Just days from the big COP 21 summit in Paris, Canadian pols are moving and shaking on the climate file. Alberta made the historic announcement that its going to start capping annual tar sands emissions. And Ontario went public with the details of its cap and trade plan. NOW chatted with Ontarios minister of the environment and climate change, Glen Murray, about concerns around cap and trade, his Paris wish list and plans for the Energy East pipeline.
ON CRITICISMS OF CAP AND TRADE GIVING A FREE RIDE FOR BIG POLLUTERS
Were still in the design phase. The challenging piece is how you protect trade-exposed industries. If you dont do it properly, they simply relocate to another jurisdiction, and their emissions just move somewhere else in the world. BC used to have a robust cement industry, [but] some of those plants have relocated. So now theyre importing cement. Free allowances [for large emitters] are there to address that, but it doesnt go on forever. It helps industry plan and buy time.
ON WHERE MONEY FROM CAP AND TRADE WILL GO
You have to make sure that money is going back into reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Were building robust public transit systems, switching to electric [trains], getting all the technology and infrastructure out there for a low-carbon economy.
ON MAKING SURE LOW INCOME COMMUNITIES ARENT STUCK WITH HIGHER HEATING BILLS
People in a lot of public housing projects in Toronto have expensive baseboard heating. We could get into integrated solar, inverters, geothermal and heat pumps and dramatically reduce the cost of heating and cooking in those buildings. Most of our programs for electric cars right now are in the form of tax credits. But most working families cant afford to switch to them. Were going to need programs like Californias, where if youre more affluent you may get a tax credit, if youre a lower-income person you might get a front-loaded grant.
ON MOUNTING PRESSURE TO RUN ENERGY EAST THROUGH ONTARIO
After Keystone XL, one of the conversations out of Paris is going to be unburnable carbon. The majority of economists and scientists agree that two-thirds of all oil and fossil fuel reserves on the books of major oil companies are unburnable if were going to survive the next century intact. The debate around pipelines has been reframed into debating whether we actually need to move this [oil] any more, whats the amount of oil thats going to be used in the economy, and once thats determined, whats the safest way to move it. A lot of us looking at the safety issue as well as environmental issues are trying to find something that addresses both concerns.
ON CONCERNS GOING INTO NATIONAL CLIMATE NEGOTIATIONS
The politicians in Ottawa have changed, but a lot of the same bureaucrats are still there. If you do what the Harper government did, which was no market mechanism, no polluter pay, no pricing of pollution and you simply use a regulatory approach, that is a very bureaucratic process. Im hoping that idea gets killed very soon.
HIS WISH LIST FOR PARIS
Im hoping the Canadian government will do two things right away: adopt the Quebec declaration that premiers and territorial leaders signed in April, which is a good foundation, and then pick up the direction from the Climate Summit of the Americas going into COP 21, trying to engage Mexico and the Obama administration in building a carbon market and a strategic plan for North America. Thats my COP 21 wish list.
ecoholic@nowtoronto.com | @ecoholicnation
