The governments of both British Columbia and Alberta are currently consulting the public as they develop “climate leadership plans.” Here in BC the deadline for email submissions has been extended to September 14th.
But what does it really take to be a climate leader? Before discussing the BC consultation (and touching on Alberta’s), let’s take a moment to reflect on what climate leadership means and to acknowledge some recent examples.
What is climate leadership?
There is not, of course, a set definition of climate leadership, but I would suggest that any true climate leadership will:
- set goals based on what science tells us must be achieved;
- be realistic about what needs to be done to achieve those goals, recognizing the challenges we face;
- inspire us collectively to take action; and
- lead to real action to achieve those targets.
Unfortunately, our leaders do not always live up to that goal.
However, we do occasionally get some glimpses of climate leadership.
Last month, U.S. President Obama unveiled limits on greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants, pledging to make the U.S. a climate leader, and leaving no doubt as to the urgency of the situation. It’s well worth watching his speech in full, but here are a few nuggets:
One year doesn’t make a trend, but 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have fallen within the first 15 years of this century. Climate change is no longer just about the future that we’re predicting for our children or our grandchildren. It’s about the reality that we’re living with every day, right now. … While we can’t say any single weather event is entirely caused by climate change, we’ve seen stronger storms, deeper droughts, longer wildfire seasons. Charleston and Miami now flood at high tide. Shrinking ice-caps forced National Geographic to make the biggest change in its atlas since the Soviet Union broke apart. …
I believe that there is such a thing as being too late. … This is one of these rare issues, because of its magnitude, because of its scope, that if we don’t get it right, we may not be able to reverse, and we may not be able to adapt sufficiently. There is such a thing as too late when it comes to climate change. That shouldn’t make us hopeless. It’s not as if there’s nothing we can do it. We can take action.
President Obama’s standards do not get the U.S. all the way to where it needs to go to address climate change – not by any means – but they do go a long way to meeting the U.S. targets that have been set.
We’ve written about the climate leadership shown by a Dutch court, and Urgenda, the environmental organization that took the Dutch government to court to limit greenhouse gas emissions and won.
Faith communities are also showing climate leadership, characterising the climate crisis as a moral issue: from Pope Francis’s latest Encyclical “Laudato Si” On Care for Our Common Home, to a new Declaration by Muslim scholars on climate change (just in the last few days), to decision (just last week) of the United Church of Canada to divest from fossil fuels.
And recently a federal NDP candidate, Linda McQuaig, courted controversy by displaying climate leadership – and in doing so illustrated how far away from accepting real climate leadership many of our leaders are. McQuaig’s comments that “a lot of the oilsands oil may have to stay in the ground” were entirely realistic, both in terms of science and economics. The reasons that a lot of oil (not just oil sands oil) needs to remain in the ground was clearly explained by Bill McKibben (among others) in his 2012 article Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math:
Think of two degrees Celsius as the legal drinking limit – equivalent to the 0.08 blood-alcohol level below which you might get away with driving home. The 565 gigatons is how many drinks you could have and still stay below that limit – the six beers, say, you might consume in an evening. And the 2,795 gigatons? That's the three 12-packs the fossil-fuel industry has on the table, already opened and ready to pour.
We have five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn. We'd have to keep 80 percent of those reserves locked away underground to avoid that fate.
But because oil sands oil is among the most carbon intensive to extract, some scientists have suggested that only a fraction of the oil sands oil can be developed if the world is to have a reasonable chance of achieving the targets that Canada has agreed to internationally - avoiding a global temperature increase of 2 ˚C. Given the wildfires, droughts, floods, etc. that we’re already experiencing from a less than 1 ˚C global temperature increase, you really have to wonder why we’re not trying a bit harder.
But the fact that McQuaig’s scientifically and economically grounded statements put our country’s choice in stark contrast, she and her party were attacked for these comments by the Prime Minister and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. The NDP, rather than defending climate leadership, took refuge in a promise of a future process “to determine whether or not you can continue at the same level (of oil sands production):
“It’s possible” to develop and increase production of the oil sands while being serious about greenhouse gas reduction, the NDP leader said. … “You have to put in place that sustainable development legislation and enforce it.”
This promise seems to be based upon a shell game approach to climate change – whereby the emissions from the oil sands don’t count towards Canada’s targets once they are exported to China, the U.S. or elsewhere. But that’s not climate leadership – that’s just moving emissions around. There is nothing indicating that the NDP is planning to take the radical step of holding oil sands operators responsible for the climate damages that their product is causing globally.
And what about BC (and Alberta)?
So what about BC and Alberta? How do their climate leadership plans measure up?
First, both provinces get points for even initiating the discussion, as too many governments turn a blind eye to this politically awkward problem . Both provinces’ discussion papers recognize the pressing need for action on climate change.
The Province of BC is consulting about how to achieve existing legislated greenhouse gas targets: a 33% reduction relative to 2007 levels by 2020. One comparison of provincial targets by a prominent climate activist describes this target as more ambitious than other provinces (except possibly for Saskatchewan), and we’re inclined to agree (although others have argued that BC’s GHG trajectory is less impressive than many other countries).
Where BC’s climate leadership falls down is in achieving its targets, and being realistic about what needs to be done to achieve those targets.
Marc Jaccard, a world renowned climate economist who assisted the BC government with its first Climate Action Plan (as well as with 4 previous climate-related planning exercises), is refusing to participate this time around, saying that the government already knows what needs to be done to achieve its targets, but won’t do it:
A short list of truly effective policies would expose an insincere government. It would need to reject all the panel’s recommendations. But the long list enables such a government to loudly enact one negligible policy after another — such as ads to promote energy efficiency — while “waiting for the right time” to implement the few truly effective policies. This has happened repeatedly.
Cherry-picking solutions while pushing GHG-generating LNG development that will make climate goals difficult, if not impossible, to achieve is not climate leadership. The government told their expert team that they must recommend strategies that met the GHG targets: “while maintaining strong economic growth and successfully implementing the BC Jobs Plan, including the liquefied natural gas strategy.”
The government’s discussion paper also operates at the level of principles, without getting to the hard choices ahead.
It is difficult to disagree, for example, with the statement that: “People and goods move efficiently and reliably, using clean transportation.” Perhaps even with the more detailed suggestion that government should prioritize “Increasing use of clean, coordinated transportation such as public transit, carpooling, shared travel, bicycles and walking …”
But what does that mean for rural communities where shared transportation may be more challenging? What about long-distance travel between communities? And what do we do with existing highway infrastructure – and how will car drivers feel about that?
This discussion paper does not need to answer all of these difficult questions, but by remaining at the level of abstract principles, the paper fails to acknowledge that the problems even exist.
This stands in contrast to Alberta’s Climate Leadership discussion document, which does a relatively good job at setting out the trends in different industries, and by extension some of the challenges (although there is certainly nothing here that directly questions the continued growth of the oil sands – there are some constraints on what the government can consider). However, Alberta is also considering changes to its GHG reduction targets, so it’s early days yet in terms of expressing a view on its leadership.
BC will be a climate leader when it develops a clear plan to achieve its 2020 targets, and actually implements it. The government needs to hear loud and clear that British Columbians want real climate leadership.
Conclusion
The governments of both BC and Alberta are looking to develop climate leadership plans, and are inviting the public to weigh in. If you live in either province take a moment to tell them that you need real climate leadership (email BC here) – that sets scientifically defensible goals, is honest about what’s required to achieve them and, crucially, puts in place the action required to do so.
By Andrew Gage, Staff Counsel
Photo by Lotus Carroll, used under a Creative Commons Licence.