Planning for failure

The Saskatchewan Party's latest excuse for a climate change announcement passed last week with little more than a passing mention in the media. And on the merits, it certainly earned that lack of notice.

But given the certainty that the Saskatchewan Party will end up pointing to the announcement later in response to the criticism it deserves for a wholly negligent climate change policy, let's take a few minutes to dig into what makes the plan so useless.

Even the headline numbers involved in the "industry standards" are pathetic on their face: a theoretical 1.1% reduction in the emissions of Canada's worst (and worsening) climate offender over a period of 12 years, compared to the national commitment to reduce emissions by 30% in the same time span. (Apparently the Moe government's new intention is to claim victory if emissions have been reduced at all by that time, signalling its determination to refuse to participate in any solution to a serious and immediate collective action problem.)

And indeed, even the closed list of industries involved will see target numbers of only 5-15% - meaning that absolutely none of Saskatchewan's largest emitters are being asked to do more than half their theoretical share to meet what's already an inadequate goal.

But matters look even worse behind that top-line number.

To start with, the targets themselves are mere "intensity" measures. I've previously noted how those are designed to fail: not only do they allow for emissions to increase as long as an industry manages to push its overall production up higher, they may even result in the government handing out credits to corporations which ramp up production by more than their emissions increase.

That's right: Scott Moe's climate plan includes free money for increased emissions.

And to make matters worse, the new standards are set based on 2018 numbers. That means that in most covered industries, the continued emission increases resulting from the Saskatchewan Party's previous decade of neglect are locked in. And conversely, any industry which bothered to act responsibly by reducing emissions in the interim will receive no credit for that effort.

Of course, it's telling that the Saskatchewan Party can't even introduce what's supposed to be an environmental regulation without emphasizing that its primary emphasis is serving big business. And this is exactly the type of industrial emission plan one would expect if the government ignored all climate science and consulted only with industrial emitters, asking them what they'd view as a fully agreeable fig leaf while emphasizing a willingness to continue letting them pollute.

But with our planet already overheating, we should be appalled by the selfishness of a government determined to keep doing as much damage as it and its corporate cronies can get away with.