{"id":131381,"date":"2020-12-12T00:03:14","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T21:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/on-climate-at-last-justin-trudeau-is-all-in\/"},"modified":"2020-12-12T00:03:14","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T21:03:14","slug":"on-climate-at-last-justin-trudeau-is-all-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/on-climate-at-last-justin-trudeau-is-all-in\/","title":{"rendered":"#On climate, at last, Justin Trudeau is all in"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#On climate, at last, Justin Trudeau is all in<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Paul Wells: It’s become a handy rule of thumb to assume this government will take the easy way out. Not this time.\n <\/div>\n
\n Will wonders never cease. We have here a specific, detailed plan to achieve significant progress in reducing carbon emissions in Canada. The reaction from people who live their lives in the trenches, like this guy from Greenpeace<\/a> and this excellent journalist and one-time Green Party candidate<\/a> encourages me in my own: a kind of startled admiration.<\/p>\n

Justin Trudeau doesn\u2019t often take risks. But putting the carbon tax on course to trip<\/a>le in a decade is risky. I had assumed the Liberals were done with carbon-tax increases, even in the tax-and-rebate form they\u2019ve used to ensure a net benefit for most consumers. When I interviewed Jonathan Wilkinson this fall<\/a> and he kept banging on about how pricing carbon is the most efficient way to ensure emissions reductions, I kept re-asking the question because I thought surely the PMO simply hadn\u2019t broken it to him yet that he didn\u2019t have a chance.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not only because it\u2019s become a handy rule of thumb to assume this government will take the easy way out: spend, subsidize, build client groups. It\u2019s also because climate activists had also seemed to be souring on carbon taxes<\/a>, not because they don\u2019t work but because they\u2019re hard to sell politically and because they seem so liberal<\/em>, allowing a market to sort out its own priorities in new circumstances instead of having choices dictated by, the theory goes, benevolent leaders. So, when McGill\u2019s Chris Ragan and Andrew Potter argued for tripling the carbon tax<\/a> as an alternative to fancy build-back-better dirigisme, they met with scorn, including from the aforementioned Greenpeace guy<\/a> (\u201cMarket evangelists aren\u2019t going down without a fight\u201d) and, on Twitter<\/a>, from the intermittently well-connected Gerald Butts.<\/p>\n

And now, damned if the Liberals aren\u2019t tripling the carbon tax. Well, setting it on course to triple, and a bit more, by 2030. Which is far slower than Ragan and Potter advocated, but it\u2019ll still require accelerating the growth in the tax after its original planning horizon ends, so that counts as gumption in my book. It\u2019s never great when governments make plans beyond their own electoral lifespan. But this sets down a marker that the Trudeau Liberals, if re-elected, would ignore at their peril.<\/p>\n

Yes, peril. It\u2019s become clear that the greater political danger for the Trudeau Liberals would be inaction on the climate file, more than action. We had an election on it. Everyone who was against carbon taxes got free exposure on the cover of Maclean\u2019s<\/em>, and even then they lost in a rout. It\u2019s highly symbolic that Trudeau announced his carbon plan the day after a virtual First Ministers\u2019 Meeting. Unlike in 2016, he didn\u2019t feel a need to bring his latest plan to the premiers\u2019 table.<\/p>\n

Of course there\u2019s a lot of other stuff in the plan Trudeau, Wilkinson and Steve Guilbeault announced today. Building retrofits, electric-car charging stations, emissions regulations tailored to the toughest standards in North America, which gives states\u2014or British Columbia?\u2014the ability to set a brisker pace than the Biden administration if the incoming president can\u2019t set the agenda. Some of these will help, but they won\u2019t make the difference the carbon price will make. It\u2019s possible to argue the carbon tax and attendant rebates or income-tax-rate reductions should have been even bigger, but I\u2019m just astonished they\u2019re there at all.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s all kinds of room to fail on implementation, which means the federal Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development\u2014imagine my surprise when I googled him and realized he\u2019s an interim<\/a> who\u2019s been serving for a year and a half while the government hasn\u2019t named a permanent replacement\u2014will have an important job monitoring progress. And politically, Trudeau\u2019s and Wilkinson\u2019s plan opens up real opportunity for the Liberals\u2019 opponents, as any real plan does. Erin O\u2019Toole had been planning to position himself as more ambitious than Andrew Scheer on credibly reducing carbon emissions. Theoretically Trudeau just increased his manoeuvring room. Unless he just redefined seriousness on the file. To the Liberals\u2019 climate-left, Elizabeth May always said Stephen Harper\u2019s emissions targets for 2030 were too timid, and that the government can\u2019t own a pipeline and meet real targets too. Trudeau just doubled down on both policies. If Annamie Paul, the new Green leader, is able to make any kind of mark on the Canadian political discourse, Trudeau just gave her fuel too.<\/p>\n

There remains the effect of all this on the federation. Right after last year\u2019s election, everyone made a show of worrying about Alberta\u2019s and Saskatchewan\u2019s response to a Trudeau re-election. Everything in today\u2019s announcement boosts costs and lowers returns for the oil sector. With what results, we\u2019ll soon see.
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