Alberta also talking emissions-intensity

From today's National Post. The good news - Alberta says it will set mandatory greenhouse gas emissions targets. The bad news - they will be emissions intensity targets, not absolute targets. As I mentioned earlier today, emissions intensity targets don't guarantee absolute limits to our emissions, just less emissions per unit of GDP/barrel of oil/what have you. The second problem here is the issue of redundant targets. There is no need for Alberta to have its own targets, unless they want to be more or less stringent than the feds. Given the Alberta government track record, I'm guessing this move is meant to ensure lower targets for Alberta industry. That, or its just a chance to claim credit for something the feds are putting in place anyway.

Link to NP story

Baird's industry targets

Looks like the Conservatives are poised to resurrect the large final emitters emissions trading scheme. Yesterday, Environment Minister John Baird told reporters that he is preparing to impose emissions intensity targets on industry, apparently "among the most aggressive in the world." The LFE scheme was also based on emissions intensity targets, which, as CANet noted, have a big weakness - they don't provide an absolute limit on industry emissions. If industry grows faster than anticipated, then emissions can grow with the industry, wiping out any absolute reductions.

The one possibly positive thing in this announcement- talk of aggressive targets. Hopefully the Conservatives will want to announce that they've gone beyond the targets previously set under the Liberals...given their political base, though, I suspect that this won't happen. More likely is that they will delay mentioning sectoral targets and hope that the public can't be bothered to figure out the details.

Link to Globe article.

Liberal Party's Kyoto motion

The Globe and Mail covers the Liberal's motion yesterday calling on the government to "reconfirm Canada's commitment to honour the principles and targets of the Kyoto Protocol in their entirety". Followed of course by mutual name calling over Liberal inaction and Conservative insincerity. I just hope the public pressure keeps up long enough for the parties to throw up a few real policy initiatives in their quest to one-up each other. Witness the Liberal's call for the creation of a "cap and trade" emissions trading system in the same motion. Dion's previous discussion of emissions trading stuck to the old emissions-intensity system, which had no hard cap. Hopefully the cap and trade reference means that we might start discussing a more serious system.

Link to Globe article
Link to Liberal press release:
Link to previous post on Dion's emissions trading plan

NDP-Conservative alliance on Kyoto

Ahh, the good old National Post. Combining the bias of Fox News with the smarmy upper-class smugness of the likes of Conrad Black. Wednesday's coverage of Clean Air Act negotiations by John Ivison discusses a potential liaison between the NDP and the Conservatives to push an improved version of the Act through by March. The article itself covers signs of a rapprochement between the two parties, including the possibility that the NDP might even go along with the Conservative's abandonment of Kyoto targets. Ivison also asserts that the Liberals look to be stalling progress on the bill in hopes that it won't make it to an eventual election.

The bias I'm mentioning here - the NDP is "clinging to the comfort blanket of Kyoto, arguing with blind optimism that we can close the 'Kyoto gap' in the next five years." Meanwhile, "a five minute talk with anyone who really knows what it would take to meet Canada's Kyoto commitment...gives some sense of how deep in the hole we are. Three hundred of the largest polluters in Canada would have to reduce emissions by more than half, something that is not technically feasible without beggaring the economy."

I guess Mr. Ivison doesn't talk much with the staff of the Pembina Institute, the David Suzuki Foundation and the other climate change experts who have been modelling and planning for Kyoto from the beginning. Their most recent contribution to the debate, under the CANet umbrella, is a backgrounder on the Clean Air Act aimed at MPs. It asks for a commitment to Kyoto targets and to a long term target of 80% below 1990 levels to be set for 2050.

Link to CANet backgrounder
Personally, I wouldn't care about meeting Kyoto targets if I actually thought that we were setting ourselves the long term targets proposed by CANet, and acting immediately on them. I agree with Ivison that we are in a deep hole and that the Kyoto targets will be difficult to meet. The problem is, backing down on Kyoto in favour of long term targets only is an easy political cop-out and will lead to more 'study' and excuses about the need to wait until magical, painless technologies appear. The only way I could accept any kind of NDP-backed dropping of the Kyoto targets would be if they were replaced by a binding set of targets for reductions in 2010, 2012, and 2015 that led to below-Kyoto targets by 2015, targets low enough to compensate for any lost reductions now. Somehow, it doesn't seem likely the Conservatives will do this.