What always bugs me about these rants is that Garth Turner tries to portray himself as clairvoyant enough to see all of these problems coming, and as someone staunchly opposed to them. Yet, (a) he never seems to have tried to raise alarm over them, even after he was booted from caucus, (b) he seems to raise these complaints only when everything has become public (e.g. his recent comments on committee members' independence), and (c) that Turner characterizes these episodes as massive affronts to democracy, ones that he thinks are unpalatable, yet he never did the logical thing in that situation: to resign from caucus in protest.

While many of Turner's criticisms are probably correct, I can't help but get the feeling that he was nowhere near as clairvoyant has he now claims that he was, and while on some issues (e.g. caucus secrecy) he would not cooperate with the party leadership, he was on most other issues a party lemming and is only now jumping on the bandwagon whenever someone else shows the bad side of the Harper government. As well, I find it more than a little inconsistent for him to blame Tory MPs for heeling to the supposed Harper autocracy when there seems to have been few instances where he did otherwise. Even on policies that he now raises a fuss over (e.g. income trust taxation, child care grants, the war in Afghanistan, the 2006 budget), Turner publically defended those decisions at the time and voted in favour of them.

Turner's accusations would be much more credible if he stopped trying to characterize himself as the flawless champion of the good in the Tory caucus, and instead acknowledged that he was party to many of these anti-democratic initiatives, but that he now sees that was taking Parliament in the wrong direction.

That brings us to the next crucial point: the cost of emissions abatement isn't necessarily the same for all polluters. Consider two coal-fired power plants, one of which is sixty years old and would need to be retrofitted with scrubbers requiring a shutdown and substantial redesign, and the other which is in the construction phase and has scrubbers planned: clearly, the cost of abating CO2 emissions from the first plant will be higher than that from the second. I'm sure you can find other illustrations (e.g. hybrid cars versus Hummers). In fact, it's exceedingly unlikely that everyone will have the same cost to abate!

Now, why's this an important point? Well, if we're imposing emissions targets across the board, as Mustafa's previous example supposes, such that if you had previously emitted 1 MT but would now be limited to 0.9 MT, we end up with a higher societal cost of abatement because we're making some high abatement cost emitters abate beyond the point of marginal damage equalling marginal abatement cost, and we're making some low-abatement-cost emitters abate too little. And to make it even worse, the more fine-grained we get --- "this unit at this power plant can now only emit 0.9 MT" v. "this power plant as a whole can only emit 4.5 MT" --- the less efficient we're likely to be!

So, what's the way out of this? Next time, I'll explain why a tax isn't much better than simply imposing limits by fiat, and why there's a better alternative.

There are three implications of this:

1. Absolute emissions rise if production increases roughly more than the increase in intensity of pollution, and only if production increase roughly more than the intensity of pollution. For the widget maker above, after a 10% reduction in intensity of GHG, it would need to raise production by over 11.1% to get back to its previous levels of emissions. If production rose by 11.1% or less, there would still be an absolute reduction in emissions.

   In the Conservative plan, there is an 18% reduction in intensity scheduled for 2010. That means that for there to be an absolute increase in emissions, production must rise by about 22% by 2010. This is not going to happen. That kind of growth in production is unheard of in an industry-wide basis, and because firms are going to be busy investing their money to become green, and won't have money to invest in expansion. There will almost certainly be an absolute reduction by 2010.

   It is less clear if absolute reductions will continue beyond that. The Conservative plan calls for 2% per year reductions going into the future. It's possible that there could be 2% increases in production each year to negate any additional absolute reductions beyond 2010. John Baird claims there will be a total of 20% in absolute reductions by 2020 from 2006. A big reduction in intensity in 2010 plus additional reductions upto 2020 amounting to a total of 40% in reduced intensity does make a 20% absolute reduction seem reasonable, with most of that being achieved in 2010.

   Let's put to rest the myth that the Conservative plan won't achieve any absolute reductions.

2. In the widget maker example, if there is an absolute cap on emissions, the widget maker would have to reduce emissions to 0.9 MT. It can achieve this in two ways: reducing production to 900 widgets, or making that 1,000 widgets produced more efficienty (of course a combination of the two is also possible). On the other hand, intensity-based reductions don't allow that second option: if you reduce production, you still have to make that reduced production more efficient.

   Put simply, intensity-based reductions force a firm to develop cleaner production. It also has no theoretical disincentive to produce. This ensures the development of cleaner technology, and limits harm to the economy. With an absolute reduction, in theory firms can be lazy, not use cleaner technolgy, and just produce less. This would result in no more cleaner technology, and harm to the economy (and the loss of consumer goods!).

   Of course, firms likely wouldn't just scale back production and forgoe possible profits. Likely under an absolute reduction scheme, firms will use a combination of reducted production and cleaner technology. But the extreme example above does illustrate that the incentives of absolute versus intensity-based reductions differ: absolute reductions will tend to harm the economy more and will result in less clean technology; intensity-based reductions will lead to much more innovation into clean technology. In particular, if you want Canada to compensate economic losses from reducing pollution through the emergence of a new green industry in Canada, intensity-based targets will do much better to foster such industry (I'm personally very skeptical that such a green industry would arise—I think it's mostly wishful thinking to make the case for emissions cuts seem easier.)

None of this is to say that absolute targets are necessarily bad, or that intensity-based targets are the way to go; absolute targets do have the benefit of resulting in a guaranteed reduction in emissions. My point is that intensity-based targets aren't necessarily a "complete and utter fraud". They can be if they are too small to result in any absolute reductions. The Conservative plan, at least up to 2010, does not call for very small reductions. Secondarily, I think there are good arguments for intensity-based targets over absolute targets. Using intensity-based targets does not mean that the government is tryign to mislead people

In any case, I don't think anyone realy cares that much about how we target reductions, so much as how much reduction we target, and how we plan to meet those reductions. The focus on the way the targets have been set is a side-show. In light of this, let's stop focusing on intensity-based targets. If you want larger reductions in emissions, fine; argue that the Conservative's targets are too low and need to be larger; don't argue that they are intensity-based and therefore must be bad.

A more useful argument, though, would be to point out that the fines in the Conservative plan and their measures for lightbulbs and energy-efficient appliances probably won't do much good. As well, the plan is *hoping* that innovation by other levels of government and the private sector will lead to additional reductions beyond what has been forcibly limited by regulations. There's a good chance that the Conservatives (and their successors?) may not meet the targets that they've set.

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