Kevin O'Leary's Letter to Premier Notley - Carbon Tax Discussion

[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Well, you show up with a snarky post, you should expect some blow back. The fact is they didn't remove 100GW from currently polluting plants, they just cancelled the construction of new ones, and the only reason they did it was for economics.

Answer me this, when was the last coal plant built in China, and Canada? What year did China, and Canada remove more coal plants than they built? Now honestly, who is making an honest effort, Canada, or China?

Also the fact that you think their cap and trade system is going to be anything more than a total farce makes me think you haven't been paying much attention to how things work in China...

I do pay attention, they've already implemented municipal cap and trade pilot programs in 7 of its largest cities. Why would they run a 5 year piloting scheme on 7 different cities if they weren't serious about implementing a national plan?

The 13th Five Year plan states plainly that a national cap and trade will be implemented. If you know anything about China then you'd know that the Five Year Plan policies are typically implemented and complied with.

I'm interested in all the insight you can provide with your evident expertise on China.

[Fuzz]

The average carbon price was $4-5 per ton. Problems included lack of consistency and transparency, weak legal enforcement, and lack of accurate emission data, but there was very high compliance, up to 98% participation by the entities covered. The national program has no specified emission reduction goals, projections, or trajectory for carbon reduction. It is a bottom up approach with the national cap to be based on the sum of facility data.

...
CO2 is not categorized as a pollutant and the trading is supported only by administrative documents, with the climate department outranked by many state-owned enterprises and a very small staff, about 30 people in the NDRC (National Development and Research Commission). Emission data is very weak, a problem of credibility more than technology, with self-reporting, third party verification and emission data checked against production data for consistency.

...
This cap and trade program may simply be symbolic, a gesture to the international community, but it can also serve as an experiment to build institutional capacity, and a market based policy for reform. It's the only policy control on CO2, more flexible than command and control, and can help toward an economic soft landing by driving the less efficient businesses out without a big shock. It also certainly builds the public awareness of climate change. However, the speaker, Wang Pu, believes the program will not provide all the advertised benefits.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1...-Trade-Program

Ooo, $4-5 a ton. Good start... See Erik's post about why their monitoring is a joke. The point is, China will do what is best for China. You can't take everything they say at face value. Reading press releases and discussing it as you do in the western world is not a responsible way of analyzing their policy.

[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1...-Trade-Program

Ooo, $4-5 a ton. Good start... See Erik's post about why their monitoring is a joke. The point is, China will do what is best for China. You can't take everything they say at face value. Reading press releases and discussing it as you do in the western world is not a responsible way of analyzing their policy.

Nobody's pointing to China as a paragon of virtue. Just that they are trying to do stuff on climate, with about as much effort and intensity as anyone else.

China's cap and trade program covers as much GHG emissions and at the same prices as the regional greenhouse gas initiative (RGGI) cap and trade system in the United States. Is the RGGI equally bankrupt? Tell that to the people who designed and administer it.

Your standard seems to be that unless China bears an incredibly stringent, costly policy then they aren't doing anything at all. Which country would pass that test currently? Probably no one.

But of course, your intervention in this thread is to appear to paint everything as starkly black and white as possible in order to satisfy some urge to argue that Canada should do nothing on climate change. Nice.

[Fuzz]

I'm just a realist, you started this claiming China was donning something to reduce emmisions by cancelling 100GW of coal power, when in reality they did it for economic reasons. Which is why China does anything. If you are going to make incorrect claims, I am going to call you on it.

And goddammit, I just re-read your post, so now I have to call you out on this too:

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Nobody's pointing to China as a paragon of virtue. Just that they are trying to do stuff on climate, with about as much effort and intensity as anyone else.

No. Just. ugh. no.

[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm just a realist, you started this claiming China was donning something to reduce emmisions by cancelling 100GW of coal power, when in reality they did it for economic reasons. Which is why China does anything. If you are going to make incorrect claims, I am going to call you on it.

And goddammit, I just re-read your post, so now I have to call you out on this too:

No. Just. ugh. no.

Again with the black and white. China is shutting down coal only for economic reasons. If only life were so simple. The fact of the matter is that they have multiple objectives and climate is one of them. No matter what you think the decision to cancel 100 GW of power plant infrastructure is not some win-win. Stakeholders lose from a decision like this, that's power sector investors, coal miners, rail shippers, and other huge vested interests. Not least of which are the provincial governments that will gain from the additional tax revenue. While at the macro scale it makes economic sense, there are large regional and distributional costs to cancelling this type of investment.

And go one, who is doing more than China to reduce GHG emissions? I'm not sure about the answer, interested to hear your take.

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

No. Just. ugh. no.

Well considering that China's renewable sources account for over 20% of their total energy compared to 12% in the US. China leads the world in both Wind and Solar installations. They have policies coming in that will stop more coal production. He isn't wrong that they are putting as much effort and intensity as anyone else.

[Fuzz]

Seriously? I'd start with any country who's emissions are trending downward over the past decade, and who aren't continuing to build coal plants. I'll give you a guess who isn't in that category....

[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Seriously? I'd start with any country who's emissions are trending downward over the past decade, and who aren't continuing to build coal plants. I'll give you a guess who isn't in that category....

Yes seriously, tell me which country has policies that are more onerous than what China has done.

China has implemented one of the world's largest cap and trade programs (albeit flawed but likely no more flawed than the EU cap and trade or the RGGI in the US), China invested the most in the renewable energy last year, China has the most electric vehicles of any country, China has regulated its heavy industry with the Top 10 000 scheme to achieve 18% energy savings in the next five years, China is building the world's largest HVDC grid, China has more track of high speed rail than all other countries combined.

So that's the starting point. I think there are arguments for other countries but I'd like to see you make them.

[Fuzz]

The only number that matters is a reduction in CO2 emmisions. The current trajectory for China is up:
http://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china.html
Many countries have decreasing trends, so you can pick any of those as doing more than China.

[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

The only number that matters is a reduction in CO2 emmisions. The current trajectory for China is up:
http://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china.html
Many countries have decreasing trends, so you can pick any of those as doing more than China.

More black and white. I'm beginning to think that this is a pathology with you.

If you think that China a country with less than half the emissions per capita than Canada should be evaluated on whether they should be reducing absolute emissions then I don't know what to say. Ridiculous.

The fact of the matter is that different countries are at different points of development and that some countries can grow their emissions while other countries should decline them absolutely based on the costs of doing so. For China, the costs of reducing absolute emissions are both the costs of deploying technologies and the opportunity cost of lower development. That argument doesn't hold as much water as with Canada who's already developed. Yes Canada will bear the costs of paying for low carbon tech but because our energy consumption is more or less saturated we don't sacrifice nearly as much wealth generation.

What matters to evaluate China is to assess how much more effort they're putting in as opposed to doing nothing on reducing emissions. China's emissions are going up no matter what. And even in the IEA's climate change mitigation scenario with extremely ambitious actions to reduce GHGs China's emissions continue to increase out to 2030.

So your standard for evaluation is frankly completely off base and ignorant.

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

The only number that matters is a reduction in CO2 emmisions. The current trajectory for China is up:
http://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china.html
Many countries have decreasing trends, so you can pick any of those as doing more than China.

On that link there are 5 countries that are trending down. So out of 31 there are 5 meeting your metric and 26 not. I don't see how this qualifies China as not having the same intensity as anyone else. Unless by anyone else you want to compare them only to the best. I think the argument is that China IS doing something positive and working towards it, not that they are the elite standard to strive for. If anything your link proves that they have significantly reduced the rate of increase in their emissions since 2005 and have policies in place that is restricting it's future growth.

Are they doing enough? No, not until they stop coal completely. But that's like telling Alberta to stop the oilsands completely.

[Fuzz]

Ah, so it comes down to efforts, and not results. Got it. Good effort, Chap! Here's your participation award!

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Nobody's pointing to China as a paragon of virtue. Just that they are trying to do stuff on climate, with about as much effort and intensity as anyone else.

Originally Posted by Fuzz

No. Just. ugh. no.

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Ah, so it comes down to efforts, and not results. Got it. Good effort, Chap! Here's your participation award!

Um...

[Bownesian]

It's fair say that since the USA and China each have an order of magnitude or more emissions than Canada, it's pretty important what their absolute emissions trends are, just as it's important what our intensity trends are.

Fuzz's link showed China projecting to increase over the 2020-2030 period by the total amount that Canada emits now. That growth isn't sustainable any more than Canada's current intensity is.

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Ah, so it comes down to efforts, and not results. Got it. Good effort, Chap! Here's your participation award!

It does come down to effort when your government goes up to the world stage and commits to absolutely ridiculous targets.

Canada committed to something, and I expect that we follow through on our end of the deal regardless of what other countries are doing. Frankly, we're not doing enough. To do what our government committed to in Copenhagen, I believe there are reports out there that say we need at least a $150/tonne carbon tax TODAY in order to get those long lead time projects going to meet the 2030 target.

If we're not going to do anything, and that we don't care about efforts or results, grow a pair and tell the world community that - like Harper did when he pulled out of Kyoto. That took leadership and poise. Committing to do something, then not doing anywhere close to enough while having a massive photo op isn't leadership at all.

[Robbob]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Yes seriously, tell me which country has policies that are more onerous than what China has done.

China has implemented one of the world's largest cap and trade programs (albeit flawed but likely no more flawed than the EU cap and trade or the RGGI in the US), China invested the most in the renewable energy last year, China has the most electric vehicles of any country, China has regulated its heavy industry with the Top 10 000 scheme to achieve 18% energy savings in the next five years, China is building the world's largest HVDC grid, China has more track of high speed rail than all other countries combined.

So that's the starting point. I think there are arguments for other countries but I'd like to see you make them.

That is true, and I agree it is a start, but with so many people I think what is important is the registration of vehicles in terms of market share for EV.



Kudos to Norway. They are kicking some serious arse.