EDITORIAL: The real choice on carbon taxes
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Let’s cut to the chase on the looming debate over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax, heading into next year’s federal election.
That tax, and whatever else Trudeau’s planning on the climate change file, is not going to come close to lowering our greenhouse gas emissions to the levels he agreed to when he signed the United Nations’ Paris climate accord in 2015.
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On CTV’s Question Period Sunday with Evan Solomon, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna dodged the question of whether Canada would meet its 2030 target, having previously expressed confidence it would.
Prior to that, the Trudeau government quietly abandoned its 2020 target.
The Paris accord’s target for 2030 would mean cutting our annual industrial greenhouse gas emissions by 192 megatonnes annually in 12 years, wiping out the equivalent of our entire oil and gas sector.
Earlier this month, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called for much deeper cuts to save the planet from catastrophic global warming,
Canada’s new target would mean lowering our emissions by 322 megatonnes annually, the equivalent of shutting down our entire oil and gas sector and three-quarters of our transportation sector in 12 years.
Practically speaking, that’s impossible.
Trudeau recently let the cat out of the bag when he told a Montreal talk show: “Even if Canada stopped everything tomorrow, and the other countries didn’t have any solutions, it wouldn’t make a big difference.”
Got that? Whatever Canada does won’t make a big difference because we account for only 1.6% of global emissions.
And the rest of the world isn’t cutting global emissions.
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While Canada reduced its emissions by 1.4% in 2016 — the last year for which figures are available — global emissions went up 1.4% in 2017.
So Trudeau’s asking Canadians to lower our emissions as an example to the world, not that it will do any practical good.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, who hasn’t yet released his climate change plan, says it won’t include a carbon tax.
Rest assured it won’t meet our Paris commitments either.
So the real choice will be a Liberal plan with a carbon tax, or a Conservative plan without a carbon tax, neither of which will significantly reduce emissions.
Given that choice, we suspect many Canadians will opt for the latter.
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