RORY MACLEAN
News Editor

With a commitment to only “minor adjustments” to greenhouse gas emissions targets from Ottawa, Canadians won’t likely see a change in the Harper government’s position following the international climate conference in Copenhagen.

The summit is being held Dec. 7 to 18 to draft a new agreement to replace the 1998 Kyoto Protocol for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The protocol, which expires in 2012, called for a 5.2 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2012, though the agreement was not legally binding.

Canada was a signatory of the 1998 agreement but, having made little effort toward its commitment, began to back away from it in the mid 2000s.

According to Mark Jaccard, an environmental systems analyst and economist, simply setting targets without having clear, effective policies in place will not do much anyway, can mean political suicide

Jaccard argues the policies that have been most popular in Canada — trying to curb emissions by improving technological efficiency — can not sufficiently reduce emissions.

Technological efficiency can cause a rebound effect, where consumers begin demanding more because efficient devices are cheaper. For example, governments might provide a subsidy for people to buy an energy efficient fridge, but people might just keep their old one too — the beer fridge effect.

Those who were already going to buy a more energy-efficient product can also take advantage of a subsidy, reducing its effect. Those limited resources should be spent to stimulate those who wouldn’t have otherwise bought the energy efficient product.

Some products, like certain fuel guzzling automobiles, have a status attached to them that advances in efficiency will not affect.

Efficiency cannot achieve significant reductions in emissions. Aside from choosing energy options like wind, hydro and solar, the only way to make people pollute less is to make it expensive.

The problem is pursing the policies necessary to actually reduce emissions can mean political suicide, says Jaccard.

“In a capitalist economy, it can’t be free to emit,” but politicians do not want to be seen to endorse a price increase, he said.

Following Kyoto, his firm was hired to model the cost of a carbon pricing scheme for the federal Liberal government. They knew that putting a price on carbon was the only option to reduce emissions, said Jaccard. But when he returned with an estimate that it would cost $150 per tonne of emissions reduced until 2010, the Canadian government balked.

Instead, they spent money on a Rick Mercer-led ad campaign for the One Tonne Challenge asking Canadians citizens to take the lead, he said.

Upon taking power Harper called the Kyoto targets unrealistic and refused to follow through on them.

Jaccard says he does not blame them, however.

“Politicians are the nexus of our contradictions. We want to save the planet but we don’t want a high price of gasoline.”

The political cost of proposing a carbon pricing scheme can be seen in the flameout of Stéphane Dion, former Liberal leader. He was quickly shuffled out of the position after the carbon tax he endorsed proved exceedingly unpopular.

Few actually doubt that something needs to be done to combat climate change. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a global body of scientists that assesses the most recent information on the potential impacts of climate change — has predicted an average global rise in temperature of 1.4 C to 5.8 C degrees between 1990 and 2100. The greatest changes are expected to occur at the poles.

Canadians’ confidence in the effectiveness of the international treaty process to set binding emissions targets is limited.

Over half of all Canadians would like to see the Copenhagen summit result in a legally-binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gases but few expect this to happen, according to an Angus Reid poll.

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photo: Flickr / Ian Britton