GOLDSTEIN: Trudeau's carbon plan will not work and Scheer will not have it

Last week, we saw a clear example of how the political debate in Canada on human-caused climate change has become a fantasy.

On the one hand, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's details on his carbon tax are not additive.

On the other hand, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, while he has a plan, has so far refused to tell Canadians what he is – other than attacking Trudeau.

Trudeau, by imposing a federal carbon tax in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick, expects its national carbon pricing plan to reduce Canada's industrial greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 60 megatonnes (a megatonne, or a million tons) from here 2022..

Creepy. In addition to the fact that Trudeau's predictions were false (see "modest deficits"), the latest report of the UN Panel of Intergovernmental Experts on Climate Change, released Oct. 8, indicates that Canada and the other 197 signatories of the 2015 Paris Agreement must now reduce their emissions by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, in order to avoid a catastrophic climate change.

To understand how inaccessible it is in 2016, the last year for which figures are available, Canada reduced its 2015 emissions by 1.4%, from 714 Mt to 704 Mt, both of which are higher. 694 Mt of emissions issued by Canada in 2010.

With the new IPCC target, we would reduce our emissions to 382 Mt a year, a 322 Mt decrease in 12 years.

To achieve this, Canada must close the equivalent of its oil and gas sector (189.5 Mt per year), as well as 76.6% of its transportation sector (132.5 Mt per year). 39, here 2030.

Even adding all the other strategies that Trudeau has to reduce emissions outside of carbon pricing, this is not possible.

Trudeau is not on track to meet the much less stringent (formerly Stephen Harper's) goals he signed by signing the Paris agreement in 2015 after abandoning his 2020 target.

The goal of the 2030 agreement is to reduce our annual emissions by 704 Mt to 512 Mt, a reduction of 192 Mt, again canceling the equivalent of our oil and gas sector.

Even if Canada achieves one of those unattainable goals, it would not be practical because we are responsible for only 1.6% of global emissions and continue to grow by 1.4% last year.

The demanding ones Immediate and dramatic government action constantly cites the UN IPCC reports on the urgency of the problem, not to mention that if they are accurate, catastrophic climate change is inevitable.

They believe that inadequate targets are better than no targets, in the hope that technology and the general public will eventually catch up with the enormity of the problem.

For large companies, it is not surprising that they boarded Trudeau's on-going train, because carbon pricing really depends on those who control and benefit from federal energy policy.

Trudeau stated that during the 2015 election campaign, his carbon price would give Canada the "social license" to build pipelines and export our oil globally, giving a a boost of billions of dollars to our economy because our landlocked petroleum resources are currently sold at a very low price. huge reduction.

It did not happen, so he changed his tone.

Now he sells it to Canadians living in the four provinces who refuse to apply his $ 20 per tonne of carbon base price in 2019 to $ 50 per tonne in 2022, saying that 70% between them would benefit financially from reductions.

Even if this is true, it means, according to Trudeau, that Canadians in the provinces who have not complied with his national carbon price will be financially better off than the provinces that did, which makes no sense. .

Trudeau should have created a carbon tax, 100% neutral, revenue neutral, that would make all the money collected directly from Canadians.

What he has done allows him to pose, for a moment, as an international scout, as he loves to do, boasting of his good intentions, without having a concrete impact on global emissions.

That said, Trudeau's plan is open to criticism because he has one.

Scheer and Conservative Premiers like Ontario, Doug Ford – who joined a Constitutional Court challenge against Trudeau's carbon tax with Saskatchewan – did not tell us what they would do, even though they argued that man-made climate change was real and needed to be addressed.

Perhaps their ultimate strategy is to attack Trudeau's carbon tax as a money grab, serving those who believe that man-made climate change is a problem. hoax, or that nothing can be done without changing the economy, or this new technology will eventually solve the problem, without carbon pricing.

If that is what they believe, they should say so, and Canadians can decide who they believe in next year's federal election.

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