Charting a green future

Canada is charting a greener future. Details to follow.

That’s the upbeat if hazy message that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the premiers will carry to the United Nations climate conference this coming week. After a decade on the bench we’re back in the game again.

“In Paris, a united Canada will demonstrate we are serious about climate change,” Trudeau said this week.

As well we should be. A nation blessed with a powerful economy and vast resources of clean energy from water, solar and wind should be a leader — not a laggard — in the push to tamp down global warming by weaning ourselves from fossil fuels and investing in green technology and conservation.

Canada has set targets under both Liberal and Conservative governments, of course. But they haven’t meant much. “What we need is not ambitious political targets,” Trudeau acknowledges. “What we need is an ambitious plan to reduce our emissions.”

The UN Conference on Climate Change is the place to begin fleshing out that plan.

Trudeau will arrive in Paris armed with a powerful mandate from the Canadian electorate, and with wide provincial backing. British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario and Alberta — comprising more than 80 per cent of the economy and carbon output — have all put a price on carbon, or soon will. And Alberta has boldly capped emissions from the oilsands, promises to phase out coal and is investing in renewables and conservation.

The conference, running Nov. 30 to Dec. 11, will try to hammer out a legally binding, universal agreement, or at least a firmer collective commitment than in the past.

More than 140 nations, not just a few, now recognize the danger of global warming and have pledged to act. That includes the biggest offenders: China, the United States and India. While emissions will still grow until 2030, these pledges will slow the rate of growth.

The aim is to keep the Earth from warming more than two degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times. That’s the point at which scientists warn the world will be threatened by melting ice sheets, rising seas, extreme weather, floods, famine and drought. But even if countries deliver on all their current pledges, warming will be held only to 2.7 degrees Celsius, the UN projects.

“Much greater emissions reductions effort . . . will be required in the period after 2025 and 2030” to avert calamity, the UN warns.

Given these realities, the “pan-Canadian framework” Trudeau hopes to strike with the provinces within 90 days of Paris should be bolder than anything currently in the works, and backed up with effective carbon-pricing policies and investments that will get us where we need to be.

While Canada ranks at the bottom of the top 10 emitters in sheer output, we’re one of the worst offenders on a per-capita basis. If we genuinely aspire to lead, we need to up our game in several ways:

Canada needs a credible target, and an aggressive plan, to leave a lot of oil in the ground. The Conservatives grudgingly pledged to cut emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, from their 2005 level. Trudeau will recommit to that in Paris. But we aren’t even on track to meet our pledge to cut emissions by17 per cent by 2020. We will fall short by a wide margin. The United States, in contrast, is halfway to meeting its own 17-per-cent goal by 2020, and intends to cut emissions by 26 per cent or more by 2025.

China, in turn, will cap emissions by 2030, and begin cutting after that. And India, another long-time holdout, will cut its carbon output by about 35 per cent by 2030. Emissions will still grow, but at a slower pace.

Canada also needs a national consensus on robust carbon pricing in the $30-a-tonne range initially and higher later. That’s well above the $17 price set by Quebec’s latest carbon auction, which Ontario plans to join.

Canada needs an aggressive investment strategy that aspires to a carbon-free economy by 2050. As a start, the $2.7 billion in subsidies that Ottawa and the provinces hand out to the fossil fuel industry should be redirected into greener investments.

Finally, we should help subsidize poorer countries to embrace green technology.

We can turn things in a better direction, if we choose. Paris is the place to start.

Trudeau will arrive in Paris armed with a powerful mandate from the Canadian electorate