Province opens climate door we must walk through

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/10/2017 (2895 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I’ve been contemplating a wicked paradox lately. On the one hand, all the reputable data out there say we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions really, really quickly. On the other hand, mountains of research highlight how slowly people and communities actually change. There is good reason for this: change — including climate change — is scary, uncertain and, we fear, expensive.

We change slowly. We need things to change fast.

The government of Manitoba has just released its new climate plan. It reflects this paradox perfectly. They have delivered a plan that involves as much change as they think Manitobans will accept. This includes a carbon levy that starts higher than the federal price but falls below it within a few years. It includes a series of emission-reduction measures that will reduce business-as-usual emissions by a couple of megatons.

They have even provided hard numbers on where these reductions will come from — a good sign that gives us reason to hope that they may deliver on their promise to measure results and provide good data to the public on progress.

It is a testament to the people of this province that the plan recognizes a clear consensus among a wide range of stakeholders on ensuring equity in a provincial climate plan by protecting low- and middle-income families from bearing disproportionate costs because of our provincial climate action.

Of course, there’s another aspect to equity: what is Manitoba’s fair share of global emission reductions? This question comes out of the recognition that different countries should have different responsibilities with respect to reducing global emissions, because of their different historical contributions to creating the problem in the first place and the different levels of wealth they can mobilize to address it.

Christian Holz, a senior research associate at Carleton University, has applied what is called the Climate Equity Reference Framework to try to figure this out. He and his colleagues have looked at the equity provisions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and sought to operationalize them. The idea is that everyone agrees on the UNFCCC, so the equity principles in it are a reasonable place to start to think about what our fair share actually is.

Based on this approach to equity, and based on a global emission-reduction pathway that is actually somewhat less ambitious than the Paris Agreement’s, emissions in Manitoba would have to fall to zero in 2023 and well below zero in 2030. Because this is physically implausible, actual emissions in Manitoba should come down to under 10 megatons (Mt) by 2030 (reflecting the same percentage reduction that global emissions have to fall) and the shortfall made up through support from Manitoba to emission reduction efforts elsewhere.

The plan our government has delivered comes nowhere close to this global equity-based threshold.

The good news is that through its made-in-Manitoba Climate and Green Plan, our government has issued an invitation to all Manitobans to be more ambitious. They are developing working groups with different sectors to establish a consultative, ground-up approach to emission reductions that will include five-year cumulative emission reduction plans.

The composition and terms of reference of these working groups will matter a lot. They are establishing an independent expert advisory commission to play a role in implementing this plan. Here again, the specific composition and terms of reference of this commission will be crucial. The individuals and communities its members are connected and accountable to will have an important impact on what we manage to accomplish and how we set about accomplishing it.

Precise decisions on how carbon levy revenues will be used are also still up for discussion. Here again, the door is open.

Now isn’t the time to get stuck in partisan politics and hubris. We have a problem and we need to solve it. The government has delivered a plan that they think will bring a new set of stakeholders to the table to make real progress on climate change. We need to be paying attention to who those stakeholders are. We need to show up and work with our communities, in our spheres of influence, to figure out how to get enough people rowing in the same — and right — direction.

Those of us who think the province isn’t rowing fast enough can row harder and, more importantly, do the work of getting others to row harder, too. We need to change fast, and now that this plan has been released, we all have a role to play in getting better at doing that.

Alana Lajoie-O’Malley is a senior adviser on research and sustainability at the University of Winnipeg.