Friday, July 15, 2005

A poor start

The Liberals' Friday news dump is a doozy:
The government published a proposal for cutting greenhouse gas emissions at the companies – in mining and manufacturing, oil and gas, and thermal electricity generation – as big business's obligation to cut 45 megatonnes (45 million tonnes) of emissions by 2008 to 2012...

The 700 companies represent nearly half of total Canadian greenhouse gas emissions.

Canada's target is to cut emissions by 270 megatonnes.

Now it's a plus to finally have some corporate accountability on emissions, and a more strict trading system wouldn't have been the worst result possible.

But this makes official that businesses responsible for 1/2 of Canada's emissions will be responsible for only 1/6 of the reduction in greenhouse gases - and that's only the reduction required to barely meet the Kyoto target.

I'm also curious about the compliance costs involved. If the implication of the proposed cap is that it'll cost no more than $15 to reduce emissions by a tonne per year, then it's all the more scandalous that more action hasn't been taken yet, and that so little of the target is based on business reductions. Compare to the cost of an individual, for example, buying a new car so as to be able to reduce gas use by half, which would be a similar emissions reduction.

It's a small start. But after a dozen years of inaction, we need to be moving much further in the right direction now.

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