A stitch in time

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/08/2023 (867 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE federal government has released a draft clean energy regulation that proposes to render Canada’s electrical energy generation carbon neutral by 2035. Immediately a howl of doom from premiers Scott Moe and Danielle Smith predicted the imminent demise of the Canadian economy and the destruction of all we hold dear.

Having been in the environmental regulation business for several decades I have heard this all too familiar refrain from big business and conservative politicians (and not a few New Democrats) countless times; never have these gloomy predictions been realized.

Nor will they in this case.

The transition to a carbon neutral economy will be forced on advanced economies by the rapid march of events of which we are just now getting a preliminary glimpse. Better we do as much as we can on our own before the big players wake up and begin imposing their own emergency measures on themselves and their trading partners.

Even though complete elimination of our total greenhouse gas emissions will, by itself, have no discernible impact on reducing the effects of climate change, there are, like Canada, more than a hundred nations with individually insignificant greenhouse gas emissions. When added together, reducing these emissions will have a significant impact. In the future, free riders will not fare well.

How refreshing it would be if our western confreres, rather than howling at the moon, would admit the undeniable — that the climate is changing faster than anyone anticipated and we are going to have to change with it — and don the vacant mantle of leadership, not just regionally, but nationally. Let’s be clear, this would not be easy as it would involve co-operating with a federal government and its bureaucracy that has consistently thumbed its nose at the three Prairie provinces — but even the big brains in Ottawa will eventually figure out that only by reviving co-operative federalism will we be able to mount an effective response to climate change.

As to the new draft regulation itself, its one redeeming feature is that it sets a target of carbon neutral electricity by 2035, a target that may seem ambitious now but certainly will not be well before that date. Otherwise, the regulation is rather fuzzy, relying as it does on carbon capture and sequestration to neutralize rather than eliminate emissions. This technology, with its enormous geological, technical, logistic, economic and environmental uncertainties, strangely has found new life in recent years, a phantom panacea that a few years ago was considered an expensive small-scale solution for uniquely situated operations.

Best-case scenario is a concerted federal-provincial effort to produce a realistic final regulation that will actually achieve the net zero energy target in a way that shares the pain rather than foisting it — as feared by Moe and Smith — on a few jurisdictions who are not as fortunate as hydropower-rich Manitoba. It will require politicians behaving like stateswomen and men rather than party hacks and the power of the federal purse, but it is doable.

It is imperative that we quickly get this train on the tracks and in motion, as it is detracting from our getting on with the the truly vital business of climate change adaptation. At the moment, Ottawa seems to believe that adaptation is all about heat relief stations, everyone having an air conditioner and building our houses of high ground.

Local measures are certainly important, yet it doesn’t appear that the mandarins have grasped the scale, cost, and the length of time to implement critical adaptation, of truly vital infrastructure. Agricultural water management, flood and drought protection, and energy infrastructure for generation transmission and storage are all critical.

Water is the vital component of our food production, the one element over which we have some control. Unfortunately, the current agricultural water management infrastructure is geared to climate norms of the past. That infrastructure cannot cope with prolonged droughts such as we now see in Alberta, nor flooding during the growing season due to intense storm events.

Similarly, our flood protection infrastructure is being taxed beyond its capacity as we have recently seen in Nova Scotia.

The generation of clean energy, required in vast quantities as we replace most fossil-fuelled sources with clean electricity, will require a much denser and extensive transmission network that can wheel surplus generation anywhere in the country; and practical methods, such as pumped storage, batteries and hydrogen generation, of storing intermittently generated power.

Each one of these challenges are easy to describe but incredibly difficult (and expensive) to implement. And since all will require years to complete, it is imperative to get moving now.

Action will require three elements. The first is leadership from both the federal and provincial governments committed to co-operative federalism directed at the most urgent issue we face — climate change adaptation. The second is money, first to plan and then execute massive infrastructure changes; the major source being the deep pockets of the federal government. The third element is inclusion. A broad buy-in that includes the affected sectors like agriculture and energy as well as civil society is essential to legitimize what will prove to be an unprecedented national effort.

How likely is it that we can harness these forces in time to avoid disaster?

Perhaps the ubiquitous sport betting community can give us odds.

Norman Brandson is the former deputy minister of the Manitoba Departments of Environment, Conservation and Water Stewardship.