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Carbon price wars–BC, Ontario or Quebec?

September 5, 2018

Carbon price wars–BC, Ontario or Quebec?

The question of how the Canadian provinces should deal with the issue of greenhouse  gas emissions continues to be contentious and occasionally acrimonious.

The new provincial government of Ontario has declared its intention to cancel that province’s cap-and-trade system—referring to it as “a punishing, regressive tax that forces low-and middle-income families to pay more.” A week ago the province of Alberta threatened to pull out of the Federal government’s carbon pricing scheme after progress on building the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline ground to a halt. Progressive Conservative leader Andrew Scheer has vowed to shut down carbon pricing asserting: “Conservatives know that carbon tax isn’t just bad for big business; it’s bad for everyone. And that’s why, come 2019, my first act as prime minister will be to get rid of it once and for all.”[1]

So is it?  Bad for everyone?

There is no question that pricing carbon works. Over 51 countries and subnational jurisdictions are now operating carbon pricing systems, or planning to do so.[2]  A report last year by two of the world’s top  economists was clear: “A well-designed carbon price is an indispensable part of a strategy for reducing emissions in a efficient way.”[3]

Earlier this year, Environment and Climate Change Canada published the results of a modeling exercise which showed that a carbon pricing system applied across Canada would reduce greenhouse gas pollution by between 80 and 90 million tonnes by 2022–making a significant contribution to meeting Canada’s Paris Agreement target of a 30% reduction over the period 2005 to 2030. [4]

But some forms of carbon pricing systems seem to work a lot better than others. Can we learn a few lessons and draw some conclusions by looking at the performance of the four Canadian provinces where carbon prices have been introduced: Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia?  Of the four, British Columbia’s revenue-neutral carbon pricing system is widely regarded as a major success.[5]  But the latest data on Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions paint a rather different picture.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Greenhouse Hothouse Firehouse

August 25, 2018

Greenhouse Hothouse Firehouse

A scientific paper recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) is getting a lot of attention.  Written in the dry style of systems analysis—and throughout the text referring to the planet as the ‘Earth System’, it nevertheless brilliantly manages to present the looming dangers of extreme climate change in a way that has powerfully resonated with many people. People who are worried  about climate change, but aren’t exactly sure what the future holds, how bad it’s going to get, and how to avoid being dragged in that direction. You can access the paper here.

Into the hothouse

‘Hothouse Earth’ is where we are all headed. And those two words, after the record heat waves and raging wildfires we have witnessed this year, conjure up images that most of us can fully comprehend.  We can almost feel the heat.

Not only that, the authors have created a simple graphic which although dimensioned in the metrics of time, space, and temperature, is easily understandable. The Earth is a ball gently rolling down a slope of increasing global temperatures.  Two pathways are available to us.  But only one can be chosen.

The pathway of least resistance is the one we are on now. The one that leads to the hothouse.

The diagram shown below perfectly captures the concept.

 

We know that actions taken so far to reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases are hopelessly inadequate. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane—the most damaging of the greenhouse gases that are responsible for global warming—continue to increase every year. There are no signs that the warming trend is slowing.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Antarctic melt accelerates sea level rise

July 21, 2018

Antarctic melt accelerates sea level rise

While renewable energy is on a roll—setting records in Europe over the last few months[1], and racking up impressive numbers in capacity buildout in 2017 [2], it’s easy to forget what is happening behind the scenes.

Extreme weather gets all the headlines: the wild fires in Canada and Sweden [3], the flooding in Japan, the heatwaves in Canada and the US. But what are called the slow onset climate change events are inexorably moving forward.

Think or swim

Let’s start with sea level. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) recently published a report called  Underwater, which examined more closely the impact of future sea level rise on coastal cities in the US.  The UCS took as their baseline that global mean sea levels would rise about 2 meters between 2010 and the end of the century—a projection judged as being very likely in several reports published last year.[4]

The UCS report looked at the impact on coastal communities of chronic inundation due to sea level rise—defined as a zone experiencing at least 26 floods a year.  By the end of the century, the UCS analysis shows that as many as 2.4 million of today’s residential properties and about 107,000 commercial properties, worth roughly $1.07 trillion, would be at risk of chronic flooding.[5]

As several million American coastal residents are forced to move inland, coastal property values collapse. The tax base of coastal towns drops catastrophically—resulting in the dramatic reduction in  numerous critical social services and the total impoverishment and eventual abandonment of many coastal communities.

In the US, Florida and New Jersey are most at risk. Over the next 30 years, roughly 64,000 homes in Florida and 62,000 in New Jersey will be at risk of chronic flooding.

These states are just the worst affected, but the whole of the eastern shoreline of the US and the coast of Atlantic Canada are all hugely at risk—particularly the low lying areas of Nova Scotia.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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