On signals

The National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy may once have seemed to be a useful diversion for the Cons on the environment file. But thanks to the Roundtable's preliminary report on greenhouse gas emissions, the Cons may be facing more heat than they'd expected this summer:

The Conservative government needs to slap a price-tag on greenhouse gas emissions very soon if it hopes to achieve its promised reductions by 2050, says a group of federally appointed advisers.

And the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy said Wednesday that the government would save Canadian businesses more money if it signed up to international carbon trading markets, rather than going it alone.

The round table's interim report, commissioned by the government, was yet another voice among a chorus of economists and environmentalists who say the only way to address greenhouse gas emissions is to make it costly to pollute. Top thinkers at financial institutions and Canadian universities have underlined that the market needs a strong price signal if industries and consumers are to truly change their behaviour...

The round table's interim report ran a number of scenarios on the impact to the economy, given certain policy choices. It found that acting quickly to achieve the target of 65 per cent below 2003 emissions levels by 2050 would have a milder impact on the economy and result in an ultimately lower price per tonne of carbon than proceeding slowly.

It shouldn't come as much surprise that Baird is responding by trying to spin a report that calls for immediate action and strong price signals as somehow supporting the Cons' intention to avoid both. But while the Cons predictably can't be bothered to acknowledge the substance of the Roundtable's report, it nonetheless figures to cause major problems for the Cons' attempts to muddy the environmental waters.

In particular, the Cons' usual claim that Canada can't afford to take real action now (if ever) will seem all the less plausible now that their own advisory body has made it clear that the greater economic danger lies in waiting too long. And the more Canadians realize that both the environment and the economy are at risk due to the Cons' inaction, the less patient they figure to be when Harper finally faces another trip to the polls.