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Does Canada’s stance on climate change constitute moral negligence?
Does Canada’s stance on climate change constitute moral negligence?.
How could the media report, with apparent pride, Canada’s military and civil contributions to humanitarian rescue efforts in the Philippines while ignoring our nation’s commitment to ensuring that present disasters are mere prelude to greater future catastrophe?
Tifón Haiyan-Yolanda en Filipinas (Erik de Castro – Reuters) – mansunides/flickr, creative commons
Reference
Greenhouse gas reduction called threat to oil industry – Politics – CBC News
Greenhouse gas reduction called threat to oil industry – Politics – CBC News.
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Alberta’s proposed oil and gas regulations are too ambitious and will hobble the Canadian industry’s ability to compete, says the industry association in Alberta government documents obtained through provincial freedom of information laws.
The industry group says the proposed regulations won’t buy any goodwill and the government should delay their introduction.
The 200-page trove of memos, correspondence and reports offers a rare glimpse behind boardroom doors at the negotiations between industry and government to craft rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers offers blunt assessments of Alberta’s plan to introduce rules that would demand industry reduce greenhouse gases by 40 per cent per barrel and charge $40 per tonne of CO2 above that level.

Alberta already has a carbon pricing scheme that costs CAPP members about 10 cents per barrel of oil. The new plan could cost industry up to 94 cents per barrel.
“Proposed 40/40 is 9 fold increase over current. Why such a dramatic step?” writes David Daly, CAPP’s manager of fiscal policy. The average price that a barrel of western Canadian bitumen fetched in 2013 was about $75, so the carbon-pricing increase would represent about a one per cent increase in the cost of a barrel oil.
That is just one quote from a file titled, CAPP Concerns and Questions for Alberta and Consultants. It tells the tale of an industry afraid that strong oil and gas regulations will rob it of what little competitive edge it has.
Strikingly candid comments
The candour is striking:
- “Will higher stringency requirements impact production and revenue? Very likely.”
- “GHG policies should be done in concert with other jurisdictions. US has no carbon tax. Why be so far out in front of them? What is that based on?”
- “Will higher stringency requirements [oil and gas regulations] deliver greater GHG reductions? Unlikely. The challenge with the oil sands is that current technology is not yet available for deployment.”
In the end, the industry’s prescription is to delay putting the regulations into effect.
“Major policies like this one should not be fast-tracked. Adequate time is required for study analysis and consultation,” writes Daly.
That suggestion irks environmentalists, who point out that negotiations over oil and gas regulations between industry and the federal and provincial governments have been going on for over two years.
“This is not a case where we need more research. We need more action and that’s what hasn’t been happening,” argued Clare Demerse of the Pembina Institute, an environmental think-tank.
The industry defends itself by pointing out that the documents provide just a snapshot in the middle of negotiations and that nothing is final yet.
“What we want to ensure is that we’ve got a competitive industry in Canada that can continue to grow, but also, very importantly, can continue to invest in the technologies that are going to be extremely important in driving down greenhouse gas emissions,” said David Collyer, CAPP’s president, in an interview with CBC News.
In the documents, the CAPP plan calls for a 20 per cent intensity reduction and $20 per tonne of CO2.
That is half of what the Alberta government’s plan is and only marginally stronger than the regulations now — 12 per cent and $15, said Demerse.
But the CAPP document explains the association’s approach.
“Will higher stringency requirements ‘secure’ social license [public support] and forestall negative policy action elsewhere? Unlikely,” writes Daly.
Demerse, on the other hand, believes that weak regulations are just going to make doing business harder for the oil and gas industry.
“The customers of the oilsands are asking very tough questions. Right now, the sector does not have good answers to give. When they continue to ask for what is essentially the weakest possible regulation, I don’t think that is working for their real best interest.”
Canada’s greenhouse gas stance slammed as COP 19 seeks solutions – Technology & Science – CBC News
Canada’s greenhouse gas stance slammed as COP 19 seeks solutions – Technology & Science – CBC News.
The annual United Nations climate conference, known as the 19th Conference of the Parties or COP 19, is underway in Warsaw with considerably less fanfare than years past. Expectations for this one are even lower than usual, after the disappointments and plodding progress of the last few conferences.
World leaders are backing away from the 2015 target for a global climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, and the news for people concerned about climate change has not been encouraging.
It’s a situation former Irish president Mary Robinson finds profoundly worrying. She now runs the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, and she has a blunt and rather inconvenient message for global leaders and fossil fuel-producing countries like Canada: If you’re serious about preventing the worst of climate change, you have to leave that bitumen, oil and gas in the ground.
Last year marked another record year for global greenhouse gas emissions. And a recent report from the UK found fossil fuel subsidies around the world added up to about $500 billion in 2011 – on the order of five times the amount of subsidies doled out to renewable energy.
The prospect of keeping the global rise in temperature below two degrees Celsius looks highly unlikely if current trends persist. And Canada, for its part, is not on track to meet its own commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Robinson’s message about reducing oil and gas production is one that would seem to be a tough sell in a country whose economic strategy is largely built around fossil fuel exports.
‘Moving to a low-carbon economy would be very good for Canadians’ futures, and for everyone’s future. And as well as that, we don’t have a choice. We’re running out of time.’– Mary Robinson, former Irish president
“We need two messages,” Robinson told The Sunday Edition’s Michael Enright. “Moving to a low-carbon economy would be very good for Canadians’ futures, and for everyone’s future. And as well as that, we don’t have a choice. We’re running out of time.
“How can Canadians not see that their grandchildren will share the world with nine billion other people (by 2050)? And I have no certainty at all that it will be a livable world.”
Robinson adds that she fears it will be, “a world of catastrophes over and over again. The 200 million people who may be climate-displaced – where are they going to go? There will be no country that will be immune to this. If [the planet] becomes too dangerous, it will be too dangerous for Canadians, for the children and grandchildren of those alive today.”
- Climate change draft report predicts war, heat waves, starvation
- Climate change report’s ‘temperature hiatus’ fuels skeptics
- Time for climate change fix running out, IEA warns
Robinson served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002, and she approaches climate change as a human rights and justice issue.
She argues that in the developing world, climate change impinges on the most fundamental human rights to food, water and life itself.

“Canada is one of the countries that has benefited from fossil fuel growth and has a responsibility to give leadership. And the whole of Africa is responsible for about the same level of emissions, but African countries are suffering hugely in their food security and long periods of drought and flooding. There is an injustice in how climate is impacting them.
“Canada has been a country proud of its development record. It gives a lot of development aid. Well, all that development aid will be wiped out by terrible climate impacts.”
Robinson plans to be a vocal presence in Warsaw. She has no great hopes for a breakthrough on a global climate pact by the time the conference closes next Friday, but she remains optimistic that the global community will respond to the challenge before it’s too late.
“We’re not, I think, a stupid race. I know that political timescales can be very short. But I believe that these next two years – 2014, we have to change course, and 2015, when we need sustainable development goals and a robust, fair climate agreement – we can still do it.
“We need a forward-looking leadership, and that won’t come from Canadian politicians unless it comes from the Canadian people.”
[Listen to Michael Enright’s full conversation with Mary Robinson on The Sunday Edition this weekend, just after the 9 am news, or on theSunday Edition website.]