Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper might be in lockstep with Tony Abbott on climate policy, but this week he was reminded that he is out of step with the majority of the leaders of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories.
Nine of Canada’s premiers on Tuesday called on Harper to take stronger measures to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, at a provincial climate summit in Quebec City ahead of the international conference in Paris in December.
Reuters reports that Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard stressed the urgency of enacting taxes on carbon, creating cap-and-trade systems or using technology to capture or reduce carbon emissions.
This followed Monday’s announcement from the Ontario government that it would join Quebec and California in a cap-and-trade system, setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions, with the requirement the polluter buy carbon credits.
Harper has said he will present Canada’s 2050 emission goal before a Group of Seven Summit in June, but in the absence of a meaningful national effort thus far, various Canadian provinces – like British Columbia – have taken the lead in taxing or restricting emissions.
Harper, like Abbott, is not a fan of any policy measures that involve pricing carbon, and has described “penalising” the nation’s oils and gas sector as an economically “crazy” notion.
He has, however, also expressed interest in using a system like that implemented in the state of Alberta, where heavy polluting companies must either reduce their energy intensity, or improve their energy efficiency, annually, or contribute to a technology fund at $15 a tonne.
Speaking at the Quebec conference, UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figuerres said she hoped to provide Canadian leaders with some perspective of the bigger picture of “what is going on out there” – what’s being done and what needs to be done to combat dangerous climate change.
While stressing that the “bottom-up” policy approach taken by countries like Canada was important, Figuerres also stressed the importance of understanding that the Paris agreement must be guided by science.
“This really is a policy response to the science certainty that we now have in front of us,” she said, referring to the scientifically agreed limit of a 2°C increase in temperature, which will require a global peaking of emissions within the next 10 years – just for starters.
“What that actually brings us to is an extraordinary challenge that is, on the one hand, reestablishing the ecological balance between the emissions that we will continue to emit, and the natural capacity of the earth to absorb those emissions,” Figuerres said. “We have to restore that balance.”
Of course, Canada has a prime example of this delicate ecological balance on its own doorstep, in the Northwest Passage – the formerly ice-bound shipping route around the top of North America that has recently opened up to tourism, trade and even sailing races, thanks to global warming.
“We shouldn’t be able to do it, but because of climate change, we can,” conceded the organiser of the 2017 Sail the Arctic Race – a 7,700-mile journey from New York to British Columbia that will take in the formerly unnavigable route
According to scientists and environmental groups, a race like this – albeit using specialty yachts – has been made possible due to the steady decrease in ice coverage since 1998, with more below-average than above-average years, and more open water.
Before that, according to CNN, it was a passage “so steadfastly icebound as to be almost mythical.”
The climate driven ice melt has also opened up the Northwest Passage to trade and tourism, with Canadian company Crystal Cruises planning the largest expedition yet through the sea route, with a 900-passenger cruise liner named the Crystal Serenity due to set sail next year.
Back at the Quebec conference, Ontario environment minister Glen Murray described climate change as something that “scares the hell out of me when I get out of bed every morning.
“The possibilities of a low carbon economy keep me going, keep my hope up,” he added.
“We are enough,” Murray continued, referring to the new carbon trading block including Ontario, Quebec and California, “to be able to tip the entire North American Economy to green technology. Its a great opportunity.”
