Canada blows post-oil economic opportunities

Susan Riley, July 7, 2009, Canwest News Service--There was a time when politicians claimed Canada would become a world leader in clean, green technologies -- that our educated workforce, abundant resources and entrepreneurial spirit, coupled with inspired government policy, would revitalize our economy and help save the planet.

No one talks that way anymore. How could they, with straight faces? We have ceded leadership on climate change to U.S. President Barack Obama and, to a lesser extent, the Europeans. Other countries will profit from the inevitable revolution in manufacturing, energy production and lifestyle choices that a green economy will bring. Not Canada.

We'll tag along, buying products designed and manufactured elsewhere. If, that is, we can afford them.

The U.S. congress recently passed a weak, but politically significant, climate bill after several months of frantic compromise, while our federal government continues to watch the march of progress from the sidelines.

Environment Minister Jim Prentice acknowledges that we will, eventually, have to enact a cap-and-trade system to match any new American regime -- including explicit curbs on oilsands pollution. Otherwise, we could face punitive "green" tariffs.

What Prentice doesn't say is that Canada would do even less to contain emissions if we could get away with it; that, at least, has been the Harper government's approach so far.

Set distant targets that will never be met, promise regulations that never come, protect oilsands producers from effective environmental oversight until every drop of "dirty" oil is extracted.

Obama's climate policy, by contrast, has the serious goal of transforming energy consumption and production in the U.S., although the legislation just passed is wobbly on some key points. However, the American Clean Energy and Security Act does devote $60 billion to carbon-capture-and-storage, an unproved technology intended to redirect carbon from coal-fired power plants or oil refineries underground.

In Canada, the federal government and Alberta are investing $3 billion. Which country do you suppose will get the patent, if the process works?

Of course, the U.S. Senate might yet kill the fledgling climate law. It only passed Congress by a handful of votes.

The original draft, for instance, would have forced power utilities to obtain 25 per cent of their energy from renewables by 2025; that was weakened to 15 per cent by 2020. The centrepiece of the bill -- a cap-and-trade system -- is undermined by a provision giving key polluting industries a free pass during a long transition period.

For all that, as U.S. journalist Adam Stein observed, "the compromises kept intact the core goal of placing an economy-wide cap on carbon emissions, supported by a raft of efficiency standards and investments in clean energy." Reality, not politics, will take care of the details, he argues: Technological advances, skyrocketing oil prices and the next climate catastrophe.

Obama, too, is characteristically optimistic, insisting that containing emissions "is going to end up being much less costly, much more efficient" than everyone imagines. Others regard the passage of the bill as a watershed moment in U.S. public opinion -- like the first attempts to curb tobacco use.

Meanwhile, Canada has slipped to eighth place among G8 nations when it comes to tackling climate change, according to a recent report from the World Wildlife Fund. While Germany and England have reduced emissions in recent decades, Canada's have increased 26 per cent since 1990.

"Canada is becoming increasingly isolated in clinging to the fossil economy while the rest of the world is moving on to a green economy," says Keith Stewart of the WWF.

And it isn't only the Harper government. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff was in Alberta last week, proposing a pipeline to bring Alberta gas and oil east. He is already a vocal champion of the oilsands.

The NDP, too, has lost any claim to leadership on the environment -- partly because of its over-the-top opposition to a carbon tax (still the most elegantly simple remedy) and partly because it has been more concerned, of late, with preserving union jobs.

So it falls to the Green Party, the Bloc Québécois and some premiers to press for a green future.

But Canada also suffers from a lack of follower-ship on this issue. Maybe it is the unseasonably cool spring, or concerns about the economy -- for whatever reason, the environment has dropped off the public agenda. And with it, our best chance of competing in the post-oil economy.