Juno News - Is Trudeau being honest about his climate policy？

00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show

00:00:05.920 i believe we have ross mckittrick back on the line now ross uh good to talk to you here what

00:00:13.620 does it feel is really the the misdirection taking place here where the government is saying

00:00:18.460 on one hand that this is not a heavy-handed regulatory process on its part um well the the

00:00:25.800 comment that i made in my op-ed was that um it's one thing for trudeau to say we believe in the

00:00:32.660 economic principles of efficient climate policy but his actual policies are anything but he's um

00:00:39.600 yes he's got this elegant little carbon tax going but the real cost of his policy are all the other

00:00:45.920 regulations the clean fuel standard the ev mandate the building energy efficiency codes all these

00:00:52.500 other regulations massively increase the costs of his climate policy so um the carbon tax itself

00:01:00.020 it's costly there's no question about it but there's actually much worse stuff in his policy

00:01:06.060 mix and and he was talking as if none of that is there now on the conservative side it's legitimate

00:01:12.940 for them to point people to the high cost of the climate policy but uh what they need to do is say

00:01:20.200 well how explain how can they be committed to things like the paris treaty and the net zero goals

00:01:25.500 without actually planning to incur any costs of of meeting them that doesn't square up so um what i'd

00:01:34.000 like is for some politicians somewhere to be honest with the public and either say we're going to do this

00:01:42.580 and it's going to cost a fortune so just get used to it or say okay we've heard from the public that

00:01:49.220 there's an upper limit to what they're willing to pay this is the most we can hope to accomplish

00:01:53.560 and we'll stick with that yeah i think that's a valid point on on all fronts because it's easy to

00:01:59.380 target and certainly for political reasons i understand why you target the consumer carbon tax

00:02:03.480 that retail carbon tax that you see that's a line item on your gas bill that you see buried in

00:02:09.280 the price of fuel for example but even i mean if we look at what the alberta government did under

00:02:14.720 jason kenney where they said let's go after the industrial side of things that makes a very much

00:02:20.520 more convoluted and as you're saying their complex process and they're still doing in effect one of

00:02:26.020 the same things but it's a lot more opaque how it's happening sure yeah when uh when they don't like

00:02:31.860 taking heat from consumers and they say well we'll make industry pay i think by now everybody realizes

00:02:37.500 uh that's just a shell game it all ends up for the consumer one way or the other uh it's either

00:02:43.440 buried in the price that you pay at the pump in the case of gas um or you you pay it directly out of

00:02:51.320 your own pocket but there's uh as economists as economics textbooks always say costs can be shifted

00:02:57.260 around but they can't be avoided so what is the i i mean just from an economics perspective here let's

00:03:04.620 just say that we agree with the core premise and we agree with the core goal which is debatable

00:03:09.360 on how much we need to reduce emissions by what is from your perspective the path that a government

00:03:15.300 should take to do that if that is its stated objective here well if it wants to meet the paris

00:03:21.360 target and then go from there down to some kind of net zero target uh later in the century we would

00:03:29.920 uh to get to paris i would estimate we'd need maybe uh two hundred dollar ton carbon tax and then

00:03:37.000 uh to get to net zero um something more like a five hundred dollar a ton carbon tax i'm not sure even

00:03:44.700 that would do it and um so uh the uh the current policy mix that we have even the federal liberal policy

00:03:54.740 makes more i don't think it'll get us to the paris target it certainly won't get us to

00:03:58.660 to net zero beyond that but that's a conversation that no one's having that i mean none of the

00:04:04.800 political leaders are willing to talk to people about the costs of what they're proposing to do

00:04:09.580 so and that i guess gets at what i was hoping to touch on here which is that

00:04:14.760 this commitment itself is boxing us in in effect like there's no way to get to that

00:04:20.440 without some sort of really aggressive plan that even the conservatives who i mean again to be fair to

00:04:26.520 critics of pierre paulia he has not he has committed to this he has committed to paris he has not talked

00:04:31.700 about uh changing the core target right and so there's an incoherency there because uh he's justified

00:04:40.940 in in saying to people look we we hear you the cost of fuel is too high cost of living is too high

00:04:48.000 all these policies are are um are driving up the cost of living in unacceptable ways

00:04:54.460 um but there's no magic alternative if at the same time you're going to remain committed to

00:05:01.120 hitting the paris targets so um if for instance they think that you can get rid of the carbon tax

00:05:07.720 and there'll be a whole bunch of far cheaper ways of doing it then they're wrong that is not the case

00:05:14.180 um and people have tried including past conservative governments and it just doesn't work

00:05:19.580 one of the the challenges and a lot of the green energy activists i i find are guilty of this where

00:05:24.880 they commit to policies and that are based on technologies that don't really exist yet or don't

00:05:30.360 do what they say they're going to do but i also feel that a lot of people that try to say market-based

00:05:35.880 solutions are the solution are also doing the same thing because you you and even mentioned at the

00:05:42.120 bottom of your piece there you know yeah maybe there's a technology that will come along that

00:05:45.280 will change the math on this but right now that hasn't happened um yeah so and that's exactly the

00:05:53.540 point that given the current technology that we have um we're fairly limited in what we can do

00:06:00.800 and um we don't know maybe a new technology will come along five years or 10 years from now

00:06:08.280 the key is if you can um if you can uh decouple emissions from combustion basically if you can

00:06:17.500 find a way to burn fossil fuels without releasing co2 we've decoupled lots of other emissions from

00:06:23.060 combustion we've decoupled sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide and lots of other types of um lots of

00:06:30.980 other types of emissions from combustion but there's no technology that does that for co2

00:06:36.140 at least not yet as far as we know now how much of a because the government says it is looking at

00:06:44.180 that as well and they say that all of these uh solutions are going to be part of the overall plan

00:06:48.400 but but how much have they actually committed to r&d on that or is it really just left to industry to

00:06:52.680 come up with it on its own uh i think that uh um i think there is some some um uh funding for that

00:07:04.020 kind of research much more in other countries i mean canada is not a big player in research in any

00:07:08.820 case but um sure people are thinking about it working on it but um there's no easy answer for

00:07:15.600 it so um uh because of that um you know it's right now it's kind of a lot of talk but um there's uh

00:07:25.160 as far as i know there's people have been thinking about it for 50 years and there hasn't been any

00:07:31.180 breakthrough on it so it's not like put a billion dollars up and someone's going to figure it out

00:07:35.760 right now all we have is carbon capture and storage which is very limited in its applicability

00:07:41.460 we uh we lost your video there but as it happens we're coming to the end of our time anyway so if

00:07:46.760 it's going to happen that's the best moment for it uh ross mckittrick from the university of guelph

00:07:50.940 great piece in the financial post wanted a federal leader who will be honest about climate policy

00:07:55.880 hopefully you'll get your wish there thank you very much thanks andrew for talking to me thanks

00:08:00.480 for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - March 31, 2024

Is Trudeau being honest about his climate policy？

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