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I wrote an essay about what a net-zero target means for Canada. What problems will we have to overcome? What will be the biggest barriers? What ideas have promise? And – most importantly – are we f*cked?
Thread: …https://misreportedandmisremembered.wordpress.com/2020/08/20/essay-a-reflection-on-the-challenge-ahead/
Thread: …https://misreportedandmisremembered.wordpress.com/2020/08/20/essay-a-reflection-on-the-challenge-ahead/
TL;DR: Canada’s old growth problems will also hinder newer, cleaner growth. New policy/market ideas have promise, but may not offer the reductions we need in a 30 yr timeframe. We need to better understand the unique barriers to Canada.
Let’s start with #s: To get to net-zero, Canada has to reduce 729 Mt/CO2eq from 2020-2050. It’s a net target, so those can be indirect offsets, but our end sum on paper has to be zero. That’s an average pace of reductions of 24.3 Mt/CO2eq every year for three straight decades.
Canada’s largest annual drop in national emissions so far this century was 14 Mt/CO2eq from 2014-2015, but they’ve climbed up by 23 Mt since. According to most recent NIR, GHG emissions in 2018 were 729 Mt/CO2eq (roughly equal to 730 Mt emitted in 2005).
We’re talking unprecedented rates of change here. You can win a few at that pace in early years by phasing out high emitters, but past the first few years, you’ll need to start thinking deeply about every sector, every process and every company in CAD getting to zero.
A useful way to think about this is that we are asking for 100+ years of economic change to occur in the next three decades. That means we have to engage with the problems we'd solve over a century quickly to ensure we can maintain momentum (and enough growth to pay for all this)
That will lead to structural change - past a point, policymakers need to start reckoning with how “green” fits into the structure of the economy. Take agriculture: What about impacts on BRM programs? Agri-insurance? Trade deals? Immigration rules? Food safety regs? Market demand?
You can only do so much before structural barriers become the problems blocking progress (Same idea for female entrepreneurs – big issues are structural barriers like no childcare & institutional sexism). Sometimes to solve problems, you have to actually fix the problem.
Every company/industry knows this. They’re rethinking their purpose/mandates for a country because the way we design, make and dispose of everything will change. Policymakers need to think along similar lines: what are the actual problems we need to solve to make net-zero happen?
In Canada’s case, our growth problems will soon be our clean growth problems. Low productivity, declining innovation rankings, low FDI attraction – all will soon pose barriers to clean growth. These are the systemic questions we need to answer, since these are systemic problems
Second question: what ideas can help us with this? One key is plugging the market gaps that exist today in climate finance & start-up commercialization to grow more firms. There are some great ideas about doing this, but they face a real problem: they’re too new.
Innovations like blended finance/PPPs will eventually dominate the market. But will it be in time? The mainstreaming of financial tranches takes decades. But we want 100+ years of change in 30. Novelty=risk, and there’s a risk we push too fast too early to get the results we need
Strategies can also be useful, but aren’t magic. Just because its green doesn’t mean it can overcome the planning fallacy/predict economic complexity/dynamics. If we use a strategy/roadmap/ pathway, it should inform how we proceed, not prescribe a path forward.
Finally: we can’t ignore the challenges Canada will face because of who we are. A conservative investment culture, small domestic population & trade dependency mean we are cautious & mostly want to avoid pissing people off. Good instinct to survive, bad one for being ambitious
To understand how to overcome that, we need to think more about culture and power. Culture is the reason PPPs are imperfect (gov isn’t really “innovative”, regardless of how much people want it to be). Culture is why conservative oppose carbon pricing…. …https://misreportedandmisremembered.wordpress.com/2020/02/03/priced-out/
… Culture is what drives/limits ZEV uptake. Culture means “people like us do things like this”, and unless the things we do involve bold risk-taking, we will always be fighting our own instincts. …https://misreportedandmisremembered.wordpress.com/2020/02/19/moping-about-mandates/
Power matters too – the best writing I’ve read this year is about how Warren’s presidential campaign exposed the underlying flaws in American democracy. Canada doesn’t have identical problems, but power will invariably accelerate/impede progress. https://www.niskanencenter.org/building-a-better-warrenism/
This is what the environmental justice movement might actually prove catalytic for – no one actually knows what it takes to decarbonize everything. Tying the agenda to “make life better for people” could give it the political boost that chatter about instruments never could.
Finally, are we f*cked? No, we are not. But we need to act boldly. We need to try to solve every problem at once in the hopes that we can overcome enough to maintain momentum. We need to listen to the people whose futures we are actively designing….
… We need to ignore those guided by fear or ideology, define our own advantage, and listen to young people. We need to invest, reform, restructure and drive the change we want. But most of all, we need to act. Fast. Enough waiting – let’s get to work. n/
