How Serious Are We?

The Liberals have finally come up with a broad climate change policy. Adam Radwanski writes:

For five years since their Paris Agreement commitment to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 30 per cent by 2030, it was never clear how that was supposed to happen – not with the government mostly dabbling in green policies that didn’t add up to nearly enough.

Now, Canadians have a credible answer, courtesy of the climate-policy plan for the next decade that Ottawa released on Friday, and it’s contentious enough that it could easily be a pivotal question in an election next year. Having in their first term introduced a national carbon price too low to have much more than a symbolic impact, the Liberals now intend to raise it sharply enough to really change the ways we behave.

The carbon price is to rise by $15 per tonne each year after 2022 – up from the current $10/tonne annual increases, which most carbon-price advocates were just hoping would be maintained – until it reaches $170/tonne in 2030.That’s not so far off from the $210 a tonne that, according to a report last year by the pro-carbon-pricing Ecofiscal Commission, would be sufficient to hit 2030 emissions-reduction targets absent much other new policy.

The inescapable takeaway from what was announced on Friday is that the Liberals have come down on the side of a market-based solution strong in economic theory, but mostly untested in political practice. And they have done so somewhat at the expense of other, more-interventionist climate-related measures.

The political theory is going to be where the rubber hits the road. The plan is

a far cry from the calls by environmental groups for the government to commit in excess of $50-billion – or in some cases more than $100-billion – toward a green economic recovery. And the plan’s relatively restrained tone on future spending, coupled with the market mechanism that is its centrepiece, shouldn’t leave those groups holding their breath.

Ottawa also has to attempt some manner of fresh consultations with the provinces, as promised before the past election prior to any future carbon-price increases. The premiers of the provinces challenging the existing policy aren’t exactly going to be receptive. They’re likely to chafe at plans to reopen provincial equivalency agreements on industrial carbon pricing (which is different from the fuel price paid by consumers) that they only recently signed. They may have some company from other premiers who feel blindsided by Friday’s news.

The conventional wisdom is that there will be an election in the spring:

There is still very big political risk in campaigning on a policy that would ultimately add roughly 40 cents a litre at the gas pumps; that requires trust in government that revenues are actually being returned; that demands faith in economic theory at a time populism might more easily triumph.

So it appears that the die has been cast. The forces of denial will be primed and ready. We shall soon know how serious we are about our planet.

Image: cheezburger.com