This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

The federal leaders’ debate on the economy focused on important issues — jobs, deficits, infrastructure spending, pipelines, climate change — but no one talked about a different vision for Canada’s economy.

What if we challenged our leaders to answer the dilemma posed by American journalist Charles Bowden: “Imagine the problem is that we cannot imagine a future where we possess less but are more”?

Not being able to even imagine an economy without continual growth is a profound failure.

A better economic vision would support the right of all Canadians to live in a healthy environment, with access to clean air and water and healthy food. It would respect planetary boundaries and provide the moral imperative to decrease growing income disparities.

Businesses would be required to pay for environmental damage they inflict, capital would be more widely distributed and ideas, such as employee shareholder programs with ethically invested stocks, would be the norm.

This alternative economy would connect people to family, friends and communities, focus on social capital investments over gross domestic product gains, and distribute wealth through taxes, social programs and minimum guaranteed incomes.

In The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett write that developed countries with the greatest inequalities have higher rates of disease, mental illness, drug use and a host of other social problems. Reducing income gaps makes all of us healthier.

In Canada, we don’t question our emphasis on constant growth. Our economic system favours short-term profits at the expense of our long-term health and survival.

Despite more than five decades of trying to fix our environmental challenges, forests are still threatened, deserts are spreading and climate change is creating more frequent and intense storms, floods, forest fires and droughts.

We’re also left with income inequality that threatens our democracy.

Since the 1980s, the top one per cent of Canadians has increasingly enjoyed the biggest share of income growth and the least pain during economic downturns.

Since 2009, the top 10 per cent have seen half of all income growth. The bottom 50 per cent of Canadians have not only seen declines in income growth, accounting for just three per cent of income gains, they’ve also been hardest hit during recessions.

In a statement that applies equally to Canada, the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once noted, “We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

A cornerstone of our current economy, consuming goods, may give us fleeting pleasure, but it isn’t making us happier.

Studies show the pleasure derived from food, sex, exercise and time with loved ones or doing meaningful work takes much longer to fade. Worse, consuming stuff is not only addictive, it also feeds rivalry and societal overconsumption.

The Canadian Index of Wellbeing uncovered some troubling truths about the connection between the economy and well-being. When Canada’s economy was thriving, Canadians saw only modest improvements in their overall quality of life, but when the economy faltered our well-being took a disproportionate step backward.

This is troubling, given predictions for an upcoming extended period of weak economic growth. Why are we so reluctant to talk about how we can get out of this cycle of endless buying and unsatisfying consumption by considering steady-state economies or even de-growth alternatives?

Despite this failure to imagine a better way, we may finally be seeing a change in course. The climate crisis is creating a global consciousness shift, with hundreds of thousands marching to demand change, and Pope Francis’s Encyclical warning that economic growth and technology can’t continue to trump all other concerns. Throughout Europe, North America and beyond, support is growing for confronting income and wealth inequality.

Imagine a Canadian election in which leaders gave us economic visions aimed at caring for people and the planet. It’s time we talked about a future when we can live with less and be happier.

I’ll be joining Peter Victor, one of Canada’s most respected ecological economists, to talk about these ideas at a public event for the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics conference in Vancouver on October 1. I hope to see some of you there.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Environmental Economist and Policy Analyst Michelle Molnar.

Image: Kris Krug

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

As President Obama heads to the Arctic to discuss climate change, just mere weeks after approving Shell Oil’s bid to drill for oil in the treacherous Chukchi Sea, a very different group is sounding the alarm over the dangers of a warming climate. That group, surprisingly, is Wall Street bankers.

Citibank has released a new report showing that taking action now against the growing threat of climate change would save an astonishing $1.8 trillion by the year 2040. Conversely, the report says that if no action is taken, the economy will lose as much as $44 trillion during that same time period.

As Think Progress points out, the Citibank report takes into account the potential lost revenue from leaving resources in the ground — including 80% of coal reserves, half of the world’s gas reserves, and a third of global oil reserves — and still concludes that the global economy would see a net gain.

This report offers a very stark contrast to the typical talking point that we hear as to why we can’t take action on climate change — that action would simply cost too much. 

But this is not the first time that financial leaders have warned about the financial dangers of climate change.

Earlier this summer, a group of current and former Wall Street executives and former U.S. Treasury Secretaries warned that a 2 degrees Celsius increase in global temperatures could result in property losses in the state of Florida totaling $23 billion by the middle of this century. On top of the economic losses from property being underwater, the Southeast would also begin to see an alarming rise in yearly deaths due to extreme heat, with some estimates putting the yearly death toll as high as 35,000 people a year.  Agricultural losses could be as high as 20% of current yield.

If Wall Street understands the threat of climate change, even if only in terms of dollars, then this begs the question as to why they continue to fund climate change denying politicians.

Since 2014, Wall Street banks, real estate firms, and insurance companies — all industries that have expressed enormous concern over the financial threat of climate change — have poured an astonishing $507 million into political campaigns and lobbying activities.  62% of this money went to Republicans.

The reason that Party split is significant is because we have more climate change-denying members of the House and Senate then at any other point in time, and nearly every single one of them are members of the Republican Party.  According to an analysis by Think Progress, 53% of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives deny that climate change is real, and 70% of Republicans in the Senate refuse to admit that climate change is real.

If they want to be taken seriously, and if they want their financial concerns addressed by politicians, then Wall Street bankers need to immediately stop the flow of corporate campaign cash that is going to climate change deniers. As long as those people hold seats of power in Washington, D.C., then we will continue to see action stalled year after year.

Image source – Huffington Post UK.

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“Frankly, we need an army of carpenters, electricians and contractors going out to plug leaky buildings,” federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May said during the August 6 leaders debate. “Thirty per cent of carbon pollution comes from the energy we waste and the money we waste heating the outdoors in the winter and cooling it in the summer.”

The suggestion’s an awfully good one. Especially in Alberta.

For one, the thousands of contractors out of work due to the oil price slump could serve as potential soldiers in this so-called army.

There’s also enormous untapped energy-saving potential in Alberta: in fact, it’s the only province or state in North America that doesn’t sport a long-term energy efficiency program — that sure means something when 55 per cent of Calgary’s emissions can be attributed to electricity generation.

Plus, interest rates are extremely low, giving municipalities and provinces plenty of incentive to borrow for projects like energy audit grants and real-time energy feedback.

Jesse Row, executive director of Alberta Energy Efficiency Alliance and director of the Pembina Institute's energy efficiency program in the province, called the idea “low-hanging fruit.”

“I think everybody should be interested in taking some [energy efficiency] action on and seeing action taken on,” he said. Alberta “stopped doing it so we never really had that success to build on as we move forward like a lot of other jurisdictions are doing.”

Alberta’s False Energy Efficiency Starts

Alberta had a government branch devoted to energy efficiency until Ralph Klein became premier in 1993 and eliminated it.

Since then, the province has introduced two short-term efficiency programs: the most recent ending in 2012 that gave out just over $50 million in the form of 173,000 purchase rebates for newer and more efficient clothes driers ($100), hot water systems ($300) and furnaces ($600).

Nothing has since replaced it. There was a lingering promise to renew energy efficiency programs from within Alberta’s Ministry of Environment, but that idea was perpetually deferred by former Premier Jim Prentice.

Alberta is the sole jurisdiction in North America without a devoted energy efficiency program. Source: Pembina Institute

Making matters worse, the province’s leading energy efficiency non-profit, Climate Change Central (C3), closed in 2014, unable to sustain its operations after the government pulled its funding in 2009.

C3 delivered 23 programs — many of which related to energy efficiency — and helped found, among other groups, the Alberta Energy Efficiency Alliance.

“We lost a lot of capacity when C3 shut down,” Row said. “It is capacity that needs to be rebuilt to get on board with what everyone else is doing and actually having some energy efficiency programs in this province.”

Row said the Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund, which houses money from Alberta’s carbon levy program, could easily be tapped to finance such endeavours; around $100 million could successfully fund a middle-of-the-road program, saving money ($460 million per year), create jobs (some 3,800) and cut emissions (up to 27 megatonnes by 2020).

There is currently around $75 million waiting to be put to use cutting greenhouse gas emissions in Alberta. But the money requires projects.

The provincial government, under the former Progressive Conservatives, issued a request for new program proposals last August, but Premier Prentice delayed the effort for unknown reasons.

Row said the failed attempt to get money flowing to new pojects was “quite a disappointment.”

But because the request for proposals is only on hold — not cancelled — the newly elected NDP government could resurrect it at any point.

In June, Premier Rachel Notley told reporters: “there’s no question that energy efficiency efforts and initiatives will be a key pillar in [our climate change] strategy.”

Row took that as a good sign.

Building Efficiency Leading the Way

But Alberta has seen some important successes.

Tanya Doran, executive director of the Alberta Chapter of Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC), pointed out that Alberta certified the second-most square footage of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) construction in North America.

The City of Calgary was also the first municipality in Canada to implement a LEED building policy, Doran said.

“I like to think we’re getting to the point where we’re no longer talking about how much it costs if we do it, but how much it’s going to cost if we don’t,” she said.

“We’re seeing some of the large private firms start to recognize that if they’re looking for investors in their project, those investors are looking for the greening of that bricks and mortar infrastructure as well as if they see it as good, long-term investment.”

New national building code recommendations released in 2012 are only just now being adopted by Alberta. The province’s building standards haven’t been updated for three decades, so there is significant room for improvement (codes concerning large buildings will come into effect in November, while residential regulations will be implemented in May 2016).

Row said now is the time to be assessing what comes next: “looking at energy efficiency within our existing building stock, getting energy efficiency in industries and…future advancements in the building codes.”

Alberta already knows there is high provincial support for energy efficiency spending.

There are plenty of other jurisdictions to look to as role models: California, Ontario, Nova Scotia. The first step for Alberta, Row said, is simply to get started.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The agriculture sector will rise in importance in coming decades as the world warms and moves away from fossil fuels.

That’s the most recent prediction from Jeff Rubin, former chief economist for CIBC World Markets, whose latest book, The Carbon Bubble, forecasts a not-so-distant future in which climate change will open up the possibility for cultivating crops, historically grown in places like Kansas and Iowa, much further north. At the same time, Rubin argues, global dependence on fossil fuels will drop, freeing up capital to migrate to crops like corn and soy.

“There could be some tremendous opportunity for Western Canada, in the same provinces that are likely to be victims of the carbon bubble,” Rubin told DeSmog Canada. “Food is the only real sector in the commodity field that has been resilient, that’s kept its pricing power. You could argue that just that alone is sufficient.”

Agriculture has always played a major role in Canada’s economy. Rod MacRae, associate professor of environmental studies at York University and national food policy expert, notes the food sector trails directly behind energy and automobile manufacturing, employing one in every eight Canadians.

Last year, farm cash receipts (the income from selling commodities combined with direct subsidies) totalled $57.4 billion. To put that in perspective, the auto industry sold $82.6 billion worth of products in 2012, with oil and gas contributing $133 billion to the country’s GDP in 2013.

But the energy industry is currently in trouble: projects in the Alberta’s oilsands are stalled out, with low prices and market access woes resulting in shoddy returns.

Rubin calculates that over the last seven years, the oilsands have lost 70 per cent of share value. Yet land in the prairies has seen double digit annual increases in the same window, he says, pointing to the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board’s 2013 acquisition of 115,000 acres of Saskatchewan farmland as an example of the changing economic terrain.

Droughts in California and British Columbia may further incentivize purchases of prairie lands.

“The strength of food prices themselves are going to make that land valuable,” Rubin says. “But once you start taking into effect the corn belt and a lot of food belts may be migrating to higher latitude regions, which is certainly what all the climate change models are suggesting, then that’s an even more compelling reason.”

Farming in a Hotter World

However, diseases, pests and weeds will also benefit from increased temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide, says York University’s MacRae.

Add in the inevitable rise in extreme weather events (like microburst rainfalls that drop several inches of precipitation in a very localized area) and climate change may have some seriously detrimental side effects on Canadian agriculture.

While MacRae likes Rubin’s argument that the food system should be a greater priority, he questions if current agricultural practices will survive such rapid and significant changes.

If Canada promotes local and organic farms, it might be a different story, he says.

“If we dramatically change the food system, we can create resilience and also mitigate emissions,” MacRae said. “Then, we’re in a much better place to deal with climate change. If we manage that properly, we can create a very viable food system economy.”

That requires government intervention — specifically, a national food strategy, he says.

Without one, MacRae says, “We can’t design anything around big pictures challenges and solutions, because it’s so fragmented and nobody wants to take the lead on it so there’s no way to marshal and coordinate resources.”

Rubin said the transition from an energy-centric to a food-centric economy is already being guided by market forces.

But for MacRae the right type of agricultural industry will require a heavy interventionist approach. He added there hasn’t been an adequate level of government participation in the food system since the Second World War.

A future of carbon taxes, biofuels and local power

But a shift to an agriculture-oriented economy may not just revolve around food, according to John Parkins, professor of rural and environmental sociology at the University of Alberta.

In coming years, oilsands majors like Suncor, Syncrude and Shell may be keenly looking for new opportunities to reinvent themselves, especially if a significant economy-wide carbon tax or another type of polluter-pay system is implemented, he said.

Parkins suggests such transformation may take the form of biofuels, which can range in origin from corn to potatoes to vegetable oils to wood chips. Oilsands companies, he says, are ultimately in the business of transportation: as alternative fuels become more viable, they could significantly reduce the need for fossil fuel-generated energy.

“In a big way, [agriculture] is related to questions about how we electrify the grid and how we put fuel in our vehicles,” he said. “If the solutions become more located within agriculture, then I could see a massive transition. That takes the question around agriculture beyond just the food question to a whole bunch of other sectors.”

Yet that shift will also require some power moves from various levels of government.

While a carbon tax may serve as a stick, capital (which Parkins describes as “agnostic about what sector it’s in”) may need more incentive to invest in socially beneficial areas.

Unfortunately, MacRae reiterates that food or agriculture is rarely a priority for the federal government, making such options significantly less probable. Based on the vague planks in the platform of the three major federal parties, he’s not optimistic that will change soon.

Image Credit: Israel Photo Gallery via Flickr

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This is a guest post by Sustainable Prosperity, a national green economy think tank.

This is a big week for Canadian energy and climate policy, with Monday’s Canadian Round Table on the Green Economy and Tuesday’s premiers’ climate summit. With all the talk of a “green economy,” we’re releasing a new video explaining what that ubiquitous term really means.  

What better time than now to bust a few myths about the “what” and the “how” of a greener Canadian economy?

Myth #1: A greener Canadian economy only exists in fairy tales.  

Many people view a green economy as something a long way out that will be difficult to achieve. But the good news is that the green economy is already here in many respects. It’s in the new ways to create energy, water, food and many of the other basic necessities. It’s also reflected in programs like British Columbia’s carbon tax and Quebec’s cap-and-trade system for emissions reductions. We already know how to green our economy. We just need to do more of it.

Myth #2: Greening the economy is incompatible with prosperity

Sustainable Prosperity’s vision of a greener economy is compatible with a strong economic future for Canada, including increased productivity, employment and innovation. Leading economic voices are pointing to the tremendous economic opportunities that await those economies that figure out how to “green while we grow.”

The global consultancy McKinsey, for example, believes that by 2020 there will be a global market in excess of US$ 2 trillion for technologies and services that deliver sustainability solutions. The recent United Nations report on the “new climate economy” identified trade in US$2.2 trillion low-carbon and energy-efficient opportunities alone.  Some countries are already taking advantage of such opportunities. Germany, for example, has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 22 per cent during the past 20 years while doubling its economic output.

Myth #3: Greening the economy is just about windmills and organic food.

The view that a green economy is made up of things that are unambiguously “green” – like windmills or organic food – is pretty widespread. But if we are going to green our economy – that is make it truly sustainable in the long-term – we will need to focus on the whole of the economy. In a greener Canadian economy, every sector is improving its environmental performance.

We are not going to stop trading our resources, nor is the world going to stop needing them. But there is a great deal we can do to make our economy as a whole – resource sectors included – greener. The benefits of that will not only come in the form of greater efficiency and a smaller environmental footprint, but also in the development of sustainability solutions that will find their own markets.

Ultimately, every part our economy and society stands to benefit from a focus on “greening while we grow.”

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This is a guest post by Cameron Fenton, Canadian Tar Sands Organizer with 350.org.

This week, the cover of the Economist proclaimed "the fall in the price of oil and gas provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix bad energy policies." The article teased on the cover explains how low oil prices create the space for governments to make rapid leaps to change energy policy instead of "tinkering at the edges" urging policy makers to use this moment to "inject some coherence into the world's energy policies."

The article gets a lot of things right. Eliminating fossil fuel subsidies and forcing big polluters to pay for the mess they're making are crucial policy steps, but the piece also presents some more dubious proposals. The last paragraph of the Economist piece is the perfect example of the inherent dangers ahead.

After calling for policy measures to constrain climate change, the author encourages that "governments should be encouraging the growth of seamless global energy markets" through steps like approving the Keystone XL pipeline or lifting restrictions on energy exports. It's the logic of free-market economics laid out in Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine applied to the climate crisis – that moments of crisis be exploited to reduce regulations and open markets.

Without a big, bold and diverse climate movement these ideas may never have a chance, or worse could be transformed into policies that leave out or sacrifice those communities on the frontlines of climate change and extraction. If we've learned anything in the past decade about climate policy it's that just because policy makes sense, that doesn't mean it will happen.

It's now up to us to seize this moment, not to follow politicians but to push them and demand the kind of energy revolution that the best scientific minds on earth are saying we need. This is a moment build on the momentum of the Keystone XL fight to hold politicians to higher standard, to refuse to accept weak policy and empty commitments on climate.

According to the Carbon Tracker Initiative, $1.1 trillion of potential capital expenditure on fossil fuel projects, including $271 billion in tar sands developments, require a price of oil above $95 a barrel. With the current price hovering close to half that, Stephen Harper's government has been forced to delay the release of their 2015 budget until April. 

An eight year push to expand the tar sands is now coming face to face with the reality of the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel age, and it's something that neither Harper nor big oil are equipped to deal with.

The fossil fuel industry's business model, echoed in the policies of the politicians they prop up, is to extract every dollar and barrel they can before the bottom drops out. It's a model of business as usual that has set us on a crash course, both economically and climatically.

Like past crises, like the 2008 recession, it's unlikely that those truly responsible – CEO's and their political allies – will feel the biggest hit. Instead it's the workers, thousands of who have already been laid off, the communities and the people who will be left out in the cold.

Much of the time, movements move slow and steady, but sometimes we have a chance to sprint. This is one of those moments, and if we wait too long we might miss it. The good news is we don't have to start from scratch. The beginning of the end of the fossil fuel age has started at campus divestment campaigns, in frontline communities organizing against extraction, where local communities are stopping new fossil fuel infrastructure, and together in the streets at mass mobilizations like the Peoples Climate March.

This is the climate movement's moment to seize. It's a moment for the labour movement and climate movement to join together to demand investment in re-tooling and re-training workers to build the new economy.

It's a moment to divest from dangerous fossil fuels like tar sands and reinvest in the solutions that are here and growing, especially those being led by those communities most impact by extraction and climate change. It's a moment to recognize that climate justice needs racial, social and economic justice, and most of all, it's a moment to be bold.

Image Credit: Natural gas flaring in North Dakota by Tim Evanson.

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Steven Guilbeault is co-founder and president of Equiterre, a Quebec-based social and environmental solutions non-profit supporting communities opposed to the expansion of the oilsands and construction of the Energy East pipeline.

I recently attended a luncheon at the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, and the speaker was none other than Sophie Brochu, President and CEO of Gaz Métro.

According to Ms. Brochu and contrary to what TransCanada is trying to sell us, the Energy East project, far from being beneficial to Quebec, will have serious economic impacts on top of its enviornmental effects.

Why? Mainly because TransCanada would have to convert one of its lines carrying natural gas from the west to begin transporting oil from the oilsands. TransCanada has propositioned natural gas distributors in Quebec and Ontario to build them a new gas line, but that would cost $2.2 billion in addition to a reduction in the gas transport capacity from western Canada.

This TransCanada decision would have several spin-off effects:

–        Price increases for Gaz Métro customers in Quebec would total $100 million per year, an increase of 155 per cent;

–        As gas in the east will become more limited and expensive, some Gaz Métro customers will likely turn to heavy fuel oil, an extremely hazardous by-product of oil refining;

–        The potential increase in the use of oil would increase greenhouse gases in Quebec by 300,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, increasing local air pollution.

TransCanada has so antagonized Quebec representatives that Michel Leblanc, President and CEO of the Quebec Chamber of Commerce, publicly questioned whether the Energy East project is in the economic interests of Quebec at the conference in front of hundreds of dinner guests.

An environmental group denouncing an Energy East project is nothing new, but I cannot remember the last time a commerce CEO did so.

Ms. Brochu, as the head of Gaz Métro, deserves commendation for bringing the effects Energy East will have on gas consumers to light. But at the same time, it’s worth asking why these considerations weren’t made public by the government of Quebec.

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard recently said, "we have to participate in the Canadian economy.” But surely he didn’t mean the Quebec must sacrifice its economic health for provinces like Alberta, or oil and gas companies. Right?

Image Credit: Ecology Ottawa

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Global economies must lower carbon emissions by at least five times the levels currently achieved, according to the 2014 Low Carbon Economy Index compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

The report – Two degrees of separation: ambition and reality – clearly shows that the global economy has missed the decarbonization target needed to limit global warming to 2 ̊C for the sixth year in a row.

The Low Carbon Economy Index paints a bleak picture of what might happen if politicians and national governments don’t soon get much more aggressive at fighting climate change.

“Confronted with the challenge in 2013 of decarbonizing at 6% a year, we managed only 1.2%,” the report noted.

“To avoid two degrees of warming, the global economy now needs to decarbonize at 6.2% a year, more than five times faster than the current rate, every year from now till 2100. On our current burn rate we blow our carbon budget by 2034, sixty-six years ahead of schedule. This trajectory, based on IPPC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] data, takes us to four degrees of warming by the end of the century.”

But the index also provided some optimism for the future.

Firstly, it said that the E7 group of emerging economies — China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Indonesia and Turkey — “appears to have woken up to the business logic of green growth, decarbonizing faster than the G7 for the first recorded time, and substantially so.”

Secondly, it added that in addition to improvements in energy efficiency there has been a rapid growth of renewable energies across both the E7 and the G7, which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Referring to recent International Energy Agency data, the report notes that renewables represent 22% of global electricity supply. “Looking forwards, as some renewables approach cost parity with fossil fuels, the stage is set for a policy framework that could further accelerate the renewables roll-out.”

The report added that “avoiding more than two degrees will depend on both G7 and E7 continuing to decouple growth from carbon.”

In an accompanying media release, it also said “2°C of warming is the limit scientists agree is needed to ensuring the serious risks of runaway climate change impacts are avoided.”

Leo Johnson, partner, PwC sustainability and climate change, said that because of a decade of carbon inertia humankind now has to decarbonize at more than five times its current rate to avoid 2°C.

“Making up for the inadequacy to date will be technologically harder, financially costlier, and climactically riskier in the future,” Johnson said.

Jonathan Grant, director, PwC sustainability and climate change, added there has been a subtle change in the carbon rhetoric over the past 12 months.

“The costs of climate inaction – from flooding to energy costs to commodity pricing, to food insecurity – appear to be growing stronger,” Grant said. “A broader recognition is needed by both business and political leaders that taking decisive action to avoid the extremes of climate change is a pre-condition for sustained economic growth.”

In a related article, Grant said the gap between what governments say about climate change and what they are actually doing about it continues to widen.

“While they talk about two degrees at the climate negotiations, the current trend is for a 4C world,” he said. “There is little mention of these two degrees of separation in the negotiations, in policy documents, in business strategies or in board rooms.”

Image credit: Global warming effect in city via Shutterstock.

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This is a guest post by Mark Jaccard, professor of sustainable energy at Simon Fraser University. 

In 2007, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government asked me and four other economists if we agreed with its study showing huge costs for Canada to meet its Kyoto commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2010. We all publicly agreed, much to the chagrin of the Liberals, NDP and Greens, who argued that Kyoto was still achievable without crashing the economy. It wasn’t.

As economists, we knew that the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien should have implemented effective policies right after signing Kyoto in 1997. It takes at least a decade to significantly reduce emissions via energy efficiency, switching to renewables, and perhaps capturing carbon dioxide from coal plants and oilsands. Each year of delay jacks up costs.

Mr. Harper’s government knew this too. Years later, when environment minister Peter Kent formally withdrew Canada from Kyoto, he charged the previous Liberal government with “incompetence” for not enacting necessary policies in time to meet their target.

With the excuse that Kyoto was too expensive, Mr. Harper replaced it with his own emission target for 2020, which he presented in his 2007 policy statement, “Turning the Corner.” Two years later, he reconfirmed it alongside U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders at the Copenhagen climate conference.

Just like Mr. Chrétien, however, Mr. Harper failed to immediately implement the necessary policies. Canadian emissions have declined slightly, for which he tries to take credit. But analysts agree that the main causes are the 2008 recession, some decline of heavy industry, Ontario’s reduction of coal-fired power, and climate policies in British Columbia and Quebec. Mr. Harper’s adoption of U.S. vehicle regulations will have a small effect by 2020, not his coal regulations.

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But instead of honestly admitting that it won’t achieve the 2020 target, the Harper government still pretends that it will. And it won’t admit that its vigorous promotion of oilsands and new pipelines, such as Keystone XL and Northern Gateway, is a key factor in Environment Canada’s prediction that Canadian emissions in 2020 will exceed the target by at least 20 per cent.

Growth in oilsands emissions alone will account for half the overshoot.

Meanwhile, the U.S. will meet a similar 2020 target. And California, with the same population as Canada, will meet a tougher target.

This time, the Harper government has not asked me to comment on the cost of trying at this late date to keep its promise. I doubt it will – at least not before the 2015 election. But as a helpful gesture, I’ve done the analysis anyway, with a model like Environment Canada’s.

My analysis shows that if Mr. Harper had “competently” enacted in 2007 the regulations he promised, the effective price on carbon would have started around $15 per tonne of CO2 in 2008, reaching $100 in 2020. This would not have harmed the Canadian economy. It would have phased-out most coal plants, as Ontario has done. It would have shifted transportation toward natural gas, biofuels and electricity, as is occurring in California. It would have substantially slowed the growth of oilsands, and led to investments in carbon capture, as in Norway. Oilsands jobs would not have grown as rapidly, but would not have declined. And job creation in alternative energy would be substantial, as has occurred with renewables in B.C. and Ontario. There would be no Keystone XL, no Northern Gateway.

My analysis further shows that were Mr. Harper now to seriously pursue his 2020 promise, he would crash the economy. His frantic regulations would be equivalent to shocking the economy with a CO2 price that quickly escalates to $200 – increasing the price of gasoline by 50 cents a litre. Industrial jobs would be lost. Oilsands production would decrease.

Mr. Harper has admitted that he will do nothing for the climate that might slow the growth of oilsands jobs, as he recently confirmed during the visit of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Yet he won’t admit that this makes his 2020 climate promise false.

Isn’t it time we had some honesty in Canada? Climate change is one of the defining issues of our time. We are being horribly let down by the Harper government.

Mark Jaccard is one of eight scientists who published a commentary in Nature in June calling for a moratorium on oilsands development. Follow him on twitter: @MarkJaccard

Image Credit: Kris Krug.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The average Canadian doesn’t place the economy above other concerns like education, health care and environment according to a a public-opinion survey analysis performed by the Privy Council Office (PCO), a group of the Prime Minister’s top advisors, in January.

As the Canadian Press reports, the research suggests major federal government policies don’t line up with Canadian priorities.

The analysis followed public opinion research of 3,000 survey respondents and 12 focus groups, conducted by NRG Research Group, on behalf of the Finance Department. The PCO is not obligated to routinely make its research public.

The research showed Canadians have “little enthusiasm” for the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, “even among supporters,” the January 25 PCO report on the findings states. Since then the pipeline was federally approved.

Individuals participating in the focus group research, conducted across Canada from B.C. to Nova Scotia, citied concerns over potential oil spills off the coast of British Columbia.

“Detractors worry about the environmental consequences in the event of a spill, particularly as a result of a tanker accident off the B.C. coast.”

“There is an appreciation that increased market access for oil will be economically beneficial but there is still a desire to do so in a more environmentally safe manner.”

Participants said they wanted to see less export of Canadian resources, suggesting they be processed and refined here in an environmentally responsible way.

Megan Leslie, environment critic for the NDP, says the report “shows that the NDP have been saying all along, that B.C. MPs, Conservative MPs, are going to have to answer to this.”

“There is not support for this project in British Columbia and across Canada,” she told the Canadian Press.

“It’s also really heartening to see that people spontaneously talked about resource development through a sustainable lens. They talked about refining and processing here in Canada. People get it,” she said.

When asked for comment on the research, David Barnabe, spokesman for the Finance Department told the Canadian Press, “the use of quantitative (telephone survey data) and qualitative (focus group) research allow the Finance Department to get a clearer sense of the evolution of the public mood towards the state of the economy, Canadians’ sense of personal economic well-being and government actions in the economic arena.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The recent shelving of the Joslyn mine oilsands project in Alberta is a reminder of the fragile economics of the oilsands. No economic formula could be found to make the $11 billion project work and it has been put on hold indefinitely.           

Oil major Total E&P, the biggest partner in the project, said the Joslyn mine project “cannot be (financially) sustainable in the long term.” Interestingly, Total did not blame lack of new pipelines for squeezing profit margins either.

“You run the risk in developing fossil fuels that one day will either become fully depleted or too expensive to extract,” Philip Gass, a policy analyst at the International Institute of Sustainable Development, said from Winnipeg.

It would be difficult to deny Canada has economically benefited from developing the oilsands, a particularly difficult and expensive fossil fuel to mine and refine into light fuels — but failing to diversify the Canadian economy beyond an oil and gas ‘energy superpower’ makes for a very uncertain economic future for Canada.

“Canada could find itself an energy superpower overspecialized in the ‘old economy’ (resource extraction) in a world rapidly trying to cut carbon emissions and avoid catastrophic climate change,” Andrew Jackson, a senior policy advisor with the Broadbent Institute, told DeSmog Canada.

“Putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good economic strategy,” Jackson said.

Benefits of Energy Development Remain Largely Locked in the Sector

The idea that all Canadians benefit from a surging oil and gas industry is slowly turning into a farce. An International Monetary Fund (IMF) report earlier this year finds every dollar invested in the energy sector in Alberta grows Canadian gross domestic product — an economic vitality indicator — by 90 cents. Of this growth, 82 cents remains in Alberta, mostly in the energy sector (67 cents).

IMF‘s breakdown of $1 investment in the energy sector scenario.

“There appears to be an important scope to increase inter-industry linkages across Canada that would lead to wider sharing of benefits from the energy sector,” concludes the IMF report released in January.

Increasing inter-industry linkages or value-added jobs does not appear to be priority of the federal government. New oil pipeline projects are almost all geared to shipping Canadian oil and oilsands bitumen to refineries in the U.S. or overseas, not in Canada. Most of the heavy equipment for oilsands extraction comes from the U.S.

“The spin-off effects of the energy boom are not being felt in Ontario and Quebec, where most Canadians are,” Jackson says.

The federal government’s low corporate tax rate and the exemption of provincial resource royalties from the Canadian system of wealth redistribution (which ensures all Canadians receive the same public services) further locks the economic benefits of the energy sector within the sector and resource-rich provinces.

Energy Sector Is Not A Big Jobs Creator

“The oil and gas sector is capital intensive, not labour intensive. Manufacturing could employ more people,” David Macdonald, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says.

The same IMF report on the Canadian energy sector indicates that of the 752,000 jobs created in Canada between 2007 and 2012, the oil and gas sector can only take credit for less than 13,000, or 1.7 per cent, of them.

Job creation is not exactly Canada’s strong suit at the moment.

“The employment rate in Canada, that is the percentage of Canadians over fifteen years of age who are working, is sixty one per cent. This is the same level the employment rate was at during the worst of the recent financial crisis,” Macdonald told DeSmog Canada.

Employment rate (blue) and unemployment rate (black) from 2003 to 2013. SOURCE: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 

The official unemployment rate (seven per cent) in Canada has returned to pre-recession levels, but Macdonald points out that Statistics Canada does not count Canadians who are not actively searching for employment as unemployed.

“Eighty per cent of the so-called ‘recovered jobs’ since the recession are Canadians who have simply given up looking for work,” Macdonald says from Ottawa.

Part-time/Temporary Job Creation On The Rise

Ninety-five percent of all net jobs created in Canada in 2013 were part-time according to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Part-time workers and the self-employed, who earn on average 20 per cent less than their employed counterparts according to CIBC, now make up 30 per cent of the Canadian work force.

Canada has created more full-time than part-time jobs since the recession but the rate of part-time job creation has grown faster than full-time. Fifty-three per cent of Canadians between the ages of 25 and 44 who found work since the recession could only find temporary jobs. The rate of Canadian part-time workers who want full-time work but cannot find it has grown 37 per cent during the same period.

“Since 2011 the number of underemployed workers has exceeded the number of unemployed workers — in 2013 there were 1.35 million unemployed workers and 1.43 million additional underemployed workers. And that is before we even begin to take into account skills-related underemployment. This is an issue that needs to be taken seriously,” a Canadian Labour Congress report concludes.

SOURCE: Canadian Labour Congress

Fourteen per cent of working Canadians are underemployed or unable to get enough work to meet their financial needs, a 28 per cent increase since 2008.

Canada Needs to Create Well-Paying, Long-Lasting Jobs

“Whether you are talking about green jobs or brown jobs (fossil fuels extraction) you want to create jobs that are fair, well-paying and long lasting,” Gass of the International Institute of Sustainable Development told DeSmog Canada.

“We would like to see federal policy facilitate the creation of more specialized manufacturing jobs and encourage unionization in the work place. Unions tend to create better paying full time jobs,” Macdonald says.

A report released last month by the Parkland Institute examining unions in Alberta (the province most hostile to unions) found in terms of economic performance, wage growth is lower in Alberta compared to other provinces with higher unionization rates, despite Alberta’s oilsands boom.

“There is $600 billion sitting on companies shelves in Canada that is not being reinvested in the economy. Companies only invest where there is an expectation for growth. At the moment it appears the expectations are low,” Jackson says from Ottawa.

Corporations operating in Canada are not the only ones with low expectations for growth. When polled earlier this year by the Broadbent Institute, Canadians between 20 and 30 believed they will face a future of precarious employment and the income gap will grow during their lifetimes despite Canada’s energy boom. Baby boomers (50 to 60 years of age) in the same poll stated they think their children are more likely to slip down an economic class than move up.

“With interest rates at all time lows I would like to see public investment into mass transit, passenger rail, etcetera ramped up. Public investment can pave the way for private investment,” Jackson said.

Unfortunately the current priorities of the federal government — tax cuts, tax breaks, battling unions and cuts to public spending — are taking Canada in just the opposite direction.

Image Credit: Cheryl via Flickr

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.