As the lines are being drawn for the battle of the new millennium, the combatants appear content to stay in their corners.
How else can you interpret the current green-vs.-carbon discussion?
In this corner, you have Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley (to name the two more notable participants).
In that corner, you have Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley.
Confused? So are we.
The national climate discussion, featuring the above-mentioned and their Canadian political peers, wrapped up in Vancouver last week.
The Vancouver Declaration on Clean Growth and Climate Change came to be March 2, with premiers and the PM trying to establish a national price for a carbon tax. While nothing came of it, except to exhale more carbon into the atmosphere with more talks at a later date, most at the meeting assured us moving to a carbon-tax structure was the way to go – Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall being the more vocal opponent of a carbon tax.
Interestingly, Yukon Premier Darrell Pasloski is against a national carbon tax because it would hurt Yukon’s economy, but in the next sentence admits climate change needs to be addressed.
Notley, like Trudeau, is for an economic model that includes addressing a carbon pricing model to reduce carbon emissions.
Then, from the other corner, she’s just as sure that Alberta’s economic future is bound to vital national energy initiatives like the Energy East and Northern Gateway pipelines. The idea being you can deliver more raw product to market to be refined and then consumed (with much of that eventually being exhaled through the tailpipes of thousands of vehicles).
For Shakespeare fans, think of Merchant of Venice protagonist Shylock being awarded his pound of flesh, “with no jot of blood.”
You can’t have one without the other.
So the new-millennium battle lines become how few hydrocarbons can you burn to get to that tonne of carbon tax?
In there somewhere, supposedly, is a formula where you can still pump carbon into the atmosphere while addressing climate change as it relates to burning fossil fuels.
This is where items like the Vancouver Declaration are (aren’t?) making progress.
You either want a carbon-based economy (think of people churning through billions of barrels of $75 oil). Or you don’t (think of $35 oil sitting in storage).
Playing both sides off the middle isn’t working, in the near term, at least. You are either for an oil-centric economy. Or you are not.
The sooner our economic/environmental stewards come clean on their intentions, the better we’ll be able to chart a course for the future.
Sailing around in circles isn’t accomplishing anything, except prolonging the agony with these hand-wringing, furrowed-brow passion plays.
The future of the economy, and the environment, hangs in the balance.
