The EcoLibertarian

Delightful as this place looks, I suspect Popular Science will drag it out of the archives as a subject for mirth in 50 years, like the pieces on how we’d be taking vacations in orbit by 2000.

Stéphane Dion’s inept failure to define what he means by a “carbon tax,” which I’ve decried at some length, left the barn door wide open for this, which is almost self-parodying in its refusal to engage with the actual issue at hand.

The “You think it’s easy to load websites?” line while some of the elaborate Flash stuff downloads is pretty good, admittedly.

It’s probably going to work, at least for the purposes of killing the carbon-tax idea. As far as winning the Tories a majority government is concerned, I think it’s most likely to reinforce the idea that the Conservatives are temperamentally kind of assholes, and never more so than when they’re in a position of strength.

The Freakonomics blog dissects the environmental and economic effects of “locavorism,” the kind of eating explored by The 100-Mile Diet. Good for the environment? Not necessarily:

This is a pretty strong argument against the perceived environmental and economic benefits of locavore behavior — mostly because Weber and Matthews identify the fact that is nearly always overlooked in such arguments: specialization (which Michael Pollan mostly dislikes, and which has been around for a long, long time) is ruthlessly efficient. Which means less transportation, lower prices — and, in most cases, far more variety, which in my book means more deliciousness and more nutrition.

Ezra Klein considered much the same question the other day, and dug up some figures suggesting that you can make a lot more difference for the planet by changing what you eat — specifically by cutting back on meat — than by getting obsessive about where your food comes from:

As Brad Plumer writes, the striking takeaway is that “on average, replacing just 21 percent of the red meat in the ‘typical’ diet with fish or chicken does as much, emissions-wise, as buying everything in that same diet locally.” That’s not, of course, an argument against eating locally. Taste, farming practices, sustainability, and much else point towards local consumption. But buying locally raised meats doesn’t get you off the environmental hook.

There’s much to be said for knowing where your food comes from and trying to understand the tradeoffs you’re making when you choose it and appreciating the unique connections between a grocery item and the land it comes from. But “local” is not a synonym for “virtuous.”

A tear-your-hair-out point-counterpoint in today’s National Post pits Liberal leader Stéphane Dion against Environment Minister John Baird, debating the merits of a carbon tax and green tax-shifting.

Dion, mind you, is at a disadvantage. He doesn’t have any of the specifics of the plan he’s arguing for, even though it is, in fact, his plan. He’s stuck with generalities, in a field where the devil is always in the details. He says things like this:

The Liberal tax shifting plan is as powerful as it is simple. We will cut taxes on those things we all want more of — income, savings, investment and innovation. And we will shift those taxes to what we all want less of — pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and waste. We need to make polluters pay and put every single penny back in the hands of Canadians through the right tax cuts.

Which is pretty unequivocal, but because the details aren’t there, his debating opponent, Baird, can fight against a straw-man version of the plan, like so:

Can a carbon tax ever be truly revenue neutral? If government is collecting $1 in taxes, and “tax-shifts” that one dollar towards spending 50¢ on green programs and fifty cents on programs like health care and infrastructure, how does the government make up that lost revenue on health care and infrastructure? By raising taxes, of course.

That’s a hypothetical that Dion has denied himself the tools to counter. In so doing, he might well end up burying a plan that has broad support from everyone from David Suzuki to the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.

It took some doing, but I finally found a copy of the Quebec–Ontario cap-and-trade deal (PDF) on the website of Quebec Premier Jean Charest. Here’s the text, if you’re looking for it yourself. My commentary’s beneath.

***

Provincial - Territorial
Cap and Trade Initiative
Memorandum of Understanding

WHEREAS the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently concluded that warming of the climate system is unequivocal and that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures is due to human activities; and

WHEREAS strong, immediate and sustained action is an absolute requirement to minimize the risks posed by climate change; and

WHEREAS early action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is now understood to be less costly than the severe economic impacts associated with inaction; and

WHEREAS reliance on intensity-based targets does not provide for sufficient certainty of real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions; and

WHEREAS collaboration among provinces, territories and states of the United States and Mexico engaged in developing and implementing climate change policies provides a consistent approach to achieving absolute greenhouse gas emissions reductions; and

WHEREAS Ontario, Québec and other provinces and territories have joined The Climate Registry; and

WHEREAS cap and trade systems are a flexible, market-based mechanism that can facilitate the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and provide opportunities for lowering the global costs of greenhouse gas emissions reductions; and

WHEREAS greenhouse gas cap and trade systems can facilitate the transition to a low carbon economy and encourage technological innovation, economic growth and job creation; and

WHEREAS the ability to link to other jurisdictional greenhouse gas cap and trade systems can provide greenhouse gas emission reductions at lower cost, allow for larger trading volumes and improved liquidity and improve the pace of innovation; and

WHEREAS harmonizing reporting requirements with other jurisdictions will facilitate the joining of new partners and linkages with other cap and trade systems; and

WHEREAS Ontario and Québec agree that like-minded provinces and territories are invited to sign this Memorandum of Understanding and work together collaboratively on this cap and trade initiative.

NOW THEREFORE, the signatories to this Memorandum of Understanding agree to collaborate on a Provincial and Territorial Greenhouse Gas Cap and Trade Initiative including the design and implementation of a cap and trade system in conjunction with broader regional trading systems already under development to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their jurisdiction respectively. This collaboration shall include, but is not limited to:

• Working co-operatively and with other provinces, territories and states on the design and implementation of a joint regional market-based multi-sector greenhouse gas cap and trade system, based on real reductions that could be implemented as early as January 1, 2010;
• Facilitating participation and linkages with broader North American and international trading systems, to the extent permitted by applicable provincial, territorial, state and federal laws;
• Providing an intergovernmental forum for collaboration between provinces and territories dedicated to developing and implementing a greenhouse gas cap and trade system in addition to other greenhouse gas emissions reductions policies
• Recognizing early action in reducing greenhouse gas emissions based on the internationally accepted base year of 1990 for entities owning or controlling covered facilities or sources that have an established and credible record of emissions reductions for those facilities or sources;
• Harmonizing greenhouse gas reporting requirements with other jurisdictions to facilitate the joining of new partners and linkages with other cap and trade systems so that regulated sectors do not face duplicative reporting requirements.

The signatories to this Memorandum of Understanding agree to direct their respective staff and appropriate agencies to meet as soon as is practicable to develop a work plan to deliver this initiative.

The signatories to this Memorandum of Understanding agree that other provinces and territories may join this initiative by signing a copy of this Memorandum of Understanding and provide a copy of it to all other signatories.

***

Given that it’s not an actual cap-and-trade deal, but rather a deal to make a deal soon, it strikes me as pretty thorough. Aside from the stuff obviously meant to tweak the federal government’s nose (like the part about using 1990 as a base year, which matters not at all in comparison to the percentage you’re promising to cut from that point), the commitment to absolute rather than intensity-based targets is significant, and so’s the commitment to link up with other carbon trading systems, which should lead to money finding its way to the most economically efficient emissions cuts, over time.

That much “real” stuff in the accord, and the 2010 target date for getting this thing going, suggests that both Dalton McGuinty and Charest grasp that this is a policy initiative that will reward swift innovation. You want to be ahead of this curve. Charest said as much, apparently:

Quebec Premier Jean Charest warned the federal government is missing the boat on a worldwide term.

“Ottawa won’t have a choice,” Charest said. “Ultimately, between you and me, the day the Americans elect a new government, the new government gets elected and says from now there will be a ceiling and such and such level and the trading will work this, don’t kid yourself,” he said.

“It’s not Canada which will say to Europe, ‘No, no, we’re doing our own system.’ Come on. They will be isolated at that moment.”

Naturally, the feds are frothing, but pretty ineffectually. It’s true that all the details, including the pivotal ones of how permits are to be distributed and whether there will be a “safety valve” price for unlimited permits from governments, have yet to be worked out. But it doesn’t seem fair to criticize a deal-to-make-a-deal for not actually being a deal. The extent of the desperation for material is suggested in this CBC story:

In the House of Commons on Monday, NDP Leader Jack Layton said the two Liberal premiers are filling a “vacuum of leadership” on the issue of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

In response, Prime Minister Stephen Harper criticized the plan for not establishing a regulatory mechanism and suggested the new Montreal Climate Exchange will have to fill that void.

Canada’s first carbon trading market, a joint venture between the Montreal Exchange and Chicago Climate Exchange, was launched last Friday.

They’re going to leave the details to a privately operated market and that’s a problem? Remind me — who are the conservatives, again?

This carbon-scrubbing machine is intended more as a proof of concept, not something you’d actually buy and set whirring away in your backyard (or at the back of your factory parking lot). They haven’t built one yet and costs decline with economies of scale.

Led by Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University in New York, [a team of scientists and engineers] plan to build and demonstrate a prototype within two years that could economically capture a tonne of CO2 a day from the air, about the same per passenger as a flight from London to New York.The prototype so-called scrubber will be small enough to fit inside a shipping container. Lackner estimates it will initially cost around £100,000 to build…

This still gives some indication of (1) how much easier it is to prevent a problem than to solve it afterward, and (2) how cool and important it is that plants do this kind of thing for us naturally.

An urgent appreciation of consensus not being a particular preoccupation of the Harper government in … well, in any other field I can think of, it’s disorienting to see one of his ministers so adamant that it’s necessary when it comes to climate-change policy:

Canada’s Environment Minister John Baird said a European Union plan to combat climate change has failed to win support from the U.S., signaling the proposal needs to be changed.

“If we want to see genuine reductions, we have to get the United States on board,” Baird said in Bonn today, where he is attending a United Nations conference on biodiversity. “The EU proposal has not been able to do that.”

Climate change will be a key topic at a July summit in Japan of Group of Eight leaders, as part of global efforts to come up with a successor to the 1997 Kyoto climate treaty. To speed the creation of a new treaty, the G-8 countries agreed to hold talks dubbed “the Kobe Initiative” in the U.K. during the second half of this year and in Italy next year.

(Purely as a marketing ploy, naming anything to do with climate change after a Japanese city beginning with “K” is probably a bad idea.)

Particularly in the lead-up to the Iraq war, it was said by right-wingers that any system that values co-operation above all things will be at the mercy of its most ruthless member. They were usually talking about the UN, and everything else aside, they were right about that. Funny that the argument doesn’t seem to apply to greenhouse gases.

Solving this global problem obviously does demand co-operation, but I’m flummoxed by a line of reasoning that seems to say that until absolutely everyone agrees on all things in this field, nobody must do anything at all.

So says the transportation department:

Americans drove less in March 2008, continuing a trend that began last November, according to estimates released today from the Federal Highway Administration.

“That Americans are driving less underscores the challenges facing the Highway Trust Fund and its reliance on the federal gasoline excise tax,” said Acting Federal Highway Administrator Jim Ray.

The FHWA’s “Traffic Volume Trends” report, produced monthly since 1942, shows that estimated vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on all U.S. public roads for March 2008 fell 4.3 percent as compared with March 2007 travel. This is the first time estimated March travel on public roads fell since 1979. At 11 billion miles less in March 2008 than in the previous March, this is the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history.

Drivers seem to be slow to react to changes in gas prices, but during and after the post-Katrina price spike, there was definitely an effect. Let’s see whether this keeps up.

(Photo credit: “Stephane Dion,” Flickr/ycanada_news)

So Liberal leader Stéphane Dion raised the idea of a carbon tax and then wandered off, refusing to offer any details. Crucially, he’s declined to emphasize what should be a pretty important point — that in his view, a tax on CO2-generating fossil fuels would be matched with tax cuts in other areas, like income and corporate profits.

A legion of economists, including pretty conservative ones, say this is a good idea, but he’s given them nothing to work with, so they’re keeping quiet. Instead, he’s left the field to his critics, who are equally legion.

Tactically, this is dumb.

Yet what’s astounding to me is how, even given this massive advantage, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and NDP leader Jack Layton have managed to come off like ninnies. Econo-blogger Stephen Gordon puts it well:

The CPC is targeting the people who don’t want to pay those costs, and Stéphane Dion is going after those who do. The NDP’s niche appears to be voters who want someone else to pay the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

So as usual, nobody has a credible plan on the table.

John Robb sums it up.

Our current global energy burn rate is 16 TW (terawatts), which is up from 0.7 TW at the turn of the 20th Century. … It’s very likely, given a judicious evaluation of the data, that this demand will double to 32 TW by 2025 (even with a global 1-2% decline in usage per $ of GDP due to efficiency improvements).

The bulk of the energy we feed this burn rate with is from stored solar — essentially, energy delivered from the sun millions of years ago and stored inside the earth’s crust. The problem we face with stored solar is that it is reaching production limits (particularly crude oil). In combination with this rapidly increasing demand, we will face a never ending series of price increases (occasionally mitigated by demand destruction) for stored solar energy as oil, natural gas, and coal deplete in series.