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Bad analogy. Common sense tells us CO2 is a clear, odourless gas that fuels plant growth while it comprises only 0.04% of air. You're confusing CO2 with pollutants like CO, NO, particulate, smoke,etc. Water vapour is responsible for the greenhouse effect but you can't tax it. Even if climate change was man made or caused by CO2 there is nothing Canada could do to impact it because we're too small. Anyone with even a bit of stats and forecasting model background knows you can't possibly know what's going to happen in the future. Even if it was a real thing, man only produces about 3% of all CO2 so all of it could be eliminated at massive cost with absolutely no effect. It's simply a way to hike taxes on the uninformed.
I wasn't only talking about Carbon Dioxide but all the other crap too that we've been pumping into the atmosphere for the last century.
The boreal forest, which stretches across Northern Canada and Russia, stores almost 60 per cent of the world's carbon (tropical rain forests store about half that much).
The Europeans would not allow the above in the Paris accord carbon calculation.
Green surprise: Why the world's forests are growing back
If the air feels just a bit fresher, it may be because the trees are making a comeback. Despite a lot of bad news on climate, our planet has become measurably greener, as seen from space. And that points to a way out of the climate crisis.
A group of scholars at Australian, Chinese, Dutch and Saudi Arabian universities recently published, in the journal Nature Climate Change, a 20-year studymeasuring the precise quantity of the Earth's "terrestrial biomass" – that is, the total mass of living organisms, most of which are plants. They used two decades of microwave satellite readings (which are an accurate way to measure biological material) to determine how the world's stock of living things has changed over time.
Because biological matter absorbs and stores carbon, it is crucial to protecting the Earth from climate change: If we diminish the amount of plant matter, then more carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, ends up in the atmosphere.
What the study found was, in the initial years, predictably depressing: Between 1993 and 2002, the world's stock of plants declined – in large part because of large-scale deforestation in the tropical rain forests of Brazil and Indonesia.
But then, between 2003 and 2012 (the last year they analyzed), something surprising happened: The trees started growing back. Their results showed that deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia slowed sharply, while better growing conditions in the savannahs of northern Australia and southern Africa added mass, and – most dramatically – the vast forests of China and Russia grew back at a considerable pace. The last point is especially significant: The boreal forest, which stretches across Northern Canada and Russia, stores almost 60 per cent of the world's carbon (tropical rain forests store about half that much).
The result was, they reported, "an overall gain" in the world's carbon-absorbing green matter – a result that has been reproduced in other recent studies showing an expansion of the global carbon sink. Another study, published in July, found that the share of carbon emissions caused by deforestation has declined by a third in the past decade.
What is most significant is not that the world's forests are growing back, but the reasons why. Almost all of the regreening of the post-2003 years was caused, whether through explicit policy or happy accident, by countries increasing their level of urbanization, their proportion of commercial agriculture or their rate of economic growth – all of which created the conditions for a more carbon-friendly ecology.
A lot of the regreening was caused by explicit policies devoted to that task: Starting in the 1990s, both China and the European Union introduced "afforestation" programs to return former croplands to forest – in the case of Europe, which produces far more food than it needs, by paying farmers grants to convert fields to forests – in the process converting at least 6,000 square kilometres of land back to forest.
China's program, popularly known as the "Great Green Wall," is intended to replant almost 400 million hectares of forest in a 4,500-kilometre strip across northern China by 2050, making it the world's largest reforesting program, and it appears to have had dramatic results.
This was only possible because China shifted from being a deeply impoverished, rural economy based on small-hold peasant farming (which tends to denude the land of forests, as well as producing very little food) to one that is urbanized and based on higher-production agriculture – so it both no longer needs all that former forest land, and also has the financial and infrastructural resources to replant forests.
Brazil, likewise, now has the scale of economy and government to end the ruin of the Amazon forest – and, for the past decade, the political will. That ruin was largely based on wasteful large-scale methods of soy and cattle farming that chewed rapidly into virgin forest. Starting in 2004, Brazil launched a Program for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon that, in the words ofJonah Busch from the Center for Global Development, has included satellite monitoring, law enforcement, new protected areas and indigenous territories, restrictions on rural credit, and moratoriums on unsustainable soy and cattle production. This has caused Amazon deforestation to fall by almost 80 per cent – but has actually increased Brazil's soy and cattle production, because farms were forced to find commercial-agriculture efficiencies rather than simply eating up more land.
Brazil is one of several ex-developing countries that now have the resources and urbanization level to get their forests under control – but even Brazil is getting help from Germany in a program, announced this week, in which Berlin will finance a program, initially costing $830-million, to reduce Amazon deforestation to zero by 2030 – something ecologists say is easily possible.
That's modelled on a deal struck between Norway and Indonesia in 2010 in which the Scandinavian country is paying to stop the wasteful cutting of Indonesia's rain forests – a program which, in combination with modernization of Indonesia's economy, is bearing fruit, according to the satellite measures.
The return of the trees teaches us a lesson. To reduce our destructive carbon output, the solution is not to reduce economic activity; rather, it's to combine a booming urban economy with smart policies that make growth and ecology work in harmony.
Canada may already be carbon neutral, so why are we keeping it a secret?
F. Larry Martin: A conservative estimate of Canada’s existing carbon-absorption capacity indicates we could already be absorbing 20 to 30% more CO2 than we emit
Here’s a seemingly simple question: Is Canada a net carbon dioxide emitter? You would think so from reading news headlines. We’ve earned the scorn of environmentalists, NGOs, and media outlets galore, labelled with such juvenile epithets as “fossil of the year” or “corrupt petro-state.”
Sadly, lost in all the hyperbole is the actual science. There is nothing quantitative about the vague idea that, as a “progressive nation,” Canada should be expected to “do more” to fight climate change.
But therein lies the rub; Canada is poised to immediately do more to combat climate change than almost every other country in the world. How, you ask? Well, by doing more of the same. If that sounds ludicrous, let me explain.
Most Canadians would agree that our response to climate change needs to be scientifically sound, environmentally sustainable and financially realistic, as well as global, comprehensive, and holistic. Right now, our approach is none of those things; the public discourse is driven by a myopic, ideological obsession with carbon emissions alone. What else is there, you ask?
The answer comes from the most recent report (2014) of the Global Carbon Project, which states that global human-induced CO2 emissions were 36 billion tonnes. Of that, 36 per cent stayed in the atmosphere, 27 per cent was absorbed by water, and 37 per cent was absorbed by land.
That’s right — absorbed by land! Not all CO2 emitted by people stays in the atmosphere. Much of it returns to the earth, mainly through the carbon absorption and sequestration power of plants, soil, and trees.
A conservative estimate of Canada’s existing carbon-absorption capacity, based on land area and the global carbon-absorption average, indicates that Canada could already be absorbing 20 to 30 per cent more CO2 than we emit. Using the same calculation, the “Big Four” polluters of China, the U.S., the European Union, and India, which together are responsible for a whopping 60 per cent of global CO2 emissions, release 10 times more CO2 than their combined land area absorbs. Canada doesn’t seem very dirty now, do we?
So when was the last time you heard a Canadian political leader, let alone the media, talk about our carbon-absorption capacity? Probably never, because we are currently ignoring that side of the equation, for a couple reasons.
First, there is insufficient political will. The government’s top experts need a mandate to pursue in-depth measurement of CO2 absorption. Recently, Canada’s federal and provincial auditors general announced a joint audit of the country’s carbon emissions. But what credible audit would examine only half a balance sheet? There’s no reason why they shouldn’t audit our absorption capacity, too. How much CO2 did our forests and land absorb? Do some trees and topographies perform better than others? In short, what is Canada’s carbon balance?
Second, it’s contrary to the interests of urbanized, overpopulated, deforested places in Europe, Asia & the Middle East to allow vast, sparsely populated, forested countries like Canada to set the climate change agenda. It doesn’t help them whatsoever for Canada to claim our fair share of the world’s carbon absorption capacity, and emerge as one of the planet’s climate leaders.
If Europe and our other traditional “Western Allies” won’t acknowledge the free ride that we are providing them by protecting our forests and thus subsidizing their emissions, it’s time for Canada to find climate allies who understand us and share our needs. It’s time for some Green Realpolitik.
We should seek out new alliances with other large, forested countries, starting with Russia, Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Argentina, Indonesia, and Peru. These countries, and many others, will all benefit from a new approach that rewards carbon absorption, and would bring diverse cultural voices and political interests together around this important climate issue.
Many people in these countries have to choose between their forests and their livelihoods, as they scramble to survive the day. Some of them still clear-cut or burn their forests for the sake of agriculture or industry. But what if they no longer had to choose between planet and profit?
Imagine the kind of eco-friendly economy that DRC Congo, Peru, or any other forested country could build by generating carbon credits to sell to Dubai, Singapore, or Luxembourg. Countries on the receiving end of cap-and-trade credits could build entire green economies around conservation, not consumption. Financial pressure to deforest would subside, replaced with incentives to manage our forests and preserve their attendant ecosystems. As a bonus, Canada and its new, green allies could label all our exports as “proudly carbon neutral.”
Imagine, too, the possibilities for indigenous people all over the world to leverage their traditional role as protectors of the environment into a feasible economic opportunity. We are constantly looking for ways to bridge gaps between modern society and native cultures, so why not empower indigenous people to take on a leadership role as stewards of the world’s precious forests?
Canada must successfully lobby for a world market on carbon-offset credits, where CO2 absorption is part of the equation. The potential impact is huge. Based on the aforementioned estimates of our absorption capacity, and a conservative CO2 price of $40/tonne, Canada stands to gain $10 billion per year. Think about it; we might currently be giving away $10 billion to the rest of the world, including the Big Four polluters, every year, for free.
$10 billion dollars in our coffers could go a long way toward balancing the budget, investing in sustainable energy, providing social programs, incentivizing innovation, renewing infrastructure, and generally improving Canada’s fortunes. So when Prime Minister Trudeau meets with provincial, territorial, and indigenous leaders, he owes it to Canadians to put this issue on the agenda. The only thing we’re really asking is for our leaders to consider the entire carbon cycle, from emission to absorption, in order to get the “balance sheet” right. Then, and only then, can our best minds get to work on making a climate plan that is fair for all Canadians, and that reflects our true contribution to the world’s climate solution.
It would be nice to end on that hopeful note, but the realistic future looks rather bleak. The prime minister thus far seems content to position himself as a goodwill ambassador to the UN and Europe, not someone who will go toe to toe with them to defend Canadian interests. Meanwhile, our other leaders are falling victim to their own political ideologies. Rachel Notley wants to kick Albertans while they’re down with a new tax, Manitoba’s Greg Sellinger thinks he can magically reverse flooding via taxation, and Ontario’s recent climate initiative is a case study in the myopic, emissions-only approach to cap-and-trade. Quebec mayors like Montreal’s Coderre blindly oppose the Energy East pipeline, forsaking the memory of those who died in Lac Mégantic due to the dangers of transporting oil by train.
Taxing Canadians to try to make planet Earth greener is futile policy based on a half-blind approach that only considers emissions from our resources, not absorption from our land and forests. Unless we change that perspective, the inevitable result is a drag on our economy with job casualties, increased costs, and lost business opportunities, ultimately weakening Canada’s ability to compete on the international stage. And for what do we sell out our future? To let the Big Four polluters off the hook? To be popular with delegates in Copenhagen or Paris?
By taking credit for absorption, we win. By negotiating a robust cap-and-trade deal between nations, we win. By working with countries that share our interests, we win. By getting the credit we deserve, and ensuring that the planet’s real polluters pay their fair share, we win. So, the question is, why do we let our leaders set Canada up to fail?
With a simple mandate from government to factor in the entire carbon cycle, our best scientific minds can get to work assembling the evidence to create an appropriate, progressive climate policy for Canada.
I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not... I was pretty sure you were in the first quote, but now, not so sure...
Are you honestly arguing that :
Climate change isn't man made
nothing can be done about climate change
this is a conspiracy put on by the government to tax us more
Or are you simply arguing that Canada is very small, so we're a drop in the bucket compared to US/China/India? I can somewhat understand this point...
....I was going to nominate Ronnie for Prime Minister! lol Climate change isn't man made.....otherwise someone explain dinosaurs becoming extinct....I'm pretty sure all those cars on the Flintstones were zero emissions!
A) It's Jet Black
B) Insurance is required for everyone, electric cars are only purchased by a small % of people.
C) Past History - we've seen how concessions like this work (see Ontario's Green Energy Act). No thanks.
D) Slippery slope - what's next? You want elective surgery to be that woman you've always wanted to? Ok, doing so is better for society since we recognize your right to be a "woman" (yeah, ok), so here's $50K towards Pete become Patricia.
A) It's Jet Black
B) Insurance is required for everyone, electric cars are only purchased by a small % of people.
I don't think the insurance is meant to cover trackday events....
Insurance is optional... it's against the law to drive without it....
How about the air we breathe? - that's required by everyone.... to improve that,
I'm happy to support rebates on LED lightbulbs, energy retrofits, and possibly even electric cars. (although I won't be in the market for one for probably at least 5 yrs).... ? TTC transportation (I've used it twice in the past 20 yrs, so I'm not so keen on that)....
If you consider EVERYTHING, electric cars are dirtier than ICE cars.
And the immediate human cost is a humanitarian nightmare. Anyone thinking they are helping our planet and people by buying electric need to wake up, but they won't because its all about having bragging rights and automotive jewelry in the driveway.
We humans are but fleas on a dog. And every once in a while, the dog must shake.
The planet will survive. We won't.
As for carbon taxes & credits......in the most simplistic terms.....
Each guy is only allowed 2 burgers.
Guy on the left buys one from the guy on the right so has 3
They still eat 4 total burgers and there's still no reduction
11-26-2018, 02:04 PM
