From Kyoto to Copenhagen

I was never a fan of the Kyoto protocol because it did not reward good behavior in the past. Those that were causing the least CO2 emissions were expected to reduce by as large a percentage as those with huge emissions. Kyoto has been at best a tool to shame governments into taking looking like they are interested taking some action on climate change.

Now we have Copenhagen and see no hope that this will make any real difference to action on climate change issues.

I may not agree with all Andrew Weaver has to say, but there is some likely limit to which we should not push green house gas emissions. We have a huge problem with the scale of emissions for electrical production in the US and China alone. Shifting cars to emission free form will ultimately be market driven and need not government intervention other than to place a carbon tax on fuels. It is electrical production where the problem.

We need to deal with the CO2 emissions from coal fired power plants. There are only two options, get rid of coal fired power or capture the CO2 released. Neither will be easy or cheap.

Based on how things are going, as an example look at the backlash against green power in BC, we are unlikely to be able to replace the coal fired power in the next 20 years. Conservation is only likely to slow demand and not to reduce the demand. Even if we could achieve a 20% reduction by households over five years, that would only keep demand steady.

In the short term, the next 20 years, the major solution to green house gasses will be through carbon capture and storage. We will see more and more people, governments and businesses pay to offset their carbon footprint. We are already seeing this happen, as an example Habour Air in Victoria is carbon neutral. This will create a real market for carbon capture and storage.

But this ignores the big picture, the 2 000 000 GWh coal fired power in the US problem.

It also ignores the other big green house gas source, eating meat.

We are going down a path of a lot more green house gas emissions for the better part of another generation. A generation of carbon capture and storage as the only major solution.

A good blog post on IPPs. The campaign against IPPs has become the most bizarre campaign of twisting reality I have seen. The people opposing IPPs are doing so with no data that I can see that backs up any of their points.

When environmental protection and business can meet up, we have the best of all worlds.

Pembina Institute Review of Platforms

The Pembina Institute has reviewed the platforms of the three major parties as it relates to climate change and energy policy. The information they pull out of each platform is good, I am just not convinced at some of their rankings.

The Greens come out the winners - no surprise there at all. The Liberals and NDP come out more or less tied. The NDP manages to benefit from being vague on a number of issues and not being held to account for how they acted when they were government.

It can not be easy for organizations that have strong personal ties to the NDP to come out and say the emperor is not wearing any clothes. The right wing equivalent is issues around the horrible mistake of deficit spending and stimulus packages - most of the commentators on the right are still having trouble pointing out that Stephen Harper has lost his way and is not governing well for the economy.

Scott Simpson Column on IPPs and NAFTA

Scott Simpson of the Vancouver Sun has his columns online and they are worth reading. Today he wrote about the idea that NAFTA somehow forces the government here to continue sales of power to the US once they start. Not that he is saying that, some of the NDP candidates are saying that.

There are some major fallacies with the argument that NAFTA would force a commodity to be sold in perpetuity.

1) No one can force a private company to sell the power they produce to the Americans.
2) BC has a sovereign right to regulate water issues under constitution. The federal Crown does not have the power to force the provincial Crown to bend to their will. No treaty Canada signs can bind a province in an area of provincial jurisdiction.
3) No one has ever come up with a true scare story of what NAFTA does.

I suspect that the licenses will be renewed in the future given the fact that it makes rational sense because the infrastructure is in place.

Of course our power is going to the US, we can produce loads of green power and are connected into a north - south grid.

IPPs and Campbell River

The Campbell River Mirror is running a poll about a moratorium on run of the river power projects. As of this moment the vote is very close with about 407 in favour of a moratorium and 395 against. I am surprised that it is this close given the huge amount of energy that the anti-green power lobby is putting into to stopping all the projects in BC.

At the same time, the opposition to green power projects on the coast of BC is pushing more and more aboriginal leaders to be either be opposed to the NDP or actively in favour of the Liberals. Lately Eppa(Gerrard Peters) of the In-SHUCK-ch and Judith Sayers of the Hupacasath First Nation both condemned the NDP stance on IPPs. Gerrard was strong supporter of the NDP in the past. Judith Sayers was the public face of the campaign against the Liberal referendum on the Treaty process.

First Nations in rural BC are looking for ways to diversify their economic options and green power is clearly one of the ways they see getting long term jobs, revenues for their governments and reduce dependency on forestry or fishing.

Atlin Run of the River project

We still have some small towns that rely on diesel generators, Atlin was on one such town. Run of the river in BC has been done well and requires a lot of reviews before you can go ahead.

The NDP and the Carbon Tax

I am finding the debate on this issue tedious. The NDP clearly has made a huge error on this issue as every recommendation for dealing with climate change is to price carbon, a carbon tax is the easiest way to do it. A carbon tax that uses tax shifting, meaning no net increases in tax take by the goverment, is truly using taxation as a public policy tool. The BC Liberals have chosen to be on the forefront on public policy on this issue. The simply are more forward thinking and progressive than anyone else out there.

Instead of supporting something the government is doing that is a very smart idea, the NDP is opposing this. There is no shortage of public policy differences the NDP could highlight.

The carbon tax is the most progressive of taxes possible because it is your choice to pay it or not. The poorest in society have almost most direct impact from it because their purchases of fuels is limited. People choosing to have several cars, a truck, a boat, a quad etc will end up paying the most.

The carbon tax will also increase the demand for transit, getting rid of it will reduce the demand.

The alternative to a carbon tax is a cap and trade system. Cap and trade will require huge amounts of regulation and monitoring, it will be very open to corrupt behaviour. Cap and trade will always be open to government meddling with the cap - if the cap is high enough, there is no need for the trade. One only needs to look at how public power has worked in BC, even though it would make good sense for conservation reasons to raise electrical rates, no government has the guts to do it. Cap and trade honestly scares me given the dangers I noted above.

A tax we can choose to pay or not is the best way to price carbon. It is my choice how much gas I want to buy and therefore how much tax I pay. The tax will rise over time. The $30 a tonne price we will see in a few years will still likely not be high enough, but it will be higher than elsewhere and people will make decisions to avoid paying the tax. We will reduce our fuel use compared to elsewhere.

Clearly the NDP chose to oppose the carbon tax because they thought they could gain political points. There was no debate of this as a policy at any NDP convention, it was just born over a coffee in the legislature by the brains trust that gave the province one of the weakest oppositions ever. This is not a thought out or rational policy decision, but a spur of the moment one they chose in the hopes of bad polling numbers for the Liberals. The wierd thing is that there environmentalists out there supporting the NDP in this decision, clearly these are people putting political partisan views ahead of a better environment.

I find a lot of the crapping on the NDP from the right on the issue of the carbon tax as annoying as the NDP opposition to the carbon tax. Many of the people suddenly voicing support in a round about way for the carbon tax are people that were until recently skpetics on climate change. Admittedly the NDP move to be side with the climate skeptics means many borderline climate change skepitcs on the right are now on board with carbon pricing.

The people that have remained rational and reasonable in this debate are:

• Serious environmentalists like Tseporah Berman
• Climate change scientists like Andrew Weaver
• Business people like Jim Hoggan
• Gordon Campbell and his government
• Jane Sterk and her party