The unbearable lightness of being Patrick Brown

Saving the planet isn’t as simple as it seems.

Not when global warming is blowing a chill wind over Queen’s Park.

Nor when you’re caught between two bloviating windbags coming at you from left and right.

Spare a thought for Patrick Brown, leader of Ontario’s opposition PCs and unofficial premier-in-waiting, as he tries to cobble together a coherent environmental policy.

Brown is trying to do the right thing, without looking too left wing.

Give him credit for trying to change his party’s stance on climate change. Progressive Conservatives had long closed their eyes to carbon pricing, which is why Brown studiously avoided the issue in his 2014-15 leadership campaign.

But in the aftermath of his convention coronation, and in advance of his crowning as premier, Brown couldn’t continue the charade of being Ontario’s emperor-in-waiting with no (environmental) cloak.

Belatedly, he promised carbon pricing for the province. Immediately, the backlash from the party’s grassroots raised the political temperature, forcing a humbled Brown to recalibrate.

Which brings us back to the bloviators blowing hot air emissions his way from opposing ends of the ideological spectrum.

Stage right is the voluble Kevin O’Leary, running for the federal Tory leadership while taking a run at Brown. He vows to vaporize any carbon pricing plan hatched by the premier-in-waiting, if not neutralize his political ambitions.

“Patrick Brown, if he wants to bring carbon taxation into Ontario, even though he’s a Conservative, I’ll campaign against him. I’ll work very hard to make sure he stays out of power,” O’Leary proclaimed.

Stage left is the famously longwinded Environment Minister Glen Murray, the never-ending Liberal know-it-all to whom everyone else is a know-nothing. Murray has been lampooning Brown’s environmental calculations and political calculus, though it’s sometimes hard to know whose fog is harder to fathom.

Ontario’s carbon pricing plan is nothing if not complicated.

It reduces our overall carbon emissions cap by 4 per cent a year, but with safety valves that let companies blow off more steam (carbon) if they are willing to pay a price for the privilege (an exemption, or allowance). The results of Ontario’s first auction of carbon allowances, released this week, showed $472 million came in from companies that will be able to buy and sell them as part of the future cap of carbon emissions. Next year, the provincial market will be integrated into the Western Climate Initiative, linking Quebec and California.

Brown hates the plan, claiming the Liberal “smokescreen . . . sends millions of dollars” to California as companies buy and sell carbon allowances in future.

Fair point, except it misses the larger point that experts agree on: Connecting Ontario to other more mature carbon markets will provide greater stability, but also dramatically lowers the costs to companies — and thus consumers — while steadily reducing overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

“Linking Ontario’s cap and trade program with California and Quebec will reduce costs for Ontario GHG emitters,” said Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner Dianne Saxe. Her report argued that the fine print of any future agreements with California could reduce any outflow of cash and that the overall benefits clearly outweighed the cost.

If he wins power, Brown would dismantle Ontario’s carbon pricing plan in order to rebuild it as a straightforward carbon tax. The downside of Brown’s carbon tax is that it doesn’t actually reduce emissions (polluters can keep paying as a cost of doing business) because the overall cap doesn’t go down (as B.C. discovered). And there is no built-in safety valve for trade-sensitive industries that get free allowances, initially, to help them transition.

But Brown seems focused more on the politics than the economics. He squandered credibility last month by promising, on the eve of the first auction, to blow up the cap-andtrade market just as private companies were making their opening bids — which is odd behaviour for a believer in free markets, free of undue influences.

It’s hard not to sympathize with Brown. He is a chameleon caught between a carbon rock and a hard place — or a hard right party. He is trying to stand up for the environment, without standing for anything coherent. “It would not be my plan to bring in a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax,” Brown told me during his 2015 leadership campaign, before conceding in the next breath: “I’m not ruling out cap-andtrade forever.”

Now, as premier-in-waiting, Brown favours a carbon tax while promising to blow up cap and trade. Next year, as premier, will he change colours again on climate change? Martin Regg Cohn’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn