THE REAL PLAN IS NO PLAN

The Conservative Party of Canada today announced their Real Plan (tm) on climate change. Since I like digging into plans and policy, I am going to summarize this entire 33-page document for you. What fun!

PAGE 1: Picture of a hand holding a maple leaf.

PAGE 3: Message From Andrew Scheer (tm), outlining how past Tory prime ministers were totally environmentalists. Did you know Robert Borden championed Arctic exploration? And John Diefenbaker proclaimed Canadian Environment Week! That is completely relevant to climate change!

PAGE 4: Standard conservative whinge that Canada only accounts for 1.6% of global carbon emissions, and what about China? China pollutes so much! (Not mentioned: the fact that while Canada only accounts for 1.6% of global carbon emissions, we also only account for approximately 0.5% of global population so we are, in fact, punching way about our weight in terms of global emissions.)

PAGE 5: The Paris Agreement is good! But Justin Trudeau, that failure, is nowhere near close to meeting Paris Agreement commitments for carbon reduction. The carbon tax is insufficient to do the job. (The Paris Agreement is at this point obsolete as a goal since it was honestly too unambitious when it was signed, and this criticism was made by many in 2015. Canada is nowhere near meeting Paris Agreement commitments, but frankly the entire country is a failure on this point and not just Justin Trudeau. Oh, and the carbon tax is insufficient to do the job. It needs to be much stronger to be effective rapidly on the level that is required. I somehow doubt the following pages of this document are going to say "we should make the carbon tax more punitive." It is amazing that the Tories are managing to get this wrong in multiple directions at the same time.)

PAGE 6: Canadian families and small businesses will pay 92 percent of the carbon tax and big business is only on the hook for eight percent! (These figures are based on a budget report talking about gross revenues which completely ignores carbon tax rebates to individuals. It is the dumbest line possible to discuss the carbon tax.)

PAGE 10: Picture of Andrew Scheer watering a plant.

PAGE 12: Picture of Andrew Scheer wearing safety glasses looking at a giant metal thing. Proposal of the Green Investment Standards, which will set an emissions limit on companies - and if they surpass that limit they need to engage in "certified green investments." The investments can include R&D spending, green bonds or other environmental financial instruments, or investing in clean tech companies or research funding at universities. (This is blitheringly stupid. There is already heaps of environmental R&D spending and you can't throw a rock without hitting a "green" mutual fund these days, and all of that has done precisely nothing to limit emissions because the thing that actually limits emissions is making emissions cost money. That is the point of all carbon pricing and/or hard carbon capping. Nothing else works, and pretending otherwise is, well, more or less what I expected from the Tories.)

PAGE 13: A two-year Green Homes Tax Credit which will allow taxpayers a 20% refundable credit on their green home renovations! Create a market for Energy Savings Performance Contracting! A voluntary net-zero ready building standard, instead of strict regulations requiring all new buildings to be environmentally emission-friendly! Encouraging greater use of wood and low-carbon cement in building projects! (In order: first, only about two-thirds of Canadians own their own homes, and a twenty percent credit capping at $20,000 isn't going to prompt less affluent homeowners to environmentally retrofit; this is a credit for rich people, like many Tory tax credits are, and needs to be more in the neighborhood of 80% if you want mass adoption. Also, limiting it to two years will limit its flexibility when you want more people to use it; if you want to sunset it to encourage early adoption, five years is a better window. Energy Savings Performance Contracting is a tool for finding ways for government agencies to fund energy-cleaning/efficiency refits without breaking their budgets, not for average homeowners - not least because it's prone to abuse, like the common American federal government practice of determining savings numbers on initial estimates rather than measurable gains. A voluntary standard isn't actually a standard, particularly during a housing crisis when all incentives point towards building as cheaply as possible. And encouraging wood and low-carbon cement use is great - but given the lack of fiscal incentives, probably toothless in intent.)

PAGE 14: Picture of Andrew Scheer walking past a tractor in the snow. Picture of Andrew Scheer looking at a plant. Promise of a Green Patent Credit, which will reduce tax rates on income generated from Canadian green patents to 5%. Promise of a Green Technology and Innovation Fund to fund Canadian green tech initiatives. (The Green Patent Credit isn't a bad idea, but limiting it to patent income is problematic because if you want green jobs you probably want that credit to go to manufacturing and service startups as well. There is nothing wrong with a Green Technology and Innovation Fund, and I say that because Canada already has the Sustainable Development Technology Canada Fund which does exactly the same thing.)

PAGE 15: Picture of Andrew Scheer on a snow-covered deck. Promise of a "go-to online hub for green technology innovators." (It sounds vaguely like a government-sponsored equivalent of LinkedIn and frankly sounds like MBA babblespeak: meaningless and pointless.)

PAGE 17: Picture of Niagara Falls. Discussion of further greening the power grid by making fuel generator use a thing of the past by expanding power grids, "fostering" renewable power, and by increasing nuclear energy use. Promise to increase availability and use of "renewable fuels." (Every government in living memory has promised to expand power grids to remote communities and it is, at best, a slow and steady process in the best case scenarios. Renewable power expansion is not a new thing and "fostering" is a meaningless term that is anything you want it to be. Nuclear energy is extremely expensive and, in case you haven't been watching Chernobyl, also always has the potential to go hellishly wrong. "Renewable fuels" means biofuels, and the biofuel industry has spent the last thirty years trying to make them even vaguely close to profitable, and has consistently failed at this; electric cars are simply better and more sensible as a path forward.)

PAGE 18: Picture of an inuksuk. Promise to work with Canada's Indigenous communities on environmental projects. (Andrew Scheer recently decided to publicly complain about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls report because he was offended by the use of the word "genocide" so... yeah.)

PAGE 19-21: Make the environment nicer and prettier! Wetland protection and management, promise to support the completion of the Canadian Wetland Inventory, invasive species strategies, management of protected areas, modernize air quality standards. (Just about all of this is stuff the Canadian government already does. "Management of protected areas" is, however, given how the section refers to "commercial fishers," code for "allowing business to do as much as possible.")

PAGE 22: Picture of a polar bear. Promise to restore the National Wetland Conservation Fund. Promise to restore the Recreational Fisheries Conservation Partnership Program. (The NWCF's funding was diverted to other environmental projects and the government continues to participate in wetland conservation - in fact, the Real Plan (tm) tacitly admits this on page 23 - and the RFCPP wasn't cancelled but simply had its funding reduced. Also, polar bears do not live in wetlands or recreational fisheries.)

PAGE 24: Picture of Andrew Scheer on a boat pointing at something while a little girl watches. Promise to enforce environmental laws. Promise to modernize merchant shipping routes "to reduce the impacts of shipping on marine life." (The Tories promising to enforce environmental laws is sort of a bad joke given their track record. Also, "reducing the impacts of shipping on marine life" inevitably becomes "make the fastest routes possible so as to impact them less.")

PAGE 27: Picture of Andrew Scheer at a podium. Promise to promote liquified natural gas, because the world will be better off with "less Chinese coal." (LNG production is the major reason Canadian carbon emissions are skyrocketing, because while it is technically better than coal in terms of carbon emissions, it is still too much. This is the Canadian version of "clean coal" arguments that American coal companies love to pretend is a thing.

PAGE 29: Picture of Andrew Scheer looking at corn. Complaint that Canada has already invented so many carbon-emissions reducing technologies, and if China would just fit their coal plants with carbon capture technology that is like, half a Canada right there. (Setting aside the "but CHINA" argument: carbon-reduction technogies are great, but the way to actually get them used is to reduce their costs. By requiring their use, either explicitly or via carbon pricing. Which the Tories aren't promising to do.)

PAGE 31: Picture of Andrew Scheer giving a speech in front of a Canadian flag. Promise to launch a "Canadian Clean" national brand to promote clean Canadian products. (Again: if salesmanship were the only thing we needed to stop climate change, we would have stopped it decades ago. This isn't a bad idea per se, but it's not a solution to anything. Much like this entire plan, which is a bunch of sprinkles in search of a sundae, if you like dessert metaphors.)

MORE LIKE ORE-GONE, AM I RIGHT

Speaking of climate change and carbon taxes, a bunch of Republican state senators in Oregon have either fled or are in the process of fleeing the state in order to prevent a carbon tax bill from passing, and it is kind of insane.

The carbon tax bill has become a major culture clash between the more urban/liberal and rural/conservative parts of Oregon (I know, you're shocked that a urban/rural divide is at the heart of a political conflict, simply shocked), mostly because part of it is being enacted as a gas tax. Said gas tax will effectively increase the price of a gallon of gas by about $1 over fifteen years under reasonably conservative projections. (There are worse projections, which essentially rely on everybody refusing to ever buy an electric vehicle ever and rolling coal in big trucks until Doomsday. But, realistically: one dollar over fifteen years.) The current price of gas in Oregon varies from place to place, as it does everywhere, but generally speaking it's about three bucks and change right now, so what we are really talking about here is a twenty-five percent increase in the cost of gas over, again, approximately fifteen years. This is what has sparked the latest iteration of the American culture war, because rural conservatives say they feel attacked because they drive more than urbanites do. (Actually, about seventy percent of adult urban Oregonians are regular drivers, but, well, culture wars.)

The result of all this anger was that the Republican members of the state senate (who overwhelmingly represent rural Oregonian districts) are fleeing/trying to flee the state, because if they aren't there then the state senate doesn't have quorum to hold a vote. Now, Democrats have actually used this same tactic on two separate occasions in the past - in Wisconsin to try to prevent right-to-work laws from being passed and in Texas to prevent gerrymandering bills from being passed - and so the usual crowd of self-superior centrists (who are always the worst people to talk to about politics, because every political position they have boils down to "there are problems on BOTH sides, which I define as Everybody Who Is Not Me, and they should just deal with the problems with common sense, namely mine") are trying to treat this as Just More Politics, but that's wrong for a couple of reasons.

First off, when the Democrats did it in Wisconsin, it was more of a protest than an actual prevention tactic, because their objection was that the anti-union legislation was being included in a budget bill; they were aware that the Republicans could pass the legislation simply by passing it in a standalone bill without fiscal items on it, which wouldn't require quorum, and that is exactly what happened in the end anyway and then the Democrats returned to vote on the budget. When they did it in Texas, that was in response to a gerrymandering bill, which was expressly designed to unfairly reduce the political power of Democrats (or, if you like, "not-Republicans," which in America is usually the same thing), and there is no good reason to co-operate with somebody who is trying to kick you in the balls. What's happening in Oregon is not either of these scenarios: it is simply an attempt by the minority to suppress the majority. (Most American governments are extremely badly designed and this sort of thing is why.)

But, just as importantly, the antics of the Republicans in this matter are insane. One Republican said that if police came to arrest him, they should "send bachelors, and come heavily armed; I’m not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon, it’s just that simple." Fifty years ago, many Black Panthers were arrested and/or assassinated for talk like this. Similarly, right-wing militias promised to respond with "deadly force" to protect fleeing Republican state senators, because if you are a right-wing militia, you get to say that sort of thing without being called a terrorist.

Again: this is over the price of gas gradually increasing by a buck over a fifteen year period.

DOUG FORD'S CABINET SHUFFLE

Doug Ford shuffled his cabinet last week and you should not even remotely care about this, because cabinet shuffles (provincial, federal, whatever) are one of those things the media likes to pretend are important and they are not important in the slightest. Cabinet ministers are, honestly, mostly glorified spokespeople/managers. They do not get to dictate policy, because all political parties, regardless of bent, dictated policy from the party's leadership core. It does not matter if Lisa Thompson is Minister of Education or if Stephen Lecce is, because at the end of the day neither of them makes any decisions about budget cuts. (Lecce will probably be a better spokesperson than Thompson was, because Thompson is an idiot and it would be hard to be worse. But so what?)

BOMB BOMB BOMB, BOMB BOMB IRAN

The USA went right up to the tippytoe line of going to war with Iran last week then changed its mind at the last second, with Donald Trump claiming it was because he didn't want to kill hundreds of civilians, which is laughable and obvious bullshit because the dude brags all the time about how he wants to nuke the bad guys and, uh, nukes kill civilians. Like, seriously, am I supposed to pretend to be objective about the idea that Donald Trump has human mercy in his heart at this point?

Anyway, this sort of posturing was always going to be the inevitable result of the USA pulling out of the Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, because the entire point of that plan, really, was to try to avoid situations like the USA and Iran waving their dicks at each other until someone blows something up. The JCPA mostly worked pretty well at what it was supposed to do: it got Iran to reduce its nuclear weapon production capability and agree to monitoring to prevent them from making nuclear weapons on the sly (which are, it turns out, not that easy to make in secret). And that happened! And then Trump pulled the USA out of it, largely because he's an idiot.

Seriously, this is one of the most lopsided policy issues I've ever studied. I've read most of the critiques of the JCPA and with one major exception, they are all either blitheringly dumb, based in misinformation, or both with a massive dose of wishful thinking on the side that boil down to "Obama COULDA SO gotten a better deal by threatening sanctions but he didn't CARE enough," reasoning that misses that in order for the deal to work you needed Russia, China and the EU on board, and all of them were no longer willing to support sanctions, so... yeah.

The one critique of the deal that I have read is reasonable is: the major conflict in the Middle East is not really "Israel v. Muslims" (as many assume), but actually Iran versus Saudi Arabia - the heart of Shia Islam versus the heart of Sunni Islam, who both also happen to be large and powerful countries in their own right. (This is not to say that either of them particularly likes Israel. They do not. But it's fair to say they're not particularly scared of Israel in the sense of Israel proactively starting a war with them.) The argument here is that the JCPA essentially freed up Iran to start flexing economic and political muscle on the world stage, which in turn meant that Saudia Arabia felt it had to counter-flex, and so on and so forth, and there is some merit to that argument because it's mostly a reasonable analysis, but again, this is where you then come back to "unless your plan was to nuke or permanently occupy Iran, what the hell better option than the JCPA was there?" and this is the point in the conversation where the other side just becomes a series of cricket noises.

PS: war with Iran would be a terrible idea and make the war in Iraq, which is one of the greatest American foreign policy blunders/crimes of all time, look like Candy Land by comparison.

THE ENTERTAINMENT SECTION

Movies watched/rewatched this week:

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019, Michael Daugherty, theatre) - 3/5

Murder on the Orient Express (1974, Sydney Lumet, Kanopy) - 3/5

Murder on the Orient Express (2017, Kenneth Branagh, Google Play rental) - 3.5/5

We're also halfway through The Terror and it's pretty good so far. Lots of snow.

See you in seven.