Is Justin Trudeau’s ‘carbon price’ too good to oppose?

Some short speeches are worth taking nearly a year to write. Justin Trudeau’s “you price carbon or I will” declaration to the provinces may be one of them.

It respects the ancient rules of Liberal incumbency: it honors international commitments, has the sympathy of most go-to policy analysts, won’t touch the middle-class, ever so gently, for years. Best of all, it has a black-hat cast of detractors, right-wing deniers, left-wing dreamers, and even a prim prairie premier leading the charge.

Its weaknesses are also its strength. There will be two years for bureaucratic brainstorming with the three biggest Liberal provincial governments before Trudeau must decide whether to bring down the hammer, starting with a puny nationwide $10-per-ton tax on carbon. And, as a largely incomprehensible war cry, a “carbon price” can be defended as one of those “good whatevers” smart people like and paranoids oppose. Being a euphemism for another consumption tax only makes it that much smarter.

With all this easily grasped by every opposition wordsmith with a security pass on Parliament Hill, why then are New Democrats and Tories (with the exception of that high-minded lone-wolf Michael Chong) not going along? Are they being too partisan too pass that life-or-death, good-citizen-of-the-world, common-sense test that is demanded by swing voters from coast to coast?

Duh. No.

In Canada, you can’t be dumb in public about a global threat as serious as climate change. But, you can, in fact, sound smart parting company with Justin Trudeau’s bold plan, and the qualified support of Andrew Coyne, for that matter, and be likeable by openly not liking Trudeau’s carbon tax plan.

First. Federal New Democrats are not honor-bound to keep up with the Liberals when they bully provinces and appropriate elements of a conservative market mechanism to fight a global problem. Furthermore, in opposition, they’d be crazy to support any tax increase that has to hit workers and families in energy-intensive ridings the hardest.

The left, of course, is free to outbid the Liberals with promises to raise taxes on those two exotic minorities: big business polluters and the rich.  However, they haven’t before and needn’t now help the Liberal Party’s indecently popular leader raise taxes on voting blocks that social democrats have solicited for generations.

Trudeau, on the face of it, has designed and intends to actually implement a carbon mitigation plan well to the right of Stephen Harper, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. New Democrats are free to leave him out there.

Second. Conservatives can survive being called hypocrites by Liberals.

Yes, Trudeau’s carbon “price” is less harsh and isn’t the federal government-money grab that was proposed by Stephen Dion. His “Green Shift" was soundly rejected in the 2008 election and Liberals learn from their mistakes. Nevertheless, Trudeau’s less rambunctious carbon tax plan will not be an alternative to inferior regulatory alternatives, but another add-on. His Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna has repeatedly assured lobbyists and provinces that they can keep bulking up subsidy and regulatory interventions.

Trudeau declared with great care that his carbon tax plan is “revenue neutral to the federal government.” Provincial governments will get every cent raised from their business and individuals. Nevertheless, its essential rationale and its inescapable impact on carbon consumers can’t be “neutral.”

The only way to leave energy-intensive users whole would be to provide matching rebates against each consumer’s carbon tax bill. But leaving them whole would contradict the whole point of Trudeau’s tax.

(Ontario Premier Wynne’s pre-election electricity rate rebate to hard-pressed electricity customers offers a real time example of trying anyway.)

It needn’t be supported today by scientifically literate and ambitious New Democrats or Conservatives.

The Trudeau government reply, of course, is that New Democrats are first to insist that Canada honor multilateral agreements and should, therefore, be first to back a carbon “price” plan that is sincerely designed to meet the climate change targets agreed to at the UN conference of all nations in Paris. The Trudeau government would also reply that the Tories have no right to complain because (1) they don’t care about climate change and (2) are not licensed to care about people. Sadly, both parties are too petty (as I am now) to hold hands and help Canada be seen to do its part to save the planet.

At the very least, the opposition—loyal, cynical, or otherwise—shouldn’t offer support, in advance, to the dark and sunny sides of a comprehensive carbon tax without (in concert with the provinces) full disclosure on how it would be applied.

In the meantime, let’s bear down on what the world truly needs: affordable technology alternatives to fossil power and a declaration by the next US president that she’ll propose and champion a substantive carbon tax or an alternative, verifiable form of American sacrifice worth Canadian sacrifice as well.

Adapt to change? That’s what we do in the Middle East.

The elites we reward when we vote can handle hooded reactionaries in Eastern Europe and hooded reactionaries in the Middle East. It’s change at home that befuddles them.

Incumbent governments and their leaders in Canada, US, and Europe confidently seek re-election as steady international problem-solvers. They scorn isolationists and nationalist romantics, and promise to continue killing violent radicals.

It’s the height of sophistication to spell, pronounce, and accurately categorize the latest bad-boy sects abroad. At home, they use stale generalizations and stale labels to put down resistance that even breathes in the polls.

Insiders mortgage their lives to stay on top and tell us not to fear change. They ask us to trust them and, also, to run away from political "paranoids."

Our overstaffed governors know more about our pressure points, our private lives, and our political biases — literally, how to handle us — than any governing elite in history. 

And the gathering wave of political frontrunners stands for continuity. Justin Trudeau, Hillary Clinton, Thomas Mulcair, and Ed Miliband are born political animals. When they get emotional, it’s about the past.

If the West’s strategic advantage were strictly conservative, we’d be blessed.

Being decisive overseas, unfortunately, is making it less necessary for our leaders to lead change at home — where our true advantage lies.

Today’s nihilists and corrupt authoritarians are child’s play compared to the enemies Western leaders faced only two generations ago. That, alone, is hardly a bad thing. Making headline news by managing manageable problems elsewhere, however, has become addictive. And the skills necessary to address novel challenges here are not being effectively exercised.

Decision-makers and agenda-setters can’t get exercised about everything of consequence — at the same time. They learn from their successes, less from failures, and almost nothing from what they leave for their successors.

They make trade-offs and nudge us to as well. The people don’t want to elect a Jimmy Carter and a Ronald Reagan for the same term.

When history sums things up, there’s a decent chance Obama is going to score as the most transformative foreign policy President since Richard Nixon. America’s postwar baby — global capitalism — is growing despite a severe global recession. American foreign policy is becoming less burdensome, less beholden to old sentiments and arrangements in Europe and the Middle East, and US public opinion has moved along with him.

Domestically, however, there’s a decent chance he’ll be seen as another coy conservative who employed his eloquence and personal popularity to make it politically respectable to let significant problems fester. In his second term, “not doing stupid stuff” domestically has come to mean: don’t overreach, always appeal to tested homilies, and never fail conspicuously.

Tethering significant domestic responsibilities to entrenched clichés may save a handful of unproductive Democrats in Congress. But that won’t change Congress.

Doing some good is not always better than trying to do too much.

Climate change is a classic example.

Rather than repeating what every reasonable person already knows and passing executive orders that can be scrapped by the next President unilaterally, Obama could put forward a concrete legislative plan, including an unlovable carbon tax. He has the voice, if not to win immediately in Congress, at least to bind one national political party to a concrete, comprehensive response.

Obama’s healthcare accomplishment was built on the shoulders of numerous failures. So was Roosevelt’s New Deal. A viable response to climate change probably needs at least one President who can loose big as well as give strong speeches.  

One of the essential reasons the West has been more adaptive than its ideological adversaries has been the relative freedom of its leaders to overreach, to ask a little too much of the people and powerful interests — and lose.

Happily, our vanquished leaders don’t need private armies, Swiss bank accounts, or safe houses overseas. They can fail.

Obama and US Climate Change Movement: Who’s the Walrus? Who’s lunch?

Five living Presidents acknowledge the problem and must know that an effective response will demand ‘muscular’ American leadership - at home and globally. Four failed in office and the incumbent is failing too. Yet, the Climate Change Movement is still soft on Barack Obama.

The smartest, best-financed, most theatrical grassroots lobby since Sixties lacks something. The Civil Rights movement made its own mistakes and suffered for those mistakes. But it never outsmarted itself.

That movement didn’t check out its tactics or ambitious demands with Democrat Presidents Kennedy or Johnson. They challenged influential conservatives as well as liberals. There certainly wasn’t a Freedom March on Washington to celebrate Executive Orders and thank either President for their eloquent speeches. Their political savvy didn’t impress but their courage did. 

Climate change is intensifying and its Movement is anxious, a voice of alarm in every public square, explaining the science, naming deniers, and warning Obama that: he sure better do what he’s already signaled he’s comfortable doing.

New York Times explained just last week how Obama’s I’ll Do What I Can Plan can help secure a global agreement that’s less laughable than what’s on paper now:

*His negotiators will aim for a “sweeping” set of commitments from all the significant polluter nations. But it will be an “accord” not one of those clunky treaties that must be ratified by at least 67 votes in the US Senate.

*Implicitly, Congress won’t be asked to provide the US Executive any new tools to make an important difference; for instance, a staged carbon tax or standby tariff on high carbon imports.

Apparently, Obama will coax leaders of burgeoning state-directed economies to reset their priorities, threaten powerful domestic allies, without asking US legislative branches to legislate - without formally binding the next President, let alone the United States of America.

Cute? You bet.

Professional advocates quoted in this front-page story, however, are content; Obama is being “realistic” about his limits. “There’s some legal and political magic to this,” purrs Jake Schmidt, an expert in global climate negotiations with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a distinguished Washington environmental lobby.

A smooth leak gently handled by a great liberal newspaper; nothing surprising here.

After all, without the US at the table, there won’t be another UN negotiation. Diplomats, advocates and their media trackers would be stuck in Washington agonizing over another crummy Canadian pipeline.  

Many of us can accept that Obama knows - and likes - what he’s doing. And admire his subtle calculations, if not his soaring speeches.

During this fall’s Congressional elections, Obama Democrats want to brag about America’s fossil fuel boom as well as their support for clean energy - and portray Republicans as anti-science and scarier than the weather.

Moderates within the two national parties, market economists, techno optimists - and most likely Barack Obama - see that significant market changes in the US are already shifting against the dirtiest fossil fuels. So, he favors tweaking regulations that tweak business, leaving noncommittal legislators and consumer at peace.

However, do any of these mitigating explanations have a place in the heads of a radical movement?

Specifically, is it in the interests of the Climate Movement’s transformative vision to accommodate a self-styled lame duck President and his Do What I Can Plan? Is it in its interest to assist the Democratic Party paint Republicans as impossibly hostile to their cause? Is it transformative to help divide Americans along ancient party lines on a profound national responsibility?

Is it progress to accept an evasive legislative strategy that strands moderate Republicans and lets blue Democrats off the hook in Congress?

What’s fascinating about all this is the willingness of the Movement, the champions of an agenda that is determined to change how humankind lives and earns a living, to accept so easily politics as usual.  Surely their radical agenda should only reward and comfort politicians with the nerve and skill to change what’s possible. 

Climate change: On gas in politics

Great challenges eventually bring out the best and worst in the temperamentally extreme among us. Climate change is such a challenge. The well-intended aren’t winning, and their most passionate companions — Green partisans and climate change radicals — are getting in our way.

There’s an impulse, especially among reformers and within the entertainment industry, to assert that a transformative threat must be met by a transformation within the human community. Since humanity’s excesses caused the problem, we need to be better humans to solve it.

A more concrete way of saying the same thing is to assert that the capitalists and their shallow politicians are the villains.

Supposedly, since climate change is a dramatic threat, our leaders and their wordsmiths need to be better dramatists.

Sunday’s New York Times column “Memorial Day 2050” by Thomas Friedman provides a lofty example.

He starts off with the words of Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State, words that, if nothing else, confirm that high rhetoric will not be retired along with the Obama presidency.

“We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it."

Friedman then asks lamely “How do we motivate people to do something about it?” He quotes extensively Dutch philosopher Thomas Wells:

“'Even if we can’t know what future citizens will actually value and believe in, we can still consider their interests, on the reasonable assumption that they will somewhat resemble our own (everybody needs breathable air, for example),’ wrote Wells in Aeon Magazine. Since ‘our ethical values point one way, towards intergenerational responsibility, but our political system points another, towards the short-term horizon of the next election,’ we  ‘should consider introducing agents who can vote in a far-seeing and impartial way.’

                                   

“Wells suggests creating a public ‘trusteeship’ of nongovernmental civic and charitable foundations, environmental groups and nonpartisan think tanks ‘and give them each equal shares of a block of votes adding up to, say, 10 percent of the electorate,’ so they can represent issues like ‘de-carbonizing the economy’ and ‘guaranteeing pension entitlements” for the unborn generation that will be deeply impacted but has no vote."

Before you get defensive about surrendering another slice of your franchise to another blue-ribbon committee, Friedman assures us that the idea is “unrealistic.”

So, after giving up on rejigging the egalitarian rules of representative democracy, Friedman finally gets down to business.

The problem would be easier to address, he argues, if every time we heard the words “finite” or “sacrifice,” we thought of appealing words like “resilience” and “freedom.” Then it would not be impossible to sell an “urgent response” to the looming environmental catastrophe. For instance, Friedman proposes simply “replacing” income and corporate taxes with a carbon tax.

He defines the political problem as impossible — lack of popular demand of demanding actions — and then addresses his impossible problem with impossible answers.

Yet I’m still hopeful that we’ll survive this danger.

Friedman has misstated the question and arbitrarily placed extreme solutions up against an extraordinary danger. Neither democratic leaders nor autocrats must first inspire popular demand for radical change.

They needn’t wait for another gigantic, time-killing IPCC study with an executive summary as powerful as the Gettysburg Address. And they shouldn’t try to redesign the global capitalist economy or recruit the pope to inspire us to shop less in the West and want more in the East.

Saving our souls is far less urgent than shaming our leaders into doing what’s well within their means.

“Something” needn’t include the introduction of an immediate massive tax on carbon. A modest carbon tax that rises progressively, and more competition, not less, across all energy-producing and -consuming industries are doable. And, most important, they should drive the innovations that will solve the problem: our reliance on energy sources born of an earlier age of human innovation.