrible happening to your child if we failed to take some course of action, would you tell them to come back when they were 90% or 100% certain?

Bike to Work Week is an annual event organized by the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition, which aims to raise the profile of cycling as a feasible transportation option. Commuters are encouraged to register and track their distance cycled, and there are prizes to be won. This year, there is even a Bike to Vote event to encourage participation in tomorrow’s provincial elections (participants are entered for a draw to win a bike).

While I am not a cyclist myself, biking-related events make me think of the transportation culture in our cities. To state that North America is built around car culture is to state the obvious. Low-density communities are widespread in many cities and suburban expansion is entirely reliant on car ownership. Perhaps the most telling is the fact that the driver’s license is the default form of ID on this continent.

However, our love affair with the automobile has become increasingly problematic over time. First, it was the air pollution generated from motor vehicles, although that was somewhat abated with the introduction of catalytic converters and cleaner burning fuels. These days, the big issue is the greenhouse gas emissions generated from transportation and their contribution to climate change.

This is reflected in much of the discussion of transportation policy in this election, which has been framed around reducing emissions. On this blog, we have argued for increased government investment in a “greener” and more sustainable transportation network, including an expansion of public transit. This is an excellent plan for the short-run, considering that we are constrained by the urban planning decisions of the past, which favoured single-use neighbourhoods (commercial, residential or industrial), and by the governments’ decision to use physical infrastructure development to stimulate the economy and create jobs in the current recession.

In the long-run, however, a big part of our transportation policy should include rethinking the way we structure our cities, and creating more pedestrian-, bicycle- and transit-friendly communities (as argued in this recent post). Walking and biking are more environmentally friendly and considerably cheaper than taking the bus, and increasing our levels of physical activity offers many health benefits to boot.

The city of Vancouver has already taken some steps in becoming more bike-friendly, as outlined in this Vancouver Sun article. Their recent decision to convert one traffic lane of the Burrard bridge for bicycles (on a six-month trial basis) is another big step forward, but much more work is necessary. The provincial government we elect tomorrow should work closely with municipalities and provide them with sufficient funding to meet their transportation needs in a sustainable way.

It’s time to put the planet before politics

May 9, 2009

In April, scientists reported that another piece of the Antarctic ice shelf, this one six times the size of Vancouver, collapsed. According to David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey, “There is little doubt that these changes are the result of atmospheric warming.”

We know that global warming is caused largely by a build-up of heat-trapping fossil-fuel emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere, but the emissions continue to increase. This past week, our nation received dubious international recognition for having the worst record among G8 countries when it comes to reducing global warming emissions. The costs of climate change are being felt worldwide and are mounting in terms of damage from extreme weather events.

In British Columbia, we are in the midst of an election that pundits predicted would be all about the economy. But climate change and the environment have dominated the debate. As is clear from news headlines, the issue has become incredibly polarized. We implore all parties to refrain from the divisive and polarized politics of the past and help us restore the planet to its natural function.

Scientists alone can’t solve global warming. We need political will and we need action from all citizens. For the sake of the environment and the economy, it’s time to come together on this issue with clear solutions.

Climate change affects us all and is one of the most pressing problems of our time. That’s why we, as leaders from diverse sectors of B.C. society, are joining to call on all B.C. political parties to adopt a fast-track climate action plan for British Columbia.

We believe B.C. already has a model that shows promise and that can set an example for the rest of the country. The latter point is crucial, as measures to combat climate change must be national in scope to be truly effective. But we must keep moving forward.

We pledge to all political parties that we are willing to work together to make B.C. a leader in climate change solutions — including new green jobs and investment — in a way that’s fair, cooperative and positive. Specifically, we’re calling on the next B.C. government, regardless of party stripe, to implement a number of key solutions.

We know we can build healthy communities through investing in green infrastructure. This investment can create thousands of new jobs today and improve our quality of life by reducing traffic, establishing more green spaces and parks, and creating more pedestrian-, bicycle- and transit-friendly communities.

Today, transportation accounts for 36 per cent of B.C.’s greenhouse gas emissions. Most B.C. communities rely on cars for transportation. This leads to more congestion and air pollution and negatively affects our health.

We need a sustainable transportation network, including faster, more frequent and more efficient transit service across the province.

We’d like to see the B.C. government invest on average $650-million a year between now and 2020 in new provincial funding for public transit to improve service with more energy-efficient buses and rapid bus and rail lines across the province.

Give us a B.C. government that will provide B.C.’s cash-strapped municipalities with the money or tools to deal with their transit-funding shortfalls. For example, B.C.’s 21 Metro Vancouver municipalities need to address the existing funding gap of $150-million now and to ramp up quickly to $450-million per year by 2011.

B.C. should also provide funds to complement U.S. President Barack Obama’s $8-billion high-speed passenger rail plan, which includes a Pacific Northwest section joining B.C. to the U.S. The funds would be used to build the Canadian portion of the network.

B.C. should invest at least $100-million a year in bicycle infrastructure such as bike paths, bike lanes and traffic calming to improve cyclist safety, and increase funding for pedestrian infrastructure.

Give us a government that will offer zero-interest-rate loans to B.C. communities through the Municipal Finance Authority so that municipalities can invest in green infrastructure, such as community energy systems that will reduce emissions and improve the quality of life in our communities.

We want to see more new and affordable clean-energy solutions available to B.C. households, including energy-efficiency retrofits and innovative measures such as solar roofs and more fuel-efficient vehicles. At the same time, we want our businesses and industries to be competitive in the economy of the future by being more clean and energy-efficient. In B.C., industry accounts for about 35 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions.

We’d like to see an increase in funding for home and business energy-efficiency retrofits to $100-million yearly. This level of provincial funding, combined with an increased investment from the federal government, will green more than 400,000 homes in B.C. by 2020 — half of all B.C.’s homes.

Let us improve B.C.’s climate plan by using both the carbon tax and the cap-and-trade system to spur innovation and development of clean-energy solutions. The carbon tax and cap-and-trade system should cover all of B.C.’s greenhouse gas emissions and should be enhanced over time to enable B.C. to achieve or surpass its legislated emissions target.

We urge the government to increase the existing low-income carbon tax credit at the same rate as price increases on greenhouse gas emissions. We also believe a portion of carbon tax revenues should fund public transit, energy-efficiency and renewable-energy projects.

B.C. should adopt world-leading energy-efficiency standards on an on-going basis for cars, light and heavy trucks, appliances and buildings.

B.C. can provide a model for an effective nation-wide climate change plan that can show the rest of the world we’re serious about this problem. This would be good for both our economy and our environment — and for our children.

As citizens of this planet, it is our responsibility to put the planet before politics and urge the next B.C. government and federal politicians to do the same.

* Dawson Creek Mayor Mike Bernier
* Castlegar Mayor Lawrence Chernoff
* Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed
* North Vancouver Mayor Darrell Mussatto
* Prince George Mayor Dan Rogers
* Kelowna Mayor Sharon Shepherd
* Dr. Warren Bell, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment
* David Boyd, Co-chair of Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Team
* Ian Bruce, David Suzuki Foundation
* Naomi Devine, Common Energy co-founder, UVic.
* David Dranchuk, Coordinator for Societal Ministry, Diocese of New Westminster
* Guujaaw, President of the Haida Nation
* Mike Harcourt, former B.C. premier
* Marc Lee, Senior Economist, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
* David Suzuki
* Milton Wong, Chancellor Emeritus, Simon Fraser University and non-executive board chair, HSBC Investments (Canada) Ltd.

Towards an effective and fair carbon reduction strategy

By George Heyman and Dr. Colin Campbell, May 7, 2009

The latest science on global warming shows we must rapidly slash carbon emissions, or face catastrophic impacts on our civilization by the end of the century. We are already seeing the precursors with a 10-year drought in Australia, repeated flood events and the loss of interior forests here in B.C. Initiating the shift to a low-carbon economy and lifestyles is the responsibility of our generation. Eventually we will have to find a way to remove carbon from the atmosphere to ensure climatic stability ­ but first we must stop making the problem worse. A hard cap on carbon emissions, within an equitable and motivational framework, is required if British Columbia is to do our part to avoid global climate disaster.

How can we effectively eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions both fairly and effectively? ‘Cap and Dividend’ is a relatively simple and transparent model that uses existing mechanisms rather than inventing new administrative bodies. It is already in the works in the United States, where it is before Congress as the Cap and Dividend Act of 2009.

Clearly, we must have a cap on carbon emissions or we will not be able to limit global warming to the average two degrees Celsius that scientists say is necessary to avoid a climate calamity. A cap will cover 100 per cent of emissions, either directly or by flow-through pricing, unlike BC’s current carbon tax which covers about 70 per cent. Once the cap is applied, carbon permits are sold at the four points of entry of carbon into the economy: oil wells, gas wells, coal mines and the border ­ protecting our industries from unfair, uncapped competition. The collected revenue is then distributed fairly to all citizens.

The ‘Cap and Dividend’ model protects low-income earners from price increases and rewards the carbon-thrifty with additional income. It takes money from carbon polluters and users, and redistributes it equitably for climate-friendly initiatives such as home retrofits, consumption of locally-produced food and low-impact and public transportation choices. The structure also brings certainty to emission levels in a way we could never count on taxes to accomplish.

British Columbia has chosen taxing carbon as its method to stimulate behavioural changes necessary to slice greenhouse gas emissions. The tax is modest, such that recent price fluctuations in gasoline have exceeded its value by a factor of 20. Even at the projected maximum of $30/tonne we cannot expect the kind of results that are needed to meet legislated goals of a 33 per cent emissions reduction by 2020 and an 80 per cent cut by 2050 — much less the critical goal of reaching zero emissions by the end of the century. Taxes beyond the $30 mark would be politically thorny, increasingly inequitable and therefore unlikely.

While the very presence of the carbon tax raises consumer awareness and promotes some positive change in energy usage, a speedy transformation to a low-carbon economy must be multi-pronged and include infrastructure renewal, a comprehensive transportation policy and personal financial ability (or available assistance) to invest in green options. Relying solely on an imprecise and unpredictable market mechanism like the carbon tax to reach critical targets within distinct time-frames runs the risk of falling short–at a time when the planetary stakes have never been higher.

B.C.’s carbon tax has been examined closely by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) The CCPA concludes that the tax in its current form is inequitable and discriminates against people who want to make the right choices both for themselves and for the planet but are struggling financially. British Columbians could turn against the essential transition to low-carbon lifestyles simply because they cannot afford to shrink their carbon footprints. The CCPA found that by year three of the carbon tax, BC’s highest 20 per cent of income earners will incur a net benefit from corresponding income tax cuts whether or not they reduce their carbon consumption, while everyone else has a net loss.

The irony is that higher income earners often have a hefty carbon footprint through lifestyles that include frequent and far-flung travel, larger vehicles like gas-slurping SUVs, bigger houses, and multiple dwellings. They have little incentive to forego what they can easily afford. Without fundamental change, the present carbon tax regime makes it harder for the majority of British Columbians to contribute to inspired solutions such as retrofitting their homes, buying locally-produced organic food or leaving their car at home in favour of improved public transportation.

A logical application of at least some of the province¹s carbon tax revenue, whether through low interest loans or grants, would be to assist many British Columbians to make those climate-friendly changes. In this vein, Metro Vancouver mayors have asked the province to free up to $300 million in annual carbon tax revenue to help pay for regional transportation. The enormous technical challenge of reconfiguring B.C.’s infrastructure will not be cheap and will not all be financed privately or by industry. The money stream generated by the current ‘revenue-neutral’ carbon tax cannot be applied, as it logically should, to low-interest retrofit loans, grants or public transit investment (including fare reductions which would encourage greater use). Taxes from gasoline are already used to build roads and bridges. It is also both sensible and necessary to use public money to finance measures and infrastructure changes which encourage climatic stabilization.

‘Cap and Dividend’ clearly has a place in Canada, and what better province than B.C. to guide the way? B.C. has already led by recognizing the need to manage our carbon. Now we can become a global leader in promoting a ‘Cap and Dividend’ solution that acknowledges the need for urgent action based on the most recent science, ensures BC¹s carbon reduction targets will be met and equitably helps all B.C. residents erase our collective carbon footprint.

George Heyman is Executive Director of Sierra Club BC. Dr. Colin Campbell is Sierra Club BC’s Science Advisor.

Letter to the editor

Re. “Maintaining momentum in oil and gas,” May 7.

The oil and gas industry should stop its political mischief-making, and obfuscating the numbers about the industry’s contribution to BC’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The estimate that flaring, fugitive gas leaks and other waste gas sources account for approximately 13 per cent of BC’s GHGs is based on our research, derived from data from the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. We stand by this research.

The industry’s David Collyer claims emissions from these sources account for between one and two per cent of BC’s GHG emissions, and cites the BC Oil and Gas Commission as his source. He is wrong. The Commission itself has made clear that this figure refers only to flaring, not the far more damaging (from a GHG perspective) venting and pipeline leaks.

Applying a royalty on this wasted gas, as the NDP proposes, is good public policy. Collyer notes that the BC Liberals are proposing to extend the carbon tax to some of these fugitive emissions. This would be an improvement to the tax, although the Liberals propose taxing only a portion of all flared gas.

Not only would financial penalties like royalties capture revenues for the public, but more importantly, they would create an incentive for the industry to quickly make the capital investments needed to capture these flared and fugitive emissions, and ensure this gas goes to market, rather than being let loose into the atmosphere.

Signed,

Seth Klein and Ben Parfitt, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

In today’s Vancouver Sun, David Collyer of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers makes the case for expanding the industry based on some dubious facts. First there is this gem:

The industry has invested almost $30 billion dollars in British Columbia over the last eight years, resulting in 34,000 direct and indirect jobs.

According to BC Stats, the oil and gas industry contributed only 2,200 direct jobs to the provincial economy in 2008. In addition, there are perhaps the same amount of jobs in the various support services for oil and gas (it is hard to tell because there are 9,300 jobs listed but they are lumped in with support services for mining; the latter had 14,300 direct jobs, so if we take the same proportions for the support services as for direct jobs, we are looking at 1,000 to 2,000 jobs). Sum it up and you get maybe 4,000 jobs in oil and gas, or about 0.2% of total employment in the province.

Indirect jobs are trickier to assess as they include retail and service jobs unrelated to the industry but that would not be there if the income from oil and gas workers did not exist. But in general, input-output models put indirect jobs at one-for-one with direct jobs. So doubling the 4,000 above to 8,000 to account for indirect jobs, we have a generous estimate of the employment impact of the industry that is nowhere close to what is claimed by CAPP. At most, about half of one percent of BC employment has some roots in oil and gas exploration.

Here is another claim:

Emissions from [flaring and other fugitive sources associated with oil and gas extraction] accounted for between one and two per cent of B.C.’s GHG emissions, rather than the 13 per cent noted in the platform (according to statistics from the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission).

According to the most recent National Inventory Report on greenhouse gas emissions, fugitive emissions in BC accounted for 8.7% of BC’s emissions in 2007 (this lumps in coal mining, which historically contributes about one-tenth of the total). The estimate of 13% comes from my colleague Ben Parfitt, who drew on data from the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, and is an average over a decade (see this post). If there is a discrepancy in the data, it is whether the real percentage is 9% or 13%; neither number is close to the 1-2% claimed by CAPP and the Oil and Gas Commission.

That is not the end of the story, either. Fossil fuels burned to extract oil and gas are higher than that, another 11% of BC’s 2007 emissions. And none of this captures the emissions associated with end use by the consumer, whether in BC or in the US (emissions are counted where the fossil fuels are burned).

At the end of the day, the oil and gas industry contributes few jobs but causes a very large share of our total emissions. It is hard to imagine BC meeting its legislated target of a 33% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 without some major action that hits oil and gas.

BC’s Economic Challenges and the Liberal Platform

By Marc Lee

The BC Liberal platform features many feel-good photos and proud statements taking credit for the province’s recent boom. But read between the lines, and one realizes that after eight years in power, the Liberals have effectively run out of ideas.

The platform fails to offer any vision for the future. The Campbell Liberals made some progress on climate change actions over the past couple years, but the platform offers nothing new. Meanwhile, the Climate Action Secretariat, once residing in the Premier’s office, has been relegated to the Ministry of the Environment, which recently had its budget cut.

Premier Campbell deserves credit for bringing in the carbon tax, plus a variety of other climate measures that represent the low-hanging fruit of greenhouse gas emission reductions. While the carbon tax has its shortcomings, in my view it is a positive first step, and one that carries enormous symbolic value for environmentalists.

Still, the government enters the election without a plan in place to get BC to its legislated 33 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. And there are some glaring contradictions between the climate plan and other parts of the Liberals’ platform.

One of those contradictions is the oil and gas industry. Between 2001 and 2006, oil and gas industry emissions surged by far more than the carbon tax will ever reduce come 2020. Recently, Premier Campbell was in the Northeast, promising more new investment in oil and gas extraction, which may make it virtually impossible to reach our targets. And it is not like the oil and gas patch is a huge employer – about 2,200 direct jobs in 2008 – for all that pollution.

Highway expansion and the $3-4 billion Port Mann Super-Bridge also go against the climate-action grain. This expensive mega-project will only push more unsustainable, car-oriented development further up the Fraser Valley. This threatens valuable farmland, and means that congestion will be back within a few years. No jurisdiction in the world has ever built its way out of congestion problems.

The Liberal platform offers no real vision for the economy either, now that the great boom is over. Unemployment rose rapidly through early 2009, and with housing starts down 70%, the worst is yet to come, as construction workers finish their current projects and head straight to the back of the unemployment line.

The current economic collapse is not the fault of the Liberals, but then neither was the boom their creation. BC’s economic fortunes rest on what happens outside our borders, in particular in the export markets of the US and Asia, and in Ottawa, through the Bank of Canada and the federal government.

As cheerleader-in-chief, Premier Campbell may have pumped up the home team’s confidence, but let’s face it, the cheerleaders did not win this game. Like other parts of the world, low interest rates drove a bubble in real estate, leading to a massive expansion of construction activity. And high commodity prices driven by export markets made BC’s resource industries take off.

In February’s budget, the Liberals offered little in the way of stimulus, mostly re-announcing projects already underway or relying on federal stimulus dollars. There is much more that should be done to retrofit our infrastructure to be green – like public transit and energy efficiency upgrades – and to meet long-neglected social needs, like affordable housing, addiction and mental health facilities, or residential health care.

Bad economic times mean that the small deficit projected in the budget will inevitably turn out to be much larger. The Liberal platform promises that BC will “live within its means”, but faced with a $1-2 billion deficit, will a new Liberal government pile on more spending cuts and risk making the economic picture worse, or will it accommodate a larger deficit? What does that mean for the few new promises in the platform, like all-day kindergarten or U-passes for all Vancouver post-secondary students?

In politics, as in business, marketing is everything. The BC Liberals have branded themselves as the party of good economic times, but also the party with the long-term vision to tackle climate change. At a time when families in BC are concerned about the future on both fronts, the Liberals have put forward an unambitious “devil you know” strategy to win re-election.

Even during the good times, not all British Columbians were part of the boom. Poverty rates did not drop in any meaningful way, homelessness doubled, and inequality worsened with each passing year. BC needs a plan, with targets and timelines (just like climate change) to address poverty, especially as the recession deepens its grip.

With a lack of vision and too many contradictions, the platform does not provide any sense of how Campbell the Third will govern.

UPDATE: The online version has now been fixed.

Can the NDP deal with B.C.’s economic challenges?

By Marc Lee

In BC’s 2009 election, parties must respond to two fundamental challenges: first, a crashing provincial economy with rapidly rising unemployment; and second, the global climate crisis, which demands that BC dramatically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Rather than pit these objectives against each other, good policy choices should instead link them together: our efforts to boost employment through stimulus packages should be strategic investments that put BC on a sustainable path, not just a return to old patterns of development.

While the NDP platform takes some important steps on both fronts, it does not offer the bold new direction and vision many might expect with global capitalism on its knees. The NDP attacks head-on some of the most egregious and controversial policies of the Liberals, like run-of-the-river power projects and the flawed P3 infrastructure model. But ultimately, the platform is cautious and lands very much in the middle of the road.

This is problematic in that the NDP platform accepts both the culture of fiscal conservatism that has come to dominate Canadian politics (manifested in an over-emphasis on tax cuts and balancing the budget), and an overly rosy view of the state of the economy. It takes as given the Liberals’ February budget, which describes an alternative universe in which unemployment averages 6.2% for 2009, and BC weathers a small storm just in time for the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

But the provincial unemployment rate hit 7.4% in March, up from 4.3% a year before. Since last summer, 83,000 jobs have been lost. With new housing starts down 70% compared to last year, construction employment will plummet even further as current projects are completed, meaning an unemployment rate that could hit double digits by year-end.

This inevitably means the half-billion dollar budget deficit tabled by the Liberals is a work of fiction. Both parties need to come clean about how they would amend their plans given higher-than-budgeted deficits in the $1-2 billion range.

Moreover, falling consumer spending and business investment mean government must lean even harder against these adverse economic winds. In terms of stimulus, the 2009 budget package will do little to curb rapidly rising unemployment. BC is in an excellent fiscal position, and should err on the side of doing too much, not too little.

The NDP platform adds more stimulus, with a modestly larger deficit and higher capital spending. Together, these provide additional stimulus of 1 to 1.5% of GDP if we count the multiplier effects. How the stimulus is spent is also important, and the NDP’s plan is focused on green infrastructure and social investments.

The NDP platform also takes aim at the climate change file. Its program would cap emissions from large industrial sources starting in 2010, and will harmonize those efforts with a North American cap-and-trade system. They also propose major public transit investments, low-interest loans for building retrofits for energy efficiency, and a royalty on “flaring” in the oil and gas sector (the source of 13% of BC’s GHG emissions).

Unfortunately, most of the attention of climate policy has been on the BC carbon tax, which is neither as horrible as the NDP paints it, nor as potent as advocates make it out to be. Given BC’s fiscal challenges, the NDP would do better by fixing some of the problems with the tax (like ensuring it covers all GHG emissions), using the revenues to fund climate action (rather than borrowing), and shoring up a low-income credit that fails to protect low-income households as of 2010.

The incrementalist approach of the NDP platform also shows on social policy. Even during the recent boom, many British Columbians were left out. The Liberals have overseen the shredding of social assistance, the gutting of social housing construction, and the dubious distinction of BC having the lowest minimum wage in Canada.

The NDP platform would reverse some of this damage. It would raise the minimum wage to $10. It aspires to create 2,400 new social housing units this year, and 1,200 per year after that – a move aimed at a major reduction in homelessness. The NDP have said they would bring in a poverty reduction plan with targets and timelines, but do not say what those targets should be. And the new money for social assistance in their platform is inadequate given this goal and the economic situation.

Now that BC’s housing and commodity booms are over, and the recession is getting worse each week, structural weaknesses in BC’s economy have been revealed that were not cured with a tax cut. BC needs a bold new vision that combines social justice principles with a sustainable economy. By this yardstick, the NDP makes some progress, but by pandering to tax cuts falls short in its ambition.

“Let me tell you what’s happened in the energy industry in British Columbia in the last eight years: thirteen billion dollars of investment,” Campbell told a crowd of about 60 at Sudeten Hall.

… “We’re not just going to build a great new northern energy corridor, we’re going to build a great opportunity with the Asia-Pacific; we’re going to open new opportunities for British Columbians,” he said. He also outlined unconventional natural gas reserves in the Horn River Basin that he said could power 650 million homes for 15 years.

So this is the dark side of the green agenda: more oil and gas expansion. Given the street cred of Premier Campbell on the climate change file, one might expect the opposite: an end to new oil and gas extraction, perhaps even a wind-down of existing projects. After all, extracting oil and gas emits huge greenhouse gases, accounting for a big slice of our provincial total emissions. And that is just the extraction, as we only count burning of those fossil fuels if done in BC. Once they cross the US border, they count in the emission totals of some other jurisdiction. In other words, we only sell the crack.

For some perspective on that $13 billion of new investment that is “keeping BC strong”, BC’s greenhouse gas emissions from this sector in 2001 were equivalent to 3.7 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2 in their production and extraction plus another 5.7 Mt from “fugitive sources”: pipeline leaks, venting and flaring (in both of these I have added in coal, which accounts for a smaller portion but is hard to cleave off in the data). This was 15.5% of BC’s total emissions that year, and the number goes up to 20.4% if also count fossil fuel burning to generate electricity.

Fast forward to 2006, the last year for which we have data, and emissions from production and extraction more than doubled to 8.1 Mt. Another 6.5 Mt came from fugitive sources. So fossil fuel production writ large amounted to 23.4% of BC’s emissions, up from 15.5%. One bit of good news is less use of fossil fuels in generating electricity, dropping to 1.5 Mt, although our total rises to 25.8% if we count those, too. Because these data are already three years out of date, it is reasonable to assume that they have continued to grow in 2007 and 2008, alongside major increases in energy prices.

In the big picture, BC emissions in 2006 were a total of 1.5 Mt higher than in 2001, an increase of 2.5%. That means other sectors of the economy stayed flat or even decreased their emissions slightly, while fossil fuel emissions surged. So yes, the carbon tax is nice and deserves applause, alongside other good initiatives. But the notion that the BC government is green is a large stretch, and new emissions from planned expansion will dwarf any beneficial impacts of the carbon tax. For example, Mark Jaccard (the only economist in Canada who models these things) estimates that the carbon tax will reduce BC’s emissions by 3 Mt in 2020 relative to “business as usual” whereas additional emissions from oil and gas were more than that over five-year period between 2001 and 2006.

And it is not like the oil and gas patch is a huge employer. Oil and gas extraction employed 3,600 workers in 2006, although that had dropped to 2,200 in 2008. Both are up from 1,800 in 2001. There may be a 1-2,000 other jobs on top of these in “support activities” for oil and gas, although it is hard to tell from the stats (both mining, which directly employed 14,300 in 2008, and oil and gas are included, and these support activities amounted to 9,300 jobs in 2008, so most of that is probably mining-related). But BC had 2.3 million jobs in 2008, so at best, the sector employs 0.1-0.2% of our workforce.

To accept an expansion of oil and gas, given its share of total emissions, would appear to be fundamentally undermine BC’s ability to meet its GHG reduction targets. Only if all other sectors of the economy delivered larger reductions as an “offset” could BC’s climate plan be realized.

In hindsight, the carbon tax was perhaps the worst-timed policy announcement ever, with prices at the pump jumping by about 40 cents per litre between the announcement in the February 2008 budget and July 1, when it was implemented. This shows both how quickly a carbon tax can be introduced (compared to years of negotiations for a cap-and-trade system) and how the intent of the tax can be subverted by market forces. The relatively puny 2.3 cent a litre carbon tax absorbed much of the public anger about rising fuel prices that were about 20 times larger in magnitude.

Thus, an important lesson is that we need more than a carbon tax, but to regulate fuel prices (so that they act like stable market prices plus a rising carbon tax). This would enable households to avoid opportunistic price increases at the pump every time a storm is headed for North American shores, and the broader problem in 2008 of a speculative bubble in energy prices. It would provide the clear market signal of rising prices that proponents of a carbon tax want. The tax would essentially become hidden and represent the difference between the wholesale and retail prices (including other federal and provincial fuel taxes, too). This mechanism could also provide a floor price for emissions under an emergent North American cap-and-trade system (price volatility is one of the downsides of cap-and-trade).

We also need more than a carbon tax in terms of complementary public investments and standards/regulations around energy efficiency, alternative power and urban and inter-city transit. The carbon tax is too small on its own to affect behaviour, and even at 7.2 cents per litre in mid-2012 (if it survives that long) it will not make a dent in BC’s greenhouse gas emissions. The tax needs to be much higher, like twenty times higher, if we are to induce shifts in people’s transportation habits (this process was underway last year but lower fuel prices have undermined those gains). However, we too often think of a driving metaphor when contemplating the efficacy of a carbon tax; large, industrial emitters will feel the pinch at lower levels of the tax.

In any event, one major problem with the NDP’s proposal to scrap the tax is that the tax could be used to finance those good things above that need a public boost. Instead, the NDP would have to borrow the money for those investments, and with the BC budget in a sea of red ink, the bias will be towards doing too little. Another problem is that any strategy to reduce greenhouse gases that is successful will lead to higher consumer prices. Even with the carbon tax, two-thirds of the tax paid by households will be indirectly embodied in the price of goods and services people buy in the marketplace. Cap-and-trade or regulatory approaches that increase costs for compliance will lead to higher prices for GHG-intensive goods and services, and overall that is a good thing. But we need to be honest about how we are going to address distributional aspects of those higher prices.

With carbon pricing alone, we just end up pricing out the lowest-income people. But addressing distributional issues is where the revenue from the carbon tax also comes in handy. The current “recycling regime” of the carbon tax dedicates about one-third of revenues to a low-income credit in year one (2008/09), which more than offsets the average impact of the tax for the bottom two quintiles. But this credit is not scheduled to grow in line with the carbon tax, and that progressive result at the bottom disappears this July, and becomes regressive as of July 2010 (on average, households will pay more in carbon taxes than they get back from the low-income credit). Toby Sanger and I crunched the numbers in a paper released last Fall.

Carbon pricing alone is also not enough because the households with the largest carbon footprints are those with the largest incomes (Hugh Mackenzie, Hans Messinger and Rick Smith detailed Canada’s ecological footprint by decile in a study last year for the CCPA). The richest households can buy their way out of change, so standards and regulations are needed to ensure that emissions from the largest-emitting households are reduced.

Fixing the tax also means that it should be applied to all GHG emissions, not just to burning fossil fuels. This means applying it to flaring and pipeline leakages in the oil and gas sector (the NDP propose something like this), process emissions in the cement and aluminum industries, and to landfills (although the current regulatory approach to this latter area may in fact make more sense than applying the carbon tax). And we should even consider applying it to exports of coal and natural gas, as these lead to massive GHG emissions outside BC’s borders that are not counted in our emission totals (only emissions associated with the extraction of the resource, which themselves are huge, are counted).

Most environmentalists are aware of these shortcomings but see the carbon tax as an important first step. But too much of the attention of climate policy has been on the carbon tax, rather than the host of other measures that need to accompany it. Rightly or wrongly, the carbon tax has become a litmus test for seriousness on climate change to the great detriment of the NDP. While I disagree with the NDP’s stance on the carbon tax, their budget platform essentially endorses the rest of the BC government’s climate action plan and does make some improvements: the royalty on flaring mentioned above; more public transit investment; and short-term caps on emissions from the largest industrial emitters. The NDP proposal for low-interest loans for housing efficiency retrofits is a weak link; we need to get beyond incentives and start mandating audits and retrofits, particularly for older building stock, and finance that through BC Hydro bills so households do not have to lay out any cash upfront but still see lower Hydro bills (a classic win-win).

So go the finer points of climate policy. There are many shades of grey, good things and bad things to be said about both the NDP and the Liberals. But by tossing the carbon tax, the NDP was won the eternal wrath of most of the enviro movement. So it is a shame to see the Pembina Insitute, David Suzuki Foundation and Forest Ethics hold a press conference to that effect, without giving credit for the good parts of the NDP platform. And given the shortcomings of the carbon tax, to fully endorse the Liberals seems a bit much, especially when there are some glaring contradictions in the Liberals’ approach, such as pressing forward with an astonishingly expensive ($3-5 billion) Port Mann Super-Bridge that will drive unsustainable suburban development further up the Fraser Valley, and that will clog up the new bridge within a few years of its opening (the NDP is silent on this one). The Liberals also want to increase oil and gas development in the Northeast – which creates few jobs but produces enormous greenhouse gas emissions – and have announced road expansion into the oil and gas patch, effectively a ramping up of subsidies to the industry (the flaring royalty notwithstanding, the NDP seems to think expansion is fine, too).

A painful bottom line is that, for all of the work on climate action over the past couple of years, and after much ado about legislated targets for greenhouse gas emissions, BC enters the election without a plan to get to its 2020 target of a 33% reduction (hello, balanced budget legislation?). The current climate action plan is estimated to get 60-80% of the way there. The remainder was considered by a Climate Action Team that reported last summer, but whose recommendations have not been implemented. And there is no plan to build these into a new climate action plan. And the kicker is that the safety valve in the CAT report that allows us to meet our 2020 targets: the carbon tax.