PCs’ vague climate plan might just be ‘for the people’
Doug Ford’s climate change plan is sorely lacking.
It is not entirely a bust. As York University environmentalist Mark Winfield writes, the Ontario premier’s blueprint for dealing with global warming contains some “surprisingly progressive” elements — including a commitment to take climate change into account in government decision-making.
But overall, the plan released Thursday is anything but a plan.
It says the government will reduce greenhouse gases in part by regulating large industrial carbon emitters.
But it also says that an unspecified number of firms, including the entire auto industry, will be exempted from this requirement.
In any case, it offers no details as to what penalties — if any — might be levied against those businesses that fail to meet the Progressive Conservative government’s as yet unspecified targets.
Like Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal regime before it, the Ford government would subsidize green industries — this time through what it calls a carbon trust. And like the Wynne Liberals, it would encourage drivers to switch to electric vehicles. It just doesn’t say how. It would increase the amount of cornbased ethanol in gasoline, a move that, while pleasing farmers, would not significantly reduce greenhouse gases and might, in fact, increase them.
It says Ontario will meet the carbon reduction target Canada set for itself at the 2015 Paris summit. It does not mention that this target is less than the one Wynne’s Liberals had committed themselves to.
Politically, the new Ontario plan is an attempt to devise a climate change solution that does not involve the carbon tax Ford campaigned against. To that end, the Progressive Conservative government has borrowed broadly and shamelessly.
It lists among its actions against climate change Ford’s pledge to take over the Toronto subway system and recommends that people deal with global warming by waterproofing their basements.
It predicts that the single biggest contributor to carbon reduction will be existing programs designed to conserve natural gas.
Whether the Ford government can avoid carbon taxes completely is an open question. Levying financial penalties against firms that fail to meet emission standards could be viewed as a form of carbon tax.
But so far it’s not clear that the Ontario government would do even that.
Indeed, the overall message from Ford’s government is that Ontario has already done plenty in the fight against climate change by eliminating its coalfired electricity generation stations and is under little obligation to do more.
Tellingly, the section on climate change takes up only 19 pages of the 53-page environmental plan released Thursday. The remainder deals with matters such as reducing litter.
However the Ford government is not alone in treating climate change casually. For all of its talk, the federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not on track to meet its self-imposed Paris carbon-reduction targets.
Nor, according to the United Nations, are most industrial countries. Scientists predict the climate crisis will soon be irreversible.
The answer from much of the world is a loud yawn.
In North America, consumers continue to choose gas-guzzling pickup trucks and SUVs over fuel-efficient small cars. In France, government attempts to raise gasoline prices have led to violent protests.
So don’t be too hard on Ford. His climate change plan is largely empty. But in real terms no one else is doing much either. Maybe that’s what people want.
For all of its talk, the federal government of Justin Trudeau is not on track to meet its self-imposed Paris carbon-reduction targets