Three Amigos Summit makes progress on climate commitments, say groups

Danger of imposing too many regulations and creating too many bureaucracies also discussed

OTTAWA (CCN)

The North American Leaders’ Summit in Ottawa June 29 produced progress on climate commitments, say groups concerned about climate change, but most argue more needs to be done.

One consultant, however, warned of the danger of imposing too many regulations and creating too many bureaucracies to meet the goals.

“It’s a good first step,” said Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace research and advocacy officer Genevieve Talbot. “It is good to see all three of them are discussing a way out of the fossil fuel industry.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hosted Mexican President Enrique Pe¤a Nieto and United States President Barak Obama for talks at Canada’s National Art Gallery. President Obama also addressed a joint session of Parliament. Though the meetings also dealt with trade, human rights and other issues, the centre piece was the leaders’ statement on “A North American Climate, Clean Energy and Environmental Partnership.”

Citizens for Public Justice senior policy analyst Karri Munn-Venn described the meetings as “a positive collaboration,” but she is looking for more.

“We’ve come off a long time of lots of commitments and little action to support them,” she said. “In terms of the framework and direction there’s a lot of great stuff in this agreement.”

“I’m more curious than ever on how this plays out in terms of national action plans,” she said.

The real action is taking place on consultations on Canada’s Climate Action Plan that will be unveiled at the next First Ministers’ Conference in late October or early November, she said.

Consultations are going on through the summer and CPJ has put together materials for faith communities at cpj.ca/climate-story, she said. “As Christians we are called by God to love and care for all of the earth and to respond to climate change as a human and ecological crisis.”

She noted leaders reaffirmed the Paris climate change agreement’s commitment to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“I think most of the initiatives they talked about are positive,” said Canadians for Clean Prosperity executive director Mark Cameron. “Reducing methane emissions from oil and gas is a very low cost positive measure which will help clean up Canada’s oil and gas industry, something Canada and the United States had already indicated they were supporting.”

“It’s good to have a developing country like Mexico signing on to the same standards,” he said.

Talbot agreed, but said there also needs to be a discussion of methane production in agriculture and landfills.

“The commitment to have clean energy reach 50 per cent of electricity production in North America is a good opportunity for Canadian hydropower exports,” Cameron said. “The U.S. would need significant hydro imports to meet that target. Renewables are not enough.”

“We would like to see a stronger commitment to a common carbon price across North America,” Cameron said. “While they didn’t go there, there was encouraging language about carbon pricing and common standards.”

He would prefer a revenue neutral carbon tax that would put a straight price per ton on carbon, while reducing taxes in other areas to offset it. “The other model is cap and trade, which we don’t think is as effective,” Cameron said. “We think there is merit in looking at both models.”

“For the most part, the measures they announced are low cost, high impact, so it’s pretty hard to be against them,” Cameron said. It would be easier to get the U.S. and Canada aligned on carbon pricing than Mexico because its economy is less developed. “If you have a $30 a ton carbon price in Canada and the US, it would be a less significant impact on gas prices at the pump than it would be in Mexico.”

“Putting a price on carbon is a real critical piece of moving to Paris commitments, reducing greenhouse gases, and supporting the shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy,” said Munn-Venn.

But as some news pundits have already pointed out, no agreement with the United States puts Canada at an economic disadvantage if it goes ahead with a carbon pricing scheme on its own.

Talbot expressed concern about the use of the word “clean energy,” in the agreement. “It’s not the same as talking about renewable energy.”

“Clean energy includes nuclear, and carbon capture technologies,” she said. “We want to achieve by 2050 100 per cent renewable energy.”

Munn-Venn pointed to positive efforts to reduce emissions in transportation, but “more on regulations, broadly speaking,” needs to be there.

Nick Zahn, an Ottawa foreign-policy consultant, raised concerns about the leaders’ goal of 50 per cent clean energy by 2025. “A lot of reasonable people would be skeptical about just how democracies are going to be able to achieve something so substantial without risking a further slide into the growth of government bureaucracies and regulations that contributed to Brexit,” he said.

“When it comes to this great belief that green energy is going to lift people up out of poverty, it’s putting the cart before the horse,” he said. “We here can only afford to invest in these sorts of experimental technologies and theories, because we are in fact the beneficiaries of those who have gone before who truly understood that governments’ role foremost is to help to make sure the potential of individuals through their own talents and ambition could be unleashed.”

Zahn pointed to the struggling economy in the “resource economies of the west,” such as Alberta. “Is this what they’d like to do continent-wide?”

Munn-Venn noted the document mentions at the very end a “just transition to a clean energy economy.”

Though this transition is not laid out, Munn-Venn said “the phrase just transition is important.”

“We need to make sure people who are employed in the oil and gas sectors, for example, aren’t the ones who alone carry the burden of transitioning away from fossil fuels,” she said. It also means being “supportive of communities that are already marginalized,” such as those in the Far North, the Inuit, First Nations and “coastal communities seeing impacts from rising sea levels.”