It is completely dark, just above freezing cold and the pressure is crushing: this is the deep-sea floor. Food is very scarce in this huge region, yet a great diversity of animals have adapted to exploit and recycle resources and thrive within it.

As technology enabled us to penetrate deeper into the ocean in the past 50 years, we discovered extraordinary ecosystems: hydrothermal vents support lush communities of unique animals, seamounts foster coral and sponge forests and abyssal plains continue to yield biodiversity novelties.

Metal-rich ores were also discovered in these same environments — and in quantities that sparked commercial interest. These deposits are now the targets for exploitation by mining companies both within and beyond national waters.

A tongue fish hovering over a sulfur-encrusted area with white crabs seen below. Photo: NOAA Vents Program / Flickr

Canada is a member of the International Seabed Authority, which is developing mineral exploitation regulations for the deep sea. It shares responsibility in the potential environmental impacts of the deep-sea mining industry.

Our research teams study deep-sea ecosystems in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. We also engage in marine conservation efforts and are strong advocates for scientific input for informed decision making. To this end, we work with an international team of scientists, the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative, to provide advice to those involved in developing the environmental regulations for the deep-sea mining code.

The mineral resources

Deep-sea mining is targeting three types of deposits all of which are formed over thousands to millions of years. Polymetallic nodules — potato-sized structures rich in manganese, nickel, copper and cobalt, and containing platinum and tellurium — form at depths of 4,000-6,000 metres, as metals precipitate from seawater. At hydrothermal vents, black smokers discharge hot (350 C), metal-rich fluids that can accumulate to form deposits containing copper and often gold, silver, zinc and lead. Crusts form on the slopes of some seamounts that are rich in cobalt, manganese, iron, copper, nickel and platinum.

We need such metals for everything from cell phones to aircraft engines. Indeed, any move to alternative energy sources must consider metal supply and the security of the supply chain. A current challenge for many countries is the negotiation of those supplies from terrestrial sources.

Several deep-water sea fans (Plumarella pellucida) photographed with a basket star at 150 metres. Photo: NOAA’s National Ocean Service / Flickr

Deep-sea mining has not begun yet on a commercial scale, but companies are developing the required technologies. The machines will collect the nodules or grind the hot vent and seamount deposits, and lift the slurry to vessel at the ocean surface.

The impact goes beyond the physical removal of the sea floor. Ships would release large plumes of particles or dump waste material into the ocean, which could have toxic effects on animals, and produce light and noise pollution.

What’s at stake

Scientists have explored less than one per cent of the deep sea. We know neither the extent of the habitats targeted by mining nor how the ecosystems will respond to it. Most of the species that live on the seafloor remain unknown to science, as do their lifestyles, interactions and ecological roles. Developing strategies to protect them is a major challenge.

We do know that many deep-sea species are particularly vulnerable to the destruction of habitat by deep-sea mining. They grow slowly, live for decades or even centuries and reproduce late in life. If ecosystems are destroyed, they take a long time to recover; recent studies found that ecosystems on the seabed of the Pacific Ocean had not recovered from experimental nodule mining after nearly 30 years.

The deep ocean provides us with many services, including storing carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere. It also contains a large repository of genetic material of potential value. Benefits reaped from this material belong to humankind rather to a particular company or nation. However, the regulation, management and benefit sharing of the genetic resources are still under debate.

Deep-sea mining will impact these remote, poorly known, resource-rich ecosystems in ways that we cannot yet predict. This lack of knowledge is a major impediment for developing strategies for sustainable use and conservation of deep-sea habitats.

Environmental leadership

The International Seabed Authority (ISA) is an organization of member states that have signed the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The ISA is writing the mining code to regulate mineral exploitation in the international seabed area. ISA has signed 29 contracts with mining companies (each with state backing) to explore vast areas of the seabed, covering a total of 1.3 million square kilometres (an area greater than Ontario).

White crabs, tube worms and a few tonguefish. Photo: NOAA Vents Program / Flickr

As a UNCLOS signatory, Canada has an opportunity and indeed responsibility to provide meaningful feedback on the mining code. Scientists, managers, lawyers and others at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, and Natural Resources Canada have the expertise to participate in the national delegation to the ISA meetings.

These Canadian government agencies have long considered topics such as ecosystem-based management, environmental impact assessments, marine protected areas and the “polluter pays” approach that are being hotly debated at the ISA. Canada’s experience in legislating and implementing some of these topics can inform the process and provide background and context in the decision-making.

Canada’s aspiring goals of global environmental leadership beyond our own continental shelf should provide the incentive to ensure that if deep-sea mining proceeds, it is in an environmentally sustainable manner.

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A small, conservative movement is growing in Ontario to “reset the conversation” around carbon pricing and bring the centre-right back to an originally-conservative position, one in support of a market-based approach to fighting climate change. But the movement faces an uphill battle.

“It’s very ironic — the idea of carbon pricing, came more from the right than the left originally,” Mark Cameron, executive director for Canadians for Clean Prosperity, and former policy director to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, told DeSmog Canada.

“There are well known conservative economists who endorsed carbon taxes for decades.”

“You don’t need to feel alone, there are a number of people coming into this tent,” said Chris Ragan, chair of the Ecofiscal Commission, associate professor at McGill University and research fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute.

Those hoping for a reset will soon see how the Ontario Progressive Conservative party engages on the topic when the governing Liberals introduce a cap-and-trade plan in the near future.

“It’s coming, it was campaigned on by the Liberals, “ said Progressive Conservative finance critic and Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli.

Fedeli was the moderator of a recent discussion with Cameron and Ragan on market-based solutions to climate change. The event in downtown Toronto was organized by Blue Skies Ontario, an idea incubator for Ontario’s centre-right (interestingly managed by Jamie Ellerton, formerly of Ethical Oil), and Canadians for Clean Prosperity, a non-profit organization working to educate Canadians about the “benefits of the polluter pay system.”

If the Ontario right does reset the conversation and agree with the left-leaning parties and economists that carbon pricing is the right approach, the debate would become focused on the details: how is the carbon tax or cap-and-trade system set up and what happens to the money? Will the revenue collected go into general government coffers, get spent on developing clean technology, building infrastructure or get returned in tax cuts?

“Once we get to the debate how we should recycle revenue, I’m going home,” Ragan told the crowd during his opening presentation on carbon pricing.

“Once we have gotten to that point, apparently we have accepted the idea that carbon pricing is sensible.”

Ontario Tories at Cross Roads

With the election of Patrick Brown as the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives in May 2015 and then to the legislature in early September, the Ontario Tories have the opportunity to redefine their party’s position on climate change. Brown has in the past come out against the idea of pricing carbon, but Fedeli says Brown is open to ideas if they work.

“He is very quick to suggest to all parties that a good idea can come from any party and he has agreed and vocalized whether if it is a Liberal idea, an NDP idea, or a PC idea, if it is a good idea, our party should be looking at supporting it,” Fedeli said.

The Liberals tried to portray Brown as an extreme social conservative during the by-election based on his voting record as an MP — a label Brown is quick to say is false. On the energy file, the Ontario Tories have for years hammered the Liberals for the mismanagement and cover-up of the cost of cancelling two gas plants. The former Ontario PC leader campaigned in the 2014 provincial election to cancel the Green Energy Act — an act that paid preferential rates to green energy producers — because it caused electricity prices to skyrocket.

Ontario shut down its coal-fired power plants, resulting in a big improvement in air quality, a major reduction in greenhouse gases and eliminated up to $4.4. billion in environmental and health costs. The plan to replace some capacity with green energy significantly underestimated the cost increase to electricity bills.

When Green Energy Act act was introduced in 2009, the Liberals projected a one per cent increase per year in electricity rates, but a 2010 forecast by the Ministry of Energy predicted a 7.9 per cent annual increase, with 56 per cent of the increase coming from renewable energy sources, reported a 2011 Ontario Auditor General report. Ontario electricity prices are now among the highest in the country and may force one in 20 Ontario businesses to close, a recent Ontario Chamber of Commerce report said.

Supporting a price on carbon and by extension a policy to further increase energy prices may prove difficult for the Ontario Tories after years spent hammering the Liberals on the energy file.

Right-wing Idea?

When finding a policy to reverse climate change, there are really only three options that economists say can work: regulation, a carbon tax or cap and trade. 

Regulation can achieve the goal of reducing greenhouse gases but is economically “inefficient” and “moral suasion and green subsidies are ineffective,” according to environmental economist Mark Jaccard and researcher Nic Rivers.

“One of the problems — age old problems — with regulation is that it becomes a source of potential corruption,” Ragan said.

Markets are remarkably flexible in responses to changes, they decentralize power away from a central authority and they drive innovation, but do a poor job of protecting the environment because “we don’t put a price on it,” Ragan said.

Cap and trade and a carbon tax are market mechanisms that leave the decision-making to industry to determine how to cut emissions and beat their competition.

Originally a cap-and-trade scheme was a right-wing idea, implemented by the first Bush administration to successfully reduce ozone-depleting chemicals. The plan, putting a hard cap on emissions and allowing polluters to buy or sell pollution credits to meet the target, gave industry the power to determine what was the best approach. The idea was disempowered the regulators used to overseeing command-and-control regulations and created an economic incentive to cut pollution. As a result, emissions fell by three million tonnes in the first year, well below targets.

A carbon tax sets a price per tonne of carbon emissions, requiring industry to either pay the tax or cut emissions. Granted a new tax, is not normally an idea a right-leaning politician would support to get re-elected, but if it used as a way to cut other taxes — taxes that hinder economic growth — then the argument shifts. Furthermore when compared to regulation or cap-and-trade, it is the most efficient policy tool to implement.

“In B.C., it took them six weeks to implement the carbon tax,” Cameron said.

A cap-and trade system is more administratively complex to set up and the complexity can open the system to exemption and backroom maneuvering, but that can happen with any system, says Ragan.

“We need to hold governments to account for doing what they said they would do,” Ragan said.

Follow the Money

Prime Minister Harper says a carbon tax is a tax grab dressed up as an environmental policy.  A carbon price could be designed in a way to funnel billions into government coffers, but as the British Columbia model demonstrates, all of the money collected is returned to consumers and businesses in the form of revenue neutral tax cuts with accountability baked into the legislation.

“The [B.C.] Auditor General has to certify that the carbon tax is being treated in a revenue-neutral manner,” Cameron said.

The B.C. model demonstrates the tax as an environmental policy can work. Since the tax was implemented, the B.C. GDP per capita grew faster than the Canadian average, the per-person consumption of fuels dropped over 16 per cent, while in the rest of Canada it grew by three per cent, reported the Economist in 2014. Denmark, Ireland, Sweden have all cut emissions using carbon taxes, while Norway’s emission have risen largely because of the boom in their oil production.

Canadian Opinion

78 per cent of the Canadian population believes the climate is changing. Of those who believe the climate is changing, 72 per cent think it is caused by human activity, according to a Forum Research poll. Those numbers drop for conservative voters to 63 and 50 per cent, respectively. The May 2015 poll is considered accurate +/- 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

When the climate change debate hits the Ontario provincial floor, the Progressive Conservatives, under their new leader Patrick Brown, will have to weigh the fact that a large segment of their base sees no change in the climate or doesn’t believe humans are too blame.

So will the Progressive Conservatives debate the minutia around revenue neutrality, administrative complexity and industry exemptions or decry the whole exercise as a job killing tax on everything? Time will tell if the conversation gets reset.

When asked if Fideli believed that “climate change is happening and we need to do something about it?”

He said: “Carbon pricing will be presented to the legislature in the fall, we need to be ready to be part of the debate because Kathleen Wynne is going to pass something with or without our input.”

So was that a yes or a no?

Image: Blue Skies Ontario via Twitter

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It may come as a surprise to some that Alberta pioneered carbon pricing — not just in Canada, but for all of North America.

That’s right: the province with the fastest growing greenhouse gas emissions in Canada was the first place on the continent to put “polluter pays” legislation into place almost exactly eight years ago.

“Even back in 2007, Alberta was getting pressure over its environmental management, particularly of the oilsands. This may have been in response to that,” Matt Horne, associate B.C. director at the Pembina Institute, told DeSmog Canada.

Since then, three other provinces have joined the carbon pricing club: British Columbia with a carbon tax and Quebec and Ontario with cap and trade.

Each system is meant to, in theory, shrink provincial carbon footprints while allowing economies to remain strong and competitive. (If you want to totally geek out on the differences between Canada's carbon pricing systems, check this paper out).

With support for a national carbon pricing system growing, Canada need look no further than these provinces to learn some lessons. So, let's start with the first: Alberta.

Canada’s First Carbon Price: The Alberta Carbon Levy [view:in_this_series=block_1]

Although a pioneering system, Alberta’s carbon levy or Specified Gas Emitters Regulation (SGER) has not been effective in decreasing emissions in the province.

The carbon levy goes after the big emitters in the province — those producing more than 100,000 tonnes of GHG emissions. Mainly oilsands operations and coal-fired power plants — which make up roughly 50 per cent of the province’s total carbon footprint — fall into this category.

Rather than requiring emitters to make overall reductions in GHG emissions, the Alberta system requires a 12 per cent reduction in GHG-intensity of their product.

That means that as long as a project or facility produces 12 per cent less GHG emissions per dollar or barrel of bitumen than it did in the baseline year, the overall carbon footprint of that project is free to grow.

“Alberta’s system is an intensity-based system, which means you can potentially increase your total emissions as long as your intensity goes down,” Philip Gass, a senior researcher at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, said.

Companies unable to make the 12 per cent reduction in energy intensity pay a $15 levy per tonne of GHG emissions.

Source: Pembina Institute

The Alberta system also allows for carbon offsets — the option to purchase the right to emit from other large emitters that have met their reduction targets. 

However, the flexibility provided to polluters in Alberta is both the system’s strength and weakness.

“The short answer is Alberta’s carbon levy has not been effective,” Horne said.

“But that is not an indictment of the system itself. The problem stems from the relatively weak parameters they’ve used to populate it.”

Alberta’s carbon levy may need to toughen up as international pressure to limit emissions grows.  

As the world prepares for the upcoming UN climate summit in late 2015, some countries have turned their attention to the oilsands, asking how Canada plans to curtail the resource’s growing emissions. A recent report argues development of the oilsands stands at odds with Canada’s climate targets.  

For more on Alberta's carbon levy read How Carbon Pricing Currently Works in Alberta from the Pembina Institute. For a more detailed analysis of the levy read Andrew Leach's analysis in the Canadian Tax Journal (pdf).

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.