Redford challenges Nobel winner in D.C.
Professor and premier at odds over emissions
While Premier Alison Redford was urging U.S politicians on Capitol Hill to endorse the Keystone XL pipeline Wednesday, a Nobel Prize-winning climate change economist was down the hall calling on a House of Representatives energy committee to block it.
Redford said people are entitled to their opinions about the oilsands and the proposed 1,800-kilometre pipeline that would carry bitumen to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, but she had a dim view of Mark Jaccard’s decision to testify before the House committee.
“It’s important that everybody has the opportunity to express their opinion,” the premier said in an interview Wednesday.
“But I think it’s pretty counterproductive for Canadians to be coming down here debating these sorts of issues in a way that really hurts the Canadian economy — or could,” Redford said.
Jaccard, a professor at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University, told the committee that Canada is not going to be able to meet the 2020 greenhouse gas emission reduction target it signed in Copenhagen, along with the U.S., largely because of oilsands development.
He said the Keystone XL pipeline will enable the oilsands to triple production and contribute to decades of massive carbon emissions.
“When you put that infrastructure in place, you’re committing yourself to pollution for a long time to come,” he told the committee.
The project, proposed by Calgary-based TransCanada, has become a lightning rod for criticism of the oilsands and Alberta’s environmental record. The U.S. administration is expected to make a decision on the pipeline later this year.
Following the hearing, Jaccard said he resented Redford’s insinuation he was doing something wrong.
“I don’t think it’s very helpful that she and the prime minister are trying to triple oilsands expansion and carbon pollution on the planet,” he said in an interview. “I’m here testifying in favour of Alberta and Canadian interests and I object to her being down here and determining that somehow she represents Alberta and Canadian interests ... I know she is an elected official, but there are a lot of different points of view out there in Canada.”
During the hearing, Jaccard described Alberta’s $15-a-tonne levy on carbon emissions intensity as “inconsequential” and not really any improvement over other countries that supply the U.S. with heavy crude, such as Venezuela, that have no emission reduction program at all.
“Their carbon levy means that most carbon is free,” he said. “Almost all tonnes of pollution in Alberta are untaxed and uncharged.”
He said later that Alberta’s convoluted levy on “emissions intensity” rather than all emissions works out to about a $2 per tonne tax on carbon compared with $30 a tonne on carbon emissions in British Columbia — a program he helped design.
But Redford defended Alberta’s carbon levy program, which is currently being reviewed, saying its advantage over B.C.’s program is the money collected goes into a technology fund to finance projects to reduce greenhouse gases rather than channelling the funds into general revenues like B.C.
“The point is not to have a price on carbon for the sake of having a price on carbon,” she said. “The point is to have a price on carbon to actually reduce emissions,” she said. “If you have a price on carbon and you take the money and throw it into general revenues, you’re doing nothing to reduce emissions.”
Redford and Jaccard made their cases in front of different audiences in the massive Rayburn House, adjacent to the Capitol.
The premier met with nine senators and members of Congress Wednesday, including congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy (D — NY), Senator Lisa Murkowski (R — AK), a member of the Senate energy and natural resources committee, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D — NH), who serves on the influential appropriations committee and armed services committee and John Hoeven (R — ND), also a member of the Senate energy and natural resources committee.
Hoeven, a strong proponent of the pipeline, said Wednesday in an interview that he doesn’t believe a higher carbon levy in Alberta will make any difference in whether it’s approved by the Obama administration. For Hoeven, it’s simple. “It’s about jobs, it’s about energy that our country needs, it’s about growing our economy and it’s about national security, working with our closest friend and ally in Canada, rather than being dependent on oil from the Middle East,” he said.
Hoeven said he hoped President Barack Obama approves the pipeline, but if not, the project might survive regardless.
“I think at this point we’ve built enough support in Congress so that if the president doesn’t approve it, I think we would be able to approve it congressionally,” he said.
Redford said she and the other members of her delegation — International and Intergovernmental Relations Minister Cal Dallas and Environment Minister Diana McQueen — chose their congressional contacts strategically.
“It’s not people inclined to be obvious supporters,” she said. “We didn’t come here to speak to the converted. We came here to talk to people with tough questions about what is going on.”
The delegation received unexpected support from federal Environment Minister Peter Kent, who said it was just a coincidence he was in Washington during Redford’s visit to attend an international climate change conference.
“The challenge we have in the United States is better informing the American public of some of the facts and the realities and the science of some of the issues that are discussed — whether around Keystone, whether around the oilsands as a legitimate resource,” Kent said.
He noted Keystone represents thousands of jobs in both Canada and the United States.
“Certainly we are dealing with responses to a very wellfunded anti-Keystone lobby and we do have a challenge to communicate the facts and the science and the business realities of what Keystone actually represents in terms of jobs (and) responsible resource development,” Kent said.