269. DEBATE: Climate Regulation vs. Economic Growth

WEBVTT
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This is our first ever nuanced debate.
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How do you understand Canada's energy and climate challenge?
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And what has Canada gotten right?
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And what has Canada gotten wrong from your perspective?
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It costs money to save the planet.
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It's not free.
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Sustainability is looking in hindsight a little bit like it was a luxury, that it was something you could focus on when all the rest of your economy was doing well, when there was surplus, when there was low inflation.
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Forcing people to choose more expensive, more difficult uh energy is not going to work overall for the long term.
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So there should be a disclaimer.
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When you're speaking like that, that is three to four degrees Celsius.
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You still didn't give me a policy.
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I asked you to give me a policy that would reduce emissions, and what you've really told me is that you would not do a policy to reduce emissions.
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Your disclaimer should come with something that says we want to reduce fossil fuels, and it'll come at the expense of industrial activity and energy security and a couple billion people.
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You know, you cannot have You keep saying that I want to reduce fossil fuels, I want to reduce emissions because scientists have told us how devastating that will be for people, not just in the developing world, who will really get impacted by it by but by people in our our world as well.
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And we're seeing it all the time now.
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What if you're wrong?
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What are the consequences from your perspective?
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Thank you so much for being willing to join us today.
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It's a privilege to have you both on the show.
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I'm wondering if we can have each of you provide a brief introduction of yourself, uh, and we'll start with you, Heather.
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Sure.
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So, yeah, so my name is Heather Exner Pro.
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I'm the director of Energy, Natural Resources and Environment at the McDonald Lorray Institute, which is a think tank based in Ottawa, although I'm based in Calgary and also a special advisor to the Business Council of Canada.
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And I'm proudly from Saskatchewan, where I fell in love with potash and uranium, and that's how come I became such a nerd with resources.
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Tremendous.
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Dr.
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Jacquard, would you mind introducing yourself?
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Yes.
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I'm Mark Jacquard.
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Um, I'm a professor, a distinguished professor at uh Simon Fraser University.
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I'm an economist, energy economist in the School of Resource and Environmental Management.
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Uh, but I'm currently um I'm still running a lab at the university, but I'm also chair and CEO of the British Columbia Utilities Commission for the last three years, which regulates energy utilities, mostly BC hydro and forest gas.
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Tremendous.
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Well, this is our first ever nuanced debate, so we're very excited to get into this.
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Uh, we'll start with you, Heather.
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How do you understand Canada's energy and climate challenge?
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And what has Canada gotten right and what has Canada gotten wrong from your perspective?
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Yeah, Australian dollar question uh there, Aaron.
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So I obviously believe that climate change is real and you see the impacts, and have also studied the Arctic a lot, and you know, though they face the impacts uh early.
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Uh, it's affected infrastructure, all those things.
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So I'm certainly not a climate change denier.
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Uh, but I, you know, really came from from this from a perspective of development, human development.
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I always like to say, you know, back in the 90s, if you were my age, you went into international uh studies and international development instead of climate change, if you're uh, you know, a bit of a Pollyanna.
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And I see energy as so critical.
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Energy and resources is so critical to human well-being and to getting, you know, billions of people out of poverty and having uh satisfactory quality of life.
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And that's Aaron, how I got into Indigenous industry relations, also is just seeing uh the way that resource development, energy development could really help Indigenous communities get more self-determination.
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So I do come from the perspective that energy and resources are a key strategic tool for Canada.
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Uh, we're very lucky to have that competitiveness to have affordable abundant energy.
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And it's obviously very helpful for a foreign policy and obviously very helpful, you know, kind of so we navigate these geblical times.
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So, although, you know, we do produce a lot of fossil fuels, the world consumes a lot of fossil fuels.
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I don't think they would consume less if Canada produced less.
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Uh, and I think we should, I think it's very important that a good democratic country uh produces satisfactory fossil fuels and we don't just leave it to authoritarian countries of the world.
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Mark, how do you understand the problem and where would your approach differ?
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Um maybe we'll find out if it differs further down the road here, but um, I didn't hear a lot to disagree with from Heather right there.
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Um I I think the way I I would approach your opening though, uh, in my own case, is to emphasize the frustration I've had in working in this file for 30 odd years more than that, is um trying to get people to hold two thoughts in their mind at the same time.
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It's kind of like walking and chew gum at the same time.
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One, fossil fuels are cheap and they have brought enormous benefits to humanity.
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And I say that over and over again.
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I've written books about that.
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This is the future of fossil fuels.
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And on the other, as Heather said, we have to stop emitting greenhouse gases, and we're going way too slow on that, and that's why we're getting all the environmental effects we are now, and it's going to get a lot worse.
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This is what scientists told me 30 years ago.
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Everything is happening ding, ding, ding, just as they said it would.
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And so the for me, the question is can we get industrial leaders, politicians, people from think tanks, um, to be able to do both things at the same time?
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In other words, when you tell me that Canada should expand fossil fuel production, and I tend to don't see anything wrong with that actually, because I agree with Heather's last point that it's about consumption and the emission.
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It's not about who produces the fossil fuels.
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They'll be produced somewhere.
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But if we can get um, you know, business leaders and uh and I have some good examples and political leaders who can do both things, who can say, I've got a plan where we're actually making serious greenhouse gas reductions, doing stuff that other countries have done, uh, while at the same time not having to demonize fossil fuels.
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Uh, and so I'm always looking for somebody that is working on that sweet spot.
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And, you know, we can talk more about that.
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Um, I have corporate leaders that I look up to, someone named Susanna Pierce that I've been up with a fair bit.
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It was at Shell Canada, her and I have done a lot of stuff together.
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Um, I'm trying to find, but too often I'll hear someone like Pierre Poiliev say, I'm gonna get rid of this climate policy and that climate policy and that climate policy.
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And then you ask him, well, so what happens to our emissions and how do we contribute to this global challenge?
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And and he doesn't have an answer.
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He'll say technology, like some, but technology doesn't happen.
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Uh, when fossil fuels are so cheap, the low emission technology just won't happen.
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I'll stop there.
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But um anyway, that hopefully that gives you a gist of this, these two conflicting things that I try to, I feel like I'm caught in the middle.
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Environmentalists don't like me because I tell them about the wonders of fossil fuels, uh, and then it's really hard to get um politicians.
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Well, there are politicians who've really tried to do good things, and I've helped them as well.
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Heather, do you have any reflections on that?
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When I just think about the circumstances we're in, they are placed at odds with each other.
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The idea that we can go uh towards a green economy.
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I see a lot of conservatives rolling their eyes when they hear about environmentalism and trying to uh act in the best interest of the environment because they're so focused on the real conditions of human beings.
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Uh, what are your thoughts on what Mark just shared?
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Yeah, well, I think it's very unfortunate that climate change became so ideological that that you know, that people on the right, you know, felt that it was in opposition to their interests and kind of dismissed the whole thing and and lost trust in in all of the science because maybe there was a portion of it that maybe was alarmist.
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And so you see, you know, that it's become a kind of a pendulum and a very polarized uh idea.
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And I think 30 years ago, I mean, and and still today, like most people want a healthy environment.
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Most, you know, people to the right of, you know, in for me in Alberta are hunters or have ranches or farmers.
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My cousins are farmers.
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They have to care deeply about the environment because that directly impacts our livelihood.
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Uh, and so, so I don't think people on the right, I don't think conservatives are against the environment.
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I think they think the climate change issue was blown up, uh, was maybe became an agenda and have lost faith in the policies that went behind it.
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And I will say there is some justification to that.
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That you know, when we talk about the Shude government and liberals and the policies they pinned forward, that there were some policies that were very expensive that didn't seem to have much impact on emissions.
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And that some people didn't seem to care about the impact on emissions.
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They cared more about stopping fossil fuels or capitalism or things like that.
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So I think at some point it did lose an evidence base.
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I think also that, you know, in some cases we've pushed the goal, has just been to have more renewables, not even to necessarily reduce emissions.
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Like this, so the goals have been, I think, you know, separated, I think, from our overall goals, or just wanting to see Canadian emissions go down and not caring about the context of global emissions.
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So I think, you know, I think everyone could look back and say there have been some mistakes in policy, and you did lose some of the public along the way.
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And there needs to be recalibration of finding that make me more middle, more pragmatic path.
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And I have to say, I think Carney is on that path of, you know, it wasn't just true that that every green policy was going to create more jobs and more growth, and that every energy, you know, fossil fuel policy was going to be more expensive and was going to be a stranded asset.
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And people were told that.
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And so now I think they're skeptical about what they're being told on everything.
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Uh, Dr.
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uh Jacquard, I'm just curious, do you agree that perhaps there were excesses from the liberal government in regards to some of their steps uh on environmental policy?
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Um I'm not sure.
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Uh they I I mean, I I do agree with much of what Heather said.
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I I guess what I was hoping Heather would do is talk also about the the the delusion on the other side.
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I've had, I mean, I've been on panels 30 years ago or no 20 years ago when auto industry executives told me that Elon Musk was a nut, um, you know, and that the the we could never have electric vehicles, and this would be unaffordable for everyone.
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Like it's it couldn't be a mass product.
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Um, I similar, I remember even when Denmark said, you know what, it's gonna cost a bit, but we're gonna stop burning coal.
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We they were an 80%, 85% coal generation electricity system, and they they switched off completely uh over a 25-year period, and it was it had costs, and um, and now today someone say to me, Well, we can't do anything in electricity because we'll make it unaffordable.
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Well, the average price in Canada, um Alberta, Ontario, a little higher, but the average price is around 14-15 cents, and in places per kilowatt hour, in place like British Columbia, uh lower than that.
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Denmark, it's now 40 cents a kilowatt hour.
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And yet the Danes don't say that electricity is unaffordable because they they made sure they took care of the lower income people and people like me and Heather could afford 40 cent electricity.
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Now, I'm I'm wandering a bit here because um if I go back to what were the things that the Trudeau government tried to do?
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They tried to have a rising carbon tax, which is what economists and business leaders told them to do, that that's the most economically efficient way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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Was it going up too fast?
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Were there enough other mechanisms?
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Perhaps that's that's true.
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I mean, I did a lot of economic analysis, not necessarily.
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Um, you know, the carbon tax actually made lower income people better off uh almost entirely.
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But um then there were the other policies, some of which um I would are yeah, I would I would be willing to agree some of them were not as economically efficient or went too fast, but a lot of them um were things like flex regs, and maybe we can talk about that later.
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But they are ways where you can make it so that the vehicle stock is switching towards low emission.
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And so they put in that that the car regulation.
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Um there were some problems with it.
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It didn't need to go to 100% uh zero emission by 2035, and I argued against that, but actually, a policy like that causes auto sellers to cross-subsidize lower-income auto buyers with higher prices on higher on more expensive cars.
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So there's a whole bunch of elements, and then similar things with the electricity policy.
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Um, you know, a lot of people were upset about the electricity policy, and uh I was involved in simulations both with independent um people at the university and also seeing government, examining government's analysis.
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And in fact, in Alberta, Blake Schaefer and Andrew Leach looked at this and said actually the electricity policy of the Trudeau government um, you know, would have the following effect in Alberta, and it was really quite small.
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Um, and our carbon pricing in the industrial sector, which is the other big thing uh that the Trudeau government brought in, the Canadian Climate Institute.
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In fact, I've seen so many independent people, including ones that I know or have trained, who've shown that the cost per barrel of oil uh thus far of the carbon price in industry, uh what do they call it?
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A tinbid.
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It's it's about it's a very cheap price per barrel.
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So there's been a lot of exaggeration uh about those policies, in my view.
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So I'll jump in here.
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Dive in back and forth is good.
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And and some of it I I agree with, but you made the point that Denmark, you know, their electricity is basically triple the cost of electricity in Canada.
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Uh, and they've just accepted it and took care of affordability and all those things.
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For me, I'm I'm looking at Europe and their competitiveness uh, you know, on an industrial level.
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And it's absolutely true that high energy costs has meant that they've had to offshore uh a lot of their manufacturing, that China has has taken a lot of that portion.
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It's been very damaging for Germany, which put in billions, you know, tens of billions of dollars into solar.
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And now you have Europe in a in a place where they are stagnant, uh, where they don't have the same uh, you know, foreign policy influence as they had, where they are dependent on China for many of these things.
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They don't have the same defense industrial base, because an industrial base is a defense industrial base.
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And so you can see looking at things holistically, that the emissions and having emissions as your only or your main goal in a society is very narrow.
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And that there are other goals and other, you know, objectives that societies need to have, that states need to have.
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And we lost the plot on some of that.
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And now we're paying some of the price.
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And you saw it in Canada too.
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There's a lot of reasons we had a lost decade, but a lot of it is that so much of our money and our investment and our focus went into just trying to reduce emissions, and it did not go into being competitive or having a suitable uh, you know, uh defense uh sector and all these other things.
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Now there's many ways where we just lost money.
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EVs, you know, again, you know, putting all the government uh, you know, call of our eggs in the basket into EVs, and that far exceeded the pace at which Canadians actually wanted to buy EVs, far exceeded the pace for which there was a market, uh, and just people did not buy into that as much.
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Uh, on the Canadian electricity regulations, you mentioned the electricity regulations, that prevented Alberta from joining into this data center boom until Kearney removed natural removed the uh the CR and said we could have natural gas generation again only a few months ago.
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That is the thing that is driving American GDP the most.
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That was that accounted for the most capital expenditure for for any sector in the world last year.
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And Canada largely missed out on that until now because we had these regulations.
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So there are these other impacts, you know, that that trickle down and made us less competitive in the oil sector for sure.
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Uh, and now you see the benefits of of unwinding and going back to a more pragmatic approach.
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You're seeing those in the numbers already.
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If I could just come back, just let you actually their income went higher than ours per capita over that 30-year period.
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They're wealthier than we are per capita, while their emissions plummeted, and they're the lowest, the poorest people in their country are doing way better than ours, and industrially they're doing way better.
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So I just wanted to be careful with that example.
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So, Heather, and and Aaron, I don't want to supplant you, but I would love to ask Heather you've talked about, you know, if you try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there are costs.
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And I agree with you.
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And so now you have this problem, though.
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We have so one of the big lines is we shouldn't do anything because of the rest of the world.
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So remember, these two the two big problems with the climate threat are A, we have no global government, so individual countries are gonna have to do things, like I just gave Denmark example, and also though, the Europeans trying to put a tax on carbon on imports, carbon emissions.
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What I'd like to know is what Heather would do.
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Like, what would you do to reduce greenhouse gases at a reasonable time where British Columbia won't burn up or Fort McMurray or wherever?
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Because we'd have to go pretty fast.
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I just don't know.
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I don't know why I don't hear people like yourself, and maybe I haven't been listening, talking about the specific policies you support.
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So you didn't like the Trudeau policies, what would you have done?
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Well, I mean, I I do have some ideas, but let me say first of all, and I'm sure you'll agree, there's nothing Canada could do that would not have, you know, more wildfires in Canada, that those emissions are largely coming from outside of our borders, and there's not much we can do.
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So you think, well, what can we do?
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What goes beyond our it's a global problem.
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Every country can say that our emissions are higher per capita than the Chinese, they're almost double.
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So the Chinese are actually spending way more than we are per capita to get their emissions down.
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So you need action by individual countries.
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And every country, Liechtenstein, can say we can't do anything until Canada acts.
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Canada can say we don't do anything until China acts.
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What would Canada do?
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Well, we were all acting.
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So we did act under Trudeau.
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You just described it all.
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You just described how Europe has acted.
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You just described how much money China has put into it, and yet we are still increasing fossil fuel production.
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So despite all those costs that we absorb, that was not enough.
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I'll say, so for me, a little bit pragmatically, I just think people will not stop burning fossil fuels.
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People, humans and human civilizations use as much energy as they can afford.
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That is the path for literally thousands of years.
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And until our population plateaus, which it will, by the way, we will start having less humans in a couple of decades.
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That I think may be the point at which our energy use starts to go down.
00:19:27.119 --> 00:19:29.519
But for me, the the answer is nuclear.
00:19:29.599 --> 00:19:32.880
Uh, and Canada can play an immense role in nuclear.
00:19:33.039 --> 00:19:40.720
And you could see a future in 50 or 80 years where nuclear is much more cost competitive with fossil fuels and it provides the base load energy.
00:19:40.799 --> 00:19:44.079
And people adopt it simply because it's a better source of energy.
00:19:44.240 --> 00:19:51.200
And so I think it's an uphill battle to compete with fossil fuels um, you know, on on you know, on the merits.
00:19:51.279 --> 00:19:57.759
And if you don't find something that's just better, that's just a better source of energy, I just don't think you will get to where you want to go.
00:19:57.920 --> 00:20:05.680
So forcing people to choose more expensive, more difficult uh energy is is not going to work overall for the long term.
00:20:06.240 --> 00:20:13.519
Well, so there should be a disclaimer when you're speaking like that, that it's three to four degrees Celsius, is what you're talking about.
00:20:13.680 --> 00:20:25.519
You're saying wait until I don't know, we run out of fossil fuels or nuclear plants are so cheap uh that we they but it still doesn't solve the car problem and all the other industry problems.
00:20:25.759 --> 00:20:30.480
But you're the disclaimer for what you're saying, you're not gonna get you still didn't give me a policy.
00:20:30.559 --> 00:20:36.480
I asked you to give me a policy that would reduce emissions, and what you've really told me is that you would not do a policy to reduce emissions.
00:20:36.720 --> 00:20:38.480
So it's good that we should have a disclaimer.
00:20:38.960 --> 00:20:48.640
Your disclaimer should come with something that says we want to reduce fossil fuels and it'll come at the expense of industrial activity and energy security and a couple of billion people.
00:20:48.799 --> 00:21:08.559
You know, you cannot have you keep saying that I want to reduce fossil fuels, I want to reduce emissions because scientists have told us how devastating that will be for people not just in the developing world who will really get impacted by it by but by people in our our world as well, and we're seeing it all the time now.
00:21:08.720 --> 00:21:16.480
So you just don't have a policy that you would implement if you were advising, um I advised Aaron O'Toole.
00:21:17.440 --> 00:21:24.720
I advised Aaron O'Toole as he prepared for an election, and and so I helped him put together holding a carbon tax of$50.
00:21:25.279 --> 00:21:35.920
We we designed it with a flex reg um for electricity and a flex reg for vehicles, uh, and kept an industrial carbon price.
00:21:36.160 --> 00:21:42.160
So this was a politician on the right of center who said, No, no, no, I really do have to do something.
00:21:42.240 --> 00:21:48.079
And there are a lot of politicians like that, both in Canada and the United States, uh, but certainly elsewhere in the world.
00:21:48.240 --> 00:21:51.119
But you wouldn't put any, you won't name me a policy.
00:21:51.440 --> 00:21:59.759
Well, I would name several, but my criticism of the left is that they have been more concerned about seeing.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:04.559
To be doing something and not on actually reducing emissions.
00:22:05.039 --> 00:22:13.440
And so we've spent a lot of money and time into things that haven't reduced emissions, but have made people feel as though they're on the good side.
00:22:15.440 --> 00:22:16.640
And I don't think that's working.
00:22:16.799 --> 00:22:20.319
I think we have to go back and say, what has actually worked to reduce emissions?
00:22:23.119 --> 00:22:25.599
Mark, mark for Mark, I'm going to jump in here.
00:22:25.759 --> 00:22:26.240
No worries.
00:22:26.319 --> 00:22:43.200
I'm I'm going to jump in here and say, Mark, like one of the issues I guess I would have with the claim that like we just need a policy to fix all of this is there was no policy to switch from burning wood to to burning something that's that's more accessible, like um, and and moving that forward.
00:22:43.279 --> 00:22:45.599
We didn't have to implement a policy.
00:22:45.759 --> 00:22:50.880
Innovations happened that we accepted into the market that had us move in a certain direction.
00:22:51.039 --> 00:23:12.079
And so when I think when Heather's saying, hey, like let's move towards nuclear, you can put in policies that like she's not getting specific as to name, like I would therefore incentivize through tax credits to see more nuclear polling, but like that would be a policy, uh endorsing people to take on nuclear instead of moving towards more oil and gas and stuff like that.
00:23:12.240 --> 00:23:12.880
Do you understand?
00:23:12.960 --> 00:23:25.759
Like the underlying argument is to stop just focusing on um doing more solar and more wind and saying, hey, nuclear is something that doesn't burn as much emissions, it's more stable, and that is uh a proposed pillar.
00:23:25.920 --> 00:23:27.039
And I understand what you're saying.
00:23:27.119 --> 00:23:30.640
The the Trudeau government came out with a ton of different policies.
00:23:30.799 --> 00:23:43.279
I mean, uh one I would put to you is the Green Slush Fund that Canadians were furious about as a policy that did not work, um, that had a lot of corruption tied to it, a lot of questions uh from the auditor general.
00:23:43.440 --> 00:23:50.480
And so I'd just be curious from your perspective, you didn't really acknowledge, I think, some of the challenges with the Trudeau era policies.
00:23:50.640 --> 00:23:56.240
And so I'm just wondering, is that at least one that you could say, hey, that was very unpopular and abused?
00:23:57.039 --> 00:24:01.519
So I don't have specifics on the policy you're talking about.
00:24:01.680 --> 00:24:04.880
Governments do give subsidies, there were a lot of subsidies.
00:24:05.039 --> 00:24:11.920
Um, and I guess if you're talking nuclear, you're talking subsidies because it would be cheaper to burn fossil fuels than to put it in a nuclear plant.
00:24:12.160 --> 00:24:25.519
So um, but when you're saying what are we I I still haven't heard of policy here, if if you're talking subsidies is the only policy, it is really hard to stop burning fossil fuels.
00:24:25.599 --> 00:24:33.279
And remember, I'm not saying stop using fossil fuels, I'm saying stop emitting CO2 from fossil fuels.
00:24:33.440 --> 00:24:37.839
If you're gonna do that, you probably have to have a regulation or prices.
00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:42.480
An economist will tell you to put in prices, that's why we had the Eco Fiscal Commission.
00:24:42.640 --> 00:24:48.079
Um, and but there are ways to do regulations that are actually quite flexible uh and cheaper.
00:24:48.240 --> 00:25:01.359
But I'm not here to defend the Trudeau policies because the other thing is, yes, politicians can be guilty of a lot of baubles and stuff and throwing around money um that doesn't really reduce emissions.
00:25:01.519 --> 00:25:10.000
Wherever I've um wherever I've been asked for my advice by politicians on climate policy, I've said you got to basically forget the subsidies.
00:25:10.160 --> 00:25:14.319
Uh, subsidies cannot overcome the fantastic benefits of fossil fuels.
00:25:14.480 --> 00:25:16.880
And these are the kind of areas where Heather and I would agree.
00:25:17.039 --> 00:25:21.039
Um, I don't like renewables are still very expensive.
00:25:21.119 --> 00:25:33.359
And you can't just compare, you know, wind and solar on a kilowatt hour basis with uh a natural gas plant because one of them is dependable and one of them's not, and it's a huge difference in value.
00:25:33.680 --> 00:25:47.920
But I guess you guys are sort of linking into technology, and I'm saying, if people ask me, are you pro-nuclear or against, I'll say, I'm in favor of any technology that gets emissions down, and it all depends on where in the world.
00:25:48.079 --> 00:25:52.640
Like it it so nuclear makes a lot of sense in a lot of places on the world, including Canada.
00:25:52.799 --> 00:25:55.920
Nuclear might not make sense in some places, I don't know.
00:25:56.079 --> 00:26:00.000
Uh, in fact, I can think of places where I don't think I would do nuclear or allow nuclear.
00:26:00.160 --> 00:26:10.799
Uh, and wind and solar, um they are they're subsidized because they're not paying their share for capacity, uh, for reliability.
00:26:10.880 --> 00:26:13.920
Uh, but they are quite cheap if you want to get a lot of energy.
00:26:14.000 --> 00:26:16.240
So it could be that we'll use a lot of wind and solar.
00:26:16.400 --> 00:26:21.920
We're seeing jurisdictions that are doing that and figuring out how to get the capacity that matches to that.
00:26:22.079 --> 00:26:23.039
But it's not cheap.
00:26:23.119 --> 00:26:24.160
It's certainly not cheap.
00:26:24.240 --> 00:26:28.079
And I guess so, Aaron, I would ask you as well, how would you get emissions down?
00:26:28.720 --> 00:26:32.640
I have no position, but I would ask, I would put the question back to you.
00:26:32.799 --> 00:26:52.880
What are your thoughts on the policies that are going to have the most benefit to our environment while also balancing the fact one of my personal big concerns is that often when we've looked at these policies, to your point about the carbon tax, is often these policies hurt people in low-income situations, particularly people in poverty.
00:26:53.039 --> 00:26:59.039
Um, I understand that the carbon tax is one example where it's argued that that did have real benefits for low-income people.
00:26:59.119 --> 00:27:06.799
Our tax policy, more broadly, I think does try and serve uh low-income people, but not to the extent where we're actually seeing them rise out of poverty.
00:27:06.960 --> 00:27:09.920
It just allows their poverty, in my opinion, to be manageable.
00:27:10.079 --> 00:27:19.680
And so I'm just wondering this is obviously a critique you hear a lot from conservatives is that how do we balance people living in poverty with some of these uh climate-oriented goals?
00:27:19.839 --> 00:27:25.200
What are the policies you think that I don't want to uh be unfair to you and tie you to the Trudeau government?
00:27:25.279 --> 00:27:27.680
You have no uh like a direct affiliation with them.
00:27:27.839 --> 00:27:30.000
So, what policies are we missing out on?
00:27:30.160 --> 00:27:31.839
Which ones would you like to see?
00:27:32.319 --> 00:27:32.480
Right.
00:27:32.559 --> 00:27:36.160
So I've written a lot about this, and I would only have four or five policies.
00:27:36.319 --> 00:27:45.279
Uh, and they're all called flex regs, and there's one in electricity and one in cars, and I've been talking about them already in this interview, and all the other policies is a lot of bump.
00:27:45.759 --> 00:27:48.480
It's uh it's about marketing and so on.
00:27:48.559 --> 00:27:51.359
And so I and I'm very clear on that in this book here.
00:27:51.519 --> 00:27:52.880
It's like the chapter four.
00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:57.119
I make fun of uh carbon taxes a little bit because they politically won't last.
00:27:57.279 --> 00:28:04.720
And I just talk about the few key policies and where they're implemented around the world, where they've been successful, and what has been the effect on low-income people.
00:28:04.799 --> 00:28:14.559
And Aaron, I did forget to properly answer your previous question as you were saying, why don't we just wait and humans will innovate their way out?
00:28:14.640 --> 00:28:17.759
And I because I'm wondering if both of you hold that view.
00:28:18.079 --> 00:28:29.839
Externality is the idea that our market econom there are some things that our market economy is not good at, and and those are like an environmental negative externality.
00:28:30.079 --> 00:28:42.160
Humanity has had to implement regulations or pricing to reduce acid emissions, to reduce the dirty dozen, to reduce uh chlorofluorocarbon the ozone depleting substances.
00:28:42.400 --> 00:28:45.200
We've gone on and on with regulations.
00:28:45.440 --> 00:29:08.240
Um, and so I just don't hear either of you saying, here's the regulation I would do, or here's the flexible regulation that has a lot of attributes that economists like, which I've worked on a lot with countries and they've been implemented, they're implemented in Canada and British Columbia, but also in many European countries, the Chinese and now South American countries, and now even some African countries.
00:29:08.400 --> 00:29:11.039
Um, but all of these are to deal with externalities.
00:29:11.359 --> 00:29:14.880
And if you read, I mean, you guys are saying right and left politics.
00:29:14.960 --> 00:29:33.119
If you read Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Friedman, or Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, I can give you the page references in both of those kinds of Bibles of uh Mark free market economists, and I'm a free market economist, uh, they all talk about externality and how government has to act with regulations.
00:29:33.440 --> 00:29:39.039
So, I mean, I'm waiting for you guys to give me your greenhouse gas-reducing regulations, and I haven't had them yet.
00:29:39.440 --> 00:29:41.200
Mark, I'll just quickly clarify.
00:29:41.279 --> 00:29:42.640
I am just the moderator.
00:29:42.720 --> 00:29:45.759
I uh I don't have a thoughtful position on any of this.
00:29:45.839 --> 00:29:54.960
I'll be sincere and say that I do feel like this has been completely politicized, which is why I wanted to have the two of you on, is because you're both thinkers on this issue.
00:29:55.119 --> 00:30:01.039
There's areas of significant overlap, which I think a lot of conservatives are not on your guys' side about.
00:30:01.119 --> 00:30:21.039
And I'm hoping through this conversation, they can see that you can want the best for the environment, you want better for ecosystems, and that doesn't mean that you want a ton of taxes impacting everyday consumers in in a lot of different aspects of their life, which is what I feel like the discussion is devolved into, which is why I wanted you both to kind of lay out your perspectives.
00:30:21.119 --> 00:30:24.000
There were areas of agreement and areas of disagreement.
00:30:24.079 --> 00:30:27.279
Um, but I sincerely am thinking this alongside you.
00:30:27.440 --> 00:30:37.920
I want to see Canada be a leader on all issues, set a positive example, while at the same time making sure that the policies don't make us less competitive and put us in a worse circumstance.
00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:47.359
But I don't, I don't exactly know what's working and what's not working, which is why we kind of started with what are your guys' perspectives on what's working and what's not working, uh, to ground the conversation.
00:30:47.440 --> 00:30:50.160
But Heather, uh, you've heard Mark talk for a fair bit there.
00:30:50.240 --> 00:30:54.799
I'd like to give you the opportunity to respond to some of the policies he thinks would be productive.
00:30:55.119 --> 00:31:05.839
Yeah, I I again, it and and you made a great example, Aaron, of you know, we moved from wood to oil, not because there was a policy or regulation, but because it was naturally, you know, the better thing.
00:31:05.920 --> 00:31:09.119
And you have some seen some growth in solar and wind.
00:31:09.279 --> 00:31:12.000
Um, and uh, you know, because it was just the cheaper thing.
00:31:12.079 --> 00:31:16.960
You know, in Texas, they wanted to have more electricity and solar and wind were the cheaper thing, and people went there.
00:31:17.039 --> 00:31:26.079
Um, and so, and so for me, there's a lot of rolling the boulder up the hill on this, and it's expensive and has effective competitiveness.
00:31:26.240 --> 00:31:28.640
And I think are there things that are easy to do?
00:31:28.799 --> 00:31:44.640
And and the one, you know, the one thing I think marked that has probably worked better than anything else in the world was coal to gas switching, uh, where you really that was really the source of of the significant emissions drops that you saw in the United States and Europe, uh, you know, since around, you know, 1992.
00:31:44.799 --> 00:31:47.759
And so helping, you know, doing more of that.
00:31:48.160 --> 00:31:53.279
It's something that's pretty seamless, pretty easy to do, not painful, doesn't affect competitiveness.
00:31:53.599 --> 00:31:57.599
Uh, you know, doing things like and I think you probably do, you know, coal to nuclear.
00:31:57.839 --> 00:32:03.839
And again, for me, how do you, you know, certainly there's investments in RD you could do, maybe some tax credits.
00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:09.279
I think you can finance nuclear, uh, maybe not subsidize it, but just government financing through utilities.
00:32:09.359 --> 00:32:10.640
That's how it's always been done.
00:32:10.720 --> 00:32:16.000
That's how nuclear and hydro for that matter uh have both uh, you know, kind of proliferated.
00:32:16.319 --> 00:32:31.039
Uh, but but but I I guess, you know, fundamentally, philosophically, the idea that there's a regulation or a policy, uh, you know, that that's you know, that the goal is to find that regulation is not how not how I think about this.
00:32:31.920 --> 00:32:32.880
Mark, what do you think?
00:32:32.960 --> 00:32:36.000
And I'll just say that cold to gas happened because of market forces.
00:32:36.160 --> 00:32:39.599
Um, there were no pol I mean, there was very little again policy.
00:32:39.920 --> 00:32:40.079
Exactly.
00:32:40.240 --> 00:32:40.400
Yeah.
00:32:40.640 --> 00:32:44.559
And and and so market forces though can destroy things.
00:32:44.799 --> 00:32:47.519
And so you do, and so I I guess fine.
00:32:47.680 --> 00:32:51.039
You you just you I don't know what you'd thought about acid rain.
00:32:51.119 --> 00:32:55.519
That was done with regulations, and you would be against those regulations too, I presume.
00:32:55.599 --> 00:32:57.440
Like any externality regulation.
00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:05.599
No, I no, I mean, I guess this problem is so wicked that there's no regulation that is going to make people stop using fossil fuels.
00:33:05.759 --> 00:33:07.440
And I guess you appreciate this.
00:33:07.680 --> 00:33:15.119
Our civilization, our industrial civilization has developed because of fossil fuels, because of coal, and then because of oil.
00:33:15.279 --> 00:33:22.319
And you cannot have industrial agriculture and you cannot have globalization and you cannot have global trade without those things.
00:33:22.559 --> 00:33:25.200
And so there are certainly costs from fossil fuels.
00:33:25.359 --> 00:33:26.480
There are certainly benefits.
00:33:26.640 --> 00:33:35.279
And I would say the cost benefit for getting, you know, for for regulating on acid rain was very clear and it was a low cost, uh, and and it was easy to coordinate, and we did it.
00:33:35.440 --> 00:33:44.640
And I think on climate change, we can all agree it's a far more wicked problem because the cost and the benefits are are, you know, the balance is far trickier to achieve.
00:33:44.960 --> 00:33:47.119
But you just said stop using fossil fuels.
00:33:47.200 --> 00:33:49.599
I feel like I'm in a conversation where my words was.
00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:52.240
Okay, if you let's so you want to figure out basically.
00:33:52.640 --> 00:33:58.720
I have to tell you, your your talking points on I'm arguing we should stop using fossil fuels.
00:33:58.799 --> 00:33:59.119
I'm not.
00:33:59.200 --> 00:34:02.480
I'm saying we should stop polluting the our nest.
00:34:02.640 --> 00:34:04.720
And we've done that with other things.
00:34:04.880 --> 00:34:26.079
Um, and your so your your line is we're gonna use fossil fuels and burn them, and and the the environmental effect of that we shouldn't act on, even though we did when we were burning fossil fuels and causing acid rain, and when we were burning fossil fuels and caused local smog, um, I would just say let's act on greenhouse gas emissions as well.
00:34:26.320 --> 00:34:27.920
But you're against that.
00:34:28.639 --> 00:34:30.239
No, I haven't said that I'm against it.
00:34:30.400 --> 00:34:37.920
I've said that the cost benefit and I uh the argument that that we could use fossil fuels, we just can't burn them.
00:34:38.079 --> 00:34:40.320
I guess for me, I don't I don't see what the difference is.
00:34:40.480 --> 00:34:45.599
Obviously, we're going obviously the energy benefit from using fossil fuels is largely from burning them.
00:34:46.800 --> 00:34:53.039
So I should I I would like to just uh follow up and say, I think Mark, you're you are asking a fundamental question.
00:34:53.280 --> 00:34:55.119
When does government intervene?
00:34:55.360 --> 00:35:00.719
What when, Heather, would you be comfortable seeing the government start to take some sort of action?
00:35:00.880 --> 00:35:05.760
And the other one that I can think of on top of acid rain is around the ozone layer.
00:35:05.840 --> 00:35:10.000
And when we saw that there was an impact happening to the ozone layer, the world came together.
00:35:10.079 --> 00:35:20.960
We addressed aerosols, we worked collaboratively, we fixed the problem, and we really proved to the world that we could see a problem and fix a problem together by responding in in unison.
00:35:21.360 --> 00:35:27.039
And I think uh correct me if I'm wrong, Mark, your perspective is why can't we do that with these issues?
00:35:27.280 --> 00:35:31.280
It gets into the politics of certain policies, like the carbon tax.
00:35:31.360 --> 00:35:40.079
But it sounds like, Mark, you're saying that this policy has so much kind of weight on it that it can't continue in its current form because it's not landing with the public.
00:35:40.239 --> 00:35:42.480
So when that happens, you would just be okay with adapting.
00:35:42.559 --> 00:35:44.239
Am I am I understanding that correctly?
00:35:44.719 --> 00:35:47.599
No, I wouldn't be okay with adapting because I think it'll be horrendous.
00:35:47.679 --> 00:35:49.679
But I I want to just thanks, Aaron.
00:35:49.840 --> 00:35:51.039
That was really clear.
00:35:51.360 --> 00:35:54.880
But this is where I would be similar to Heather, I think.
00:35:54.960 --> 00:35:57.039
I'll speak for her and then she can correct me.
00:35:57.199 --> 00:36:13.039
I I do see that the ozone depleting substances was a way easier problem to solve because as Heather has said since the beginning of this in this talk, uh, fossil fuels have been fundamental to humanity in improving the lives of people.
00:36:13.280 --> 00:36:19.119
Um, our well-being today is so much greater because of fossil fuels.
00:36:19.440 --> 00:36:43.760
And now we have a problem is that if we burn them openly, instead of capturing the carbon or converting the fossil fuels into something while we extract the carbon, which we're already technically able to do, and it makes it'll make our well, in that one book I did it, it makes our energy system two to uh five to ten percent more expensive than it otherwise is.
00:36:43.920 --> 00:36:52.000
And we can look at that like by looking at Danish electricity and looking at uh Norway today, which is a fossil fuel exporter.
00:36:52.159 --> 00:37:02.719
So, so Aaron, my point is is that uh I would I you know it would be nice if fossil fuels could be solved in the same way that ozone depleting substances could, but it isn't.
00:37:02.960 --> 00:37:08.639
So the bigger problem is we have no global government and fossil fuels are fantastic to burn them.
00:37:08.960 --> 00:37:13.440
They'll they'll be cheaper than nuclear power for, in my opinion, for 100 years.
00:37:13.599 --> 00:37:15.760
Um, and so we have a we have a challenge.
00:37:15.840 --> 00:37:25.440
And I'm just trying to call people out and say, are you willing, are you willing to implement some policies that would move us away from emissions?
00:37:25.599 --> 00:37:29.519
Um, and maybe we'll keep using fossil fuels, maybe we'll switch to other things.
00:37:29.679 --> 00:37:33.280
There is a lot of transition going on on this planet right now.
00:37:33.440 --> 00:37:37.119
I'll pick a I'll pick a fossil fuel exporting country like Norway.
00:37:37.360 --> 00:37:46.159
Um, in the 80s, they had they've discovered in the 70s, they discovered all this natural gas and they were gonna convert their buildings to being heated by natural gas.
00:37:46.320 --> 00:37:51.760
And they decided not to because they don't just in the late 80s, they already started to hear about the fossil fuel concern.
00:37:51.840 --> 00:37:59.039
And I've kind of tracked that through colleagues and people that I knew uh in Norway, and I advised them quite a long time ago.
00:37:59.280 --> 00:38:07.280
And then they did the same thing in um in electricity generation, they could have generated a lot of electricity with natural gas, and they don't.
00:38:07.360 --> 00:38:23.519
They have one refinery, the Monk Refinery, that uses a little bit of natural gas, but they couldn't be making almost, I mean, they make a lot of electricity from hydro, but they've had to have a lot of growth in their generation, and natural gas would have been dead cheap for them, and they had big debates about it and decided not to for planetary reasons.
00:38:23.679 --> 00:38:29.679
And now with vehicles, people told them when you can't switch away from vehicles, uh, how can you go to electric vehicles?
00:38:29.840 --> 00:38:39.760
And they said, and they put in policies, and the policies were some regulations, some pricing, uh, road pricing, uh, taxation on vehicles, and some subsidies.
00:38:39.920 --> 00:38:41.360
Uh, and they've done that as well.
00:38:41.440 --> 00:38:51.280
And all I'm saying, Aaron, is that we already have people around who are acting on us, so it's a bit rich when somebody says, Oh, we can't have this policy or that policy in Canada.
00:38:51.440 --> 00:38:54.800
And the Trudeau government was trying to implement some of these.
00:38:54.960 --> 00:38:57.039
Uh, was it doing all the right stuff?
00:38:57.199 --> 00:38:58.239
Uh, I'll agree with that.
00:38:58.400 --> 00:39:04.159
But I think if we go on a rant about it, you'd kind of have to ask yourself what policies you would do instead.
00:39:05.039 --> 00:39:06.960
Heather, what are your reflections on that?
00:39:07.119 --> 00:39:07.280
Yeah.
00:39:07.599 --> 00:39:10.159
And then I'll I'm gonna go to a pipeline question after this.
00:39:10.480 --> 00:39:10.800
Perfect.
00:39:10.960 --> 00:39:18.320
I'll just say with Norway, you know, the reason they could subsidize EVs so much is because they had so much income from fossil fuels.
00:39:18.480 --> 00:39:20.400
And I don't think that is replicable.
00:39:20.480 --> 00:39:22.239
I think it's, you know, uh admirable.
00:39:22.320 --> 00:39:23.840
It was not reclaimable.
00:39:24.159 --> 00:39:31.199
The far better option, the the way that we are electrifying transportation to a far greater extent is with China having a cheap EV.
00:39:31.440 --> 00:39:39.039
And it's just cheaper for some, you know, for some good consumers to just have EVs, not having to subsidize a third of it.
00:39:39.280 --> 00:39:45.440
Uh, but but basically just having, you know, again, the market doing its thing, people freely choosing.
00:39:45.519 --> 00:39:49.360
Uh so for me, when you say, you know, what policies would you do?
00:39:49.440 --> 00:39:50.639
I mean, there's there's a few policies.
00:39:50.800 --> 00:39:53.119
I'm even not uh opposed to a carbon tax.
00:39:53.199 --> 00:39:56.320
I'm I'm in favor of the industrial carbon price in Alberta.
00:39:56.559 --> 00:40:01.760
I just think probably$60 is as high as it can go before you start getting less globally competitive.
00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:04.239
The tier programs work pretty well in Alberta.
00:40:04.480 --> 00:40:15.280
But I'm saying for the 8 billion people in the world, uh, what's only going to work are our market solutions where people just naturally choose the lower emitting um uh product.
00:40:16.239 --> 00:40:18.159
I do want to move forward on this.
00:40:18.320 --> 00:40:21.039
Mark, do you do you feel the need to respond to that?
00:40:24.159 --> 00:40:26.719
They used all the money they have from their oil to do that.
00:40:26.800 --> 00:40:30.800
Well, we can do some of that, but also that's why I use Denmark as the earlier example.
00:40:30.960 --> 00:40:37.840
They were by the time they were reducing emissions, they really weren't using any of the bits of money they made from gas in the North Sea.
00:40:37.920 --> 00:40:42.320
So, and then there are a lot of other countries that are examples, but anyway, no, please go ahead.
00:40:43.440 --> 00:40:51.039
So, in in my view, the world has changed quite a bit since those Trudeau era policies, particularly with the war in Iran.
00:40:51.199 --> 00:40:57.760
And there seems to be a change within the liberal government now under Prime Minister Mark Carney to say, hey, we have to be realistic.
00:40:57.920 --> 00:41:07.599
He wrote the book Values, very much outlining the need to take climate action, and then has said, hey, you know what, we need to be realistic about where we are and what our country does.
00:41:07.760 --> 00:41:09.440
And so, Mark, I'd like to start with you.
00:41:09.519 --> 00:41:14.639
What are your thoughts on this transition and should Canada build the proposed pipeline?
00:41:15.119 --> 00:41:23.440
So here's where I might wreck your show, because I think I'm gonna say stuff that Heather will agree with, but um, and so apologies in advance.
00:41:23.679 --> 00:41:32.079
Uh so I am an energy economist, and so I really try not to have all this as one ideological blinders on this or that.
00:41:32.239 --> 00:41:36.639
I don't follow left or right, environmentalist or industry.
00:41:37.119 --> 00:41:45.760
I try to see what are the sort of in my field, and I'm on several of the some of the major journals, uh editorial boards, and so on.
00:41:45.840 --> 00:41:47.679
I see a lot of research.
00:41:47.840 --> 00:41:50.159
And what do we know about energy markets?
00:41:50.320 --> 00:41:55.519
Well, we know that um they equilibrate globally now.
00:41:55.920 --> 00:42:09.760
So you can't sort of say, oh, there's a North American natural gas market or just uh, you know, a regional electricity, electricity, yes, but uh you know, oil, coal, natural gas, these are global.
00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:26.159
So if one jurisdiction says, oh, we're not gonna produce this anymore as a way of helping the planet get off fossil fuels, the what the energy economist experts would say uh is no, you'd have no effect.
00:42:26.320 --> 00:42:40.159
So, in other words, stopping an oil pipeline in Canada or stopping a natural gas uh project uh in Canada for export um doesn't won't reduce emissions globally because someone will produce it elsewhere.
00:42:40.320 --> 00:42:47.519
And then, of course, people add on and say we're better than them, we're nicer, we're more friendly allies, and we do it more cleanly and so on.
00:42:47.679 --> 00:42:49.199
Fine, that's a justification.
00:42:49.360 --> 00:43:02.960
But basically, um the argument that I hear from environmentalists, like a uh, you know, a fossil fuel moratorium that's supposed to stop supply projects, I just don't think that accords with reality.
00:43:03.119 --> 00:43:27.119
And and so, um, and that's why I just pointed to Norway because there's a fossil fuel-rich jurisdiction that still exports um oil and gas, but it says domestically then, why can't we be at least an example for other parts of the world and actually help to improve the costs of the low emission options by adopting that for our internal consumption?
00:43:27.280 --> 00:43:43.280
So, so Aaron, I hope that wasn't too long-winded, but when it comes like I really separate the idea of global trade and therefore decisions about expansion of fossil fuel production in Canada, I separate that from the greenhouse gas argument that I've been making so far.
00:43:43.440 --> 00:43:48.960
And I'll uh pass it over to Heather, who maybe will still find areas to disagree with me.
00:43:49.039 --> 00:43:49.840
I don't know.
00:43:50.719 --> 00:43:51.920
Yeah, well, I can jump in.
00:43:52.000 --> 00:44:10.400
And and for me, I I look at it often as a cyclical thing that energy was very expensive actually around two thousand eight, uh between two thousand eight and 2014, and then it very got cheap because of what we call the shale revolution, this hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling that unleashed a lot more oil and natural gas into the world.
00:44:10.559 --> 00:44:14.480
And that shale revolution made energy cheap and it also lowered inflation.
00:44:14.639 --> 00:44:16.000
So you had very low inflation.
00:44:16.079 --> 00:44:16.800
We all enjoyed that.
00:44:16.880 --> 00:44:22.159
If you bought more got mortgages at that time, um, and the world is able to grow quite quickly.
00:44:22.320 --> 00:44:28.079
Low, you know, low energy prices and low inflation is a really recipe for development.
00:44:28.320 --> 00:44:30.719
So why is Mark Carney changing his tune?
00:44:30.880 --> 00:44:32.400
Why is the public change his tune?
00:44:32.639 --> 00:44:39.039
Why is, you know, the can, you know, Paris Agreement not not driving every every policy decision anymore?
00:44:39.360 --> 00:44:40.880
Is because the cycle changed.
00:44:40.960 --> 00:44:45.039
Um, and you first start to see it, I think, with COVID when supply chains got stretched.
00:44:45.119 --> 00:44:53.199
You certainly saw after Russia invaded Ukraine in particular, when natural gas prices spiked and energy security came to the top of the list again.
00:44:53.440 --> 00:44:58.559
Uh, sustainability had been the priority, the policy priority for I think those seven years before that.
00:44:58.719 --> 00:45:01.840
And then it became energy security and affordability.
00:45:02.000 --> 00:45:08.480
And now that has just, you know, entrenched even more with the street of four moves with Trump and the chaos and all those things.
00:45:08.719 --> 00:45:22.480
So it's just a cyclical thing for me where sustainability is looking in hindsight a little bit like it was a luxury, uh, that it was something you could focus on when all the rest of your economy was doing well, when there was surplus, when there was low inflation.
00:45:22.639 --> 00:45:27.280
And now that the rubber is hitting the road again, security goes to the top of the list.
00:45:27.440 --> 00:45:37.599
And for Canada, it's obvious, you know, that oil has become a strength uh in our negotiations with the United States and with our ability to diversify trade uh with others.
00:45:37.760 --> 00:45:44.719
The reason why we're having better GDP, the reason why we have a trade balance, have had it for four months, is because primarily those oil exports.
00:45:44.880 --> 00:45:49.360
So it's just practical reality, uh, and the pendulum has swung back.
00:45:49.760 --> 00:45:54.960
So, Heather, you're just describing for us reasons for shifts in opinion.
00:45:55.199 --> 00:46:08.000
I I thought the question, so we mean you would have been against um fossil fuel expansion um at when we were more focused on the climate, you would you would have opposed oil pipelines or natural gas.
00:46:08.159 --> 00:46:33.039
Um, it seems to me those things would have, you know, if the mark, yes, we impeded them more, governments impeded them more with regulation and so on, but it seems to me um that the point I was trying to make, uh, yes, I know that my career is long enough that it's it's I've seen several of these in terms of the interest in how how much or how fast you expand fossil fuel production in some country or another.
00:46:33.199 --> 00:46:40.159
I used to make the point, as as did people who influence me, that the Earth's crust is chalk a block full of fossil fuels.
00:46:40.320 --> 00:46:46.000
And and so you can get more of it all over the place and you can develop innovations that will do that.
00:46:46.159 --> 00:46:51.920
That's why it's such a risk for us to just sort of blindly not put in climate policies.
00:46:52.079 --> 00:47:08.480
Um, but but I I mean, wouldn't you agree that that that stopping the Trans Mountain pipeline wouldn't have affected the amount of um oil burnt on the planet uh if we did that 15 years ago, stopped it, or 10 years ago stopped it?
00:47:08.800 --> 00:47:09.840
Well, I totally agree.
00:47:09.920 --> 00:47:15.599
It's just that, you know, producers would have been would have made less profits and royalties would have been lower when when oil is low.
00:47:15.760 --> 00:47:17.199
That's what happens when oil's low.
00:47:17.360 --> 00:47:19.519
And you try to make yourself resilient to that.
00:47:19.679 --> 00:47:30.559
But no, I totally, I totally agree that Canada has not gained at all from stopping Northern Gateway or from, you know, proposing an emissions cap or putting on the industrial carbon price.
00:47:30.639 --> 00:47:36.559
Uh, but that, you know, other countries have gained market share as a result, the United States being, you know, top of that list.
00:47:36.719 --> 00:47:38.480
And that is why the balance is so important.
00:47:38.639 --> 00:47:40.559
Where do you put your industrial carbon price?
00:47:40.800 --> 00:47:42.719
What environmental regulations do you have?
00:47:42.880 --> 00:47:44.639
What social license do you need?
00:47:44.800 --> 00:47:53.119
Because when oil is$60, then it's a fight, then it's a hunger game to be still competitive, to still be able to produce, to not have to shut in.
00:47:53.199 --> 00:47:58.719
And Ken, unfortunately, for a long time, was at the top of the cost curve, and we're trying to get that lower now.
00:47:59.679 --> 00:48:06.079
Mark, one one of my questions for you is you seem very confident in your position.
00:48:06.159 --> 00:48:14.559
And I appreciate that you're saying, like, hey, I kind of look at how these things are playing out and recognize uh the curves, and I'm sure you've experienced that over your career.
00:48:14.719 --> 00:48:22.079
But what is what is going on in our society from your perspective that there are these incredible ebbs and flows?
00:48:22.159 --> 00:48:35.519
Like, like in my community, in my indigenous culture, the idea that it would be controversial to put the planet first, to recognize that if we burn it all down, there's nowhere for us to live and we die as a consequence of that.
00:48:35.679 --> 00:48:39.360
And I think those are some of the concerns that undergird your perspective.
00:48:39.519 --> 00:48:44.400
But why does it become so controversial from your perspective if the Trudeau policies weren't so bad?
00:48:44.559 --> 00:48:58.000
I'm not saying you are endorsing all of them, but if they're not so bad, why has it become uh such a such so politically unpopular for anybody right now to be advocating for the environment and for climate change and for these pieces?
00:48:58.400 --> 00:49:00.239
Yeah, thanks for that question.
00:49:00.480 --> 00:49:05.519
It costs money to save the planet, it's not free.
00:49:07.440 --> 00:49:14.159
And so humans, uh, you know, you're gonna humans have a lot of challenges with stuff like that.
00:49:14.320 --> 00:49:18.960
Uh, and especially because what can I do as an individual?
00:49:19.119 --> 00:49:22.159
And then we say, what can I what can we do as a country?
00:49:22.320 --> 00:49:24.079
Like it's a global problem.
00:49:24.320 --> 00:49:26.639
So humans are going way too slow.
00:49:26.800 --> 00:49:54.559
And the reasons why, I mean, there are so many books written about this by good scholars, uh, and and so the the basic line is in your own private life, like human volunteerism and choices in the marketplace, as maybe Heather was describing, and yourself, um, aren't going to take care of a major externality, like um like atmospheric climate-causing uh greenhouse gas emissions.
00:49:54.719 --> 00:50:18.880
And so people can say they care about that's why you have like when I do media stuff, and uh the the media will be always doing shows on somebody who's done something different, like they're not using plastic anymore, or they're walking more, like people try to do something in their lives, and I understand that and I sympathize with that, but you need so much more than that, uh, with a with an externality.
00:50:18.960 --> 00:50:26.960
So you just you you look at the history of acid rain, look at the you know, I taught I taught most of my career in an interdisciplinary school.
00:50:27.119 --> 00:50:30.800
I'm an economist, but it's called resource and environmental management.
00:50:30.960 --> 00:50:40.800
So we talk about and we teach about and we study uh and we advise because we're we're a very applied school, uh, where governments have had great success in environment.
00:50:40.880 --> 00:50:56.800
And I look to indigenous people as uh having been you know already having a mindset that's accepting of that, and to some extent also having a mindset to say there's things we have to do as a collectivity, like it isn't just about individual choice in the marketplace.
00:50:56.960 --> 00:51:07.440
We actually need to get together and make, you know, uh seems to be a dirty word here, but policies that uh you know that actually take care of the externality.
00:51:07.599 --> 00:51:10.320
And it's funny, I was wondering if we'd be talking about that.
00:51:10.480 --> 00:51:24.159
So I that's why I brought uh I brought my capitalism and freedom and uh the road to serfdom from Hayek, and the yellow stickies are where I'll read to you if you want, where they tell you you need regulations for environmental issues, anyway.
00:51:24.800 --> 00:51:25.519
Fascinating.
00:51:25.599 --> 00:51:34.400
Uh Heather, on that note, and Mark, I do not want you to think that policy is a bad word here, it's an incredibly important one, and I think you've grounded us uh in the importance of that.
00:51:34.559 --> 00:51:41.039
But Heather, I guess my question to you would be what if you're wrong about this being a free choice?
00:51:41.199 --> 00:51:48.400
What are the consequences for our planet for future generations if we leave this more towards market forces?
00:51:48.480 --> 00:52:14.559
I understand you're not saying only market forces, but if we leave this more towards market forces and you end up being incorrect in your final analysis, and in 50 years we realize that Mark was correct and that we needed to if we had to put in more policies, if we had of made it cost more to do some of these things and try and control emissions and really throw everything at the kitchen sink to address it, what if you're wrong?
00:52:14.719 --> 00:52:16.800
What are the consequences from your perspective?
00:52:17.119 --> 00:52:23.199
Well, I mean, I I do think the world is warming up, and I think that has many negative consequences for humans.
00:52:23.440 --> 00:52:26.079
Uh, and so so I'm not not blind to that.
00:52:26.159 --> 00:52:29.679
So I don't, but I guess I am less alarmist.
00:52:29.920 --> 00:52:33.920
I do, I guess I do have more faith in the ability of humans to adapt.
00:52:34.079 --> 00:52:49.519
And I think, but mostly I just don't think there are policies that are going to change this problem, maybe in Canada or maybe in Denmark, maybe in Norway, but certainly not for the 8.5 billion people, certainly not for countries that don't have those same resources as us.
00:52:49.679 --> 00:52:51.760
It didn't work for those of us with resources.
00:52:52.000 --> 00:52:56.639
It wasn't enough to make us change our behaviors, and there were costs to changing those behaviors.
00:52:56.800 --> 00:53:01.360
So I just don't see it trickling over to the 6 billion people that don't have that excess.
00:53:01.519 --> 00:53:04.239
So I think the world will get warmer, I guess is what I'm saying.
00:53:04.400 --> 00:53:06.159
I'm just realistic about that.
00:53:06.320 --> 00:53:10.000
Uh, I don't want it to get warmer, but it's clear to me that it will get warmer.
00:53:10.159 --> 00:53:14.639
And so I think the obvious thing that governments and societies are doing now is adapting.
00:53:14.719 --> 00:53:23.360
And you're adapting with air conditioning and you're adapting with irrigation, you're adapting with uh, you know, uh genetic technologies that make plants more drought resistant.
00:53:23.519 --> 00:53:26.079
And we are producing more food than we've ever produced.
00:53:26.159 --> 00:53:28.400
And we do have more humans than we've ever had.
00:53:28.559 --> 00:53:31.360
And overall, people's quality of life is still getting better.
00:53:31.440 --> 00:53:34.719
There's fewer poor people in general than there has been in the past.
00:53:34.960 --> 00:53:39.440
And so it is there a tipping point, you know, where everything breaks down.
00:53:39.519 --> 00:53:43.199
I always think, you know, I go to Europe and I think it's a very pleasant place and I like it.
00:53:43.360 --> 00:53:55.199
But if you were to say 200 years ago, wow, there'll be no more forests, there'll be no more animals, there'll be no more bears, you'll have no more biodiversity, you would think, wow, Europe is going to be a hellhole in this in this future.
00:53:55.360 --> 00:53:58.880
In fact, what it is today is a pretty pleasant place for humans to live in.
00:53:59.119 --> 00:54:00.639
So maybe I'm just an optimist.
00:54:02.960 --> 00:54:04.880
Well, with air conditioning, it's not too bad.
00:54:04.960 --> 00:54:07.519
I mean, we like we like to go to Phoenix for God's sakes.
00:54:07.760 --> 00:54:11.599
Uh the Phoenix has been made quite pleasant with air conditioning and irrigation.
00:54:11.760 --> 00:54:17.280
So so so, regardless of whether you want it to warm or not, it's going to warm, if you ask me.
00:54:17.440 --> 00:54:18.880
And so, how do we adapt?
00:54:18.960 --> 00:54:26.320
Uh, and how do we do, you know, the things that eight billion people can do to mitigate these problems, not the things that one billion people can do?
00:54:27.679 --> 00:54:29.039
Mark, uh your thoughts.
00:54:29.360 --> 00:54:38.719
Well, I mean, I think what the Chinese have done is they're let's say on the vehicle side, um, you know, it is how do we generate electricity?
00:54:39.360 --> 00:54:43.519
And in buildings and most of the planet, it's not about heat anyway.
00:54:43.599 --> 00:54:47.519
It's all already it was it's about air conditioning and electricity.
00:54:47.679 --> 00:54:54.880
And so it's not about burning fossil fuels, it's it could be fossil fuels, but you can burn other, you could there's other ways to make electricity.
00:54:55.199 --> 00:55:06.400
So, so much of the planet is gonna get more um electricity in their buildings, and so then the question will be how do you make that electricity?
00:55:06.719 --> 00:55:20.079
And um, where the planet is where people are gonna move around in vehicles and then trucks, I think we can see the writing on the wall that humans uh and the Chinese, there was there was huge subsidies, but it's funny.
00:55:20.159 --> 00:55:26.719
I was in China last November, and people are saying, Well, they're you know, they're making forced laborers build electric cars.
00:55:26.800 --> 00:55:30.480
I was in a car plant and there's nobody there, it's all robots.
00:55:30.800 --> 00:55:41.039
Um, the Chinese are making very cheap cars and they're selling them around the planet, they're gonna wipe out our auto industry um because we didn't move fast enough towards electricity.
00:55:41.280 --> 00:55:46.400
And uh, and so there are good things um that are happening because of policies.
00:55:46.559 --> 00:56:02.320
Uh and I, you know, but I but I think I I I appreciate that Heather is is being honest here, and I, you know, and just saying I don't want to do policies that make anything more expensive, and we have to uh help, you know, help poorer people.
00:56:02.559 --> 00:56:09.679
Uh, and I don't think that'll work in the rest of the planet, and therefore we should just adapt to two, three, four degree temperatures.
00:56:09.760 --> 00:56:11.119
And it's it's good to know about that.
00:56:11.280 --> 00:56:15.440
Most humans, I don't think, will accept that position, but she's welcome to have that.
00:56:16.960 --> 00:56:18.320
Are there any comments on that?
00:56:18.400 --> 00:56:19.760
And then we'll just do closing statements.
00:56:20.079 --> 00:56:22.559
Again, I I guess it's not what I want, you know.
00:56:22.639 --> 00:56:31.039
And I think that's the feeling that many people on the left in Canada have is if they just want policy enough, if they just want to change enough, that's enough.
00:56:31.280 --> 00:56:36.159
I guess I don't see any evidence that wanting policy to change this is having much difference.
00:56:36.320 --> 00:56:40.880
And so, yeah, I just think realistically, adaptation is is what's going to happen.
00:56:41.039 --> 00:56:48.400
I don't see a decline in fossil fuel use, a decline in emissions in a meaningful way uh coming anytime soon.
00:56:48.639 --> 00:56:54.480
That is not the choice of of the Indians, of the Chinas, of the Indonesia's, of the Nigerias of the world.
00:56:54.639 --> 00:56:56.880
And so, what do we do about that reality?
00:56:58.719 --> 00:57:07.599
For closing statements, I'm hoping that each of you can just share your takeaways, maybe um the the best argument you heard from the other.
00:57:07.760 --> 00:57:10.559
The goal, as I said, is this to be nuanced.
00:57:10.719 --> 00:57:16.880
And what I appreciated about both of your approaches is you saw agreement um on some of the key issues.
00:57:16.960 --> 00:57:18.159
And and I think that's important.
00:57:18.239 --> 00:57:23.760
You guys disagreed vigorously on some aspects, um, but agreed on I think some key points.
00:57:23.920 --> 00:57:30.719
So if I can start with you, Heather, would you mind laying out kind of your reflections on this uh and uh your thoughts on Mark's arguments?
00:57:30.960 --> 00:57:31.519
Yeah, sure.
00:57:31.599 --> 00:57:40.719
I mean, what there were quite a few things we agreed on, kind of just the factual, you know, basic things about economics, uh, you know, about how energy economics work and what people choose.
00:57:40.880 --> 00:57:51.119
Um and so I think, you know, the area of disagreement is just on the power of policy to change, you know, the kind of something so fundamental as our energy system.
00:57:51.360 --> 00:57:57.119
And and whether you say I'm more optimistic or pessimistic, you know, depends on on how you take it.
00:57:57.199 --> 00:58:09.760
But but I think that's our difference, is that I just don't think policy, I think we've shown that very expensive policy and efforts uh and uh you know, for 10 years have not done that much to change it.
00:58:09.840 --> 00:58:15.119
And we need to think of a different tack, and it's not just what is the next tax or what is the regulation.
00:58:15.360 --> 00:58:20.000
Um, those things haven't done the job, and I think we need to be a bit more creative going forward.
00:58:21.119 --> 00:58:21.760
Mark.
00:58:22.559 --> 00:58:28.159
Yeah, I don't um so I yeah, I I think there's lots where we do agree, actually.
00:58:28.320 --> 00:58:34.000
And I think where and Heather, let you come back if you want.
00:58:34.320 --> 00:58:36.800
You've often said people on the left, people on the left.
00:58:36.880 --> 00:58:38.800
And every time I hear you say that, I'm like, what?
00:58:39.039 --> 00:58:51.199
And I can introduce you to lots of people on the right who will also say that there are there are reasons to intervene in economies, like it's not pure free market economy, let it go where it wants.
00:58:51.360 --> 00:59:00.639
And so that there is lots happening towards an energy transition in which we burn less fossil fuels per capita and then totally.
00:59:00.800 --> 00:59:22.000
And as Heather said, in a in a planet where the population is probably going to uh you know stabilize and even start to decline, and uh, and so I am uh hopeful that humans can not make the planet too unlivable in key areas, and so I would still work towards that.
00:59:22.159 --> 00:59:29.760
And in working towards that, I would you know invite people to think about there are ways to do this that are fairly economically efficient.
00:59:29.920 --> 00:59:49.199
And I think you know, Heather and I would agree, we got to really pay attention to economic efficiency, and I think there are ways where you can do it where it's affordable, and then you have to pay attention to the lower income people because both Heather and I, and and I'm sure you, Aaron, could afford more slightly more expensive electricity that was zero emission.
00:59:49.440 --> 01:00:09.760
Um, so I and I I guess my argument would just be I I relish people that are free market economy types, uh, like me, who do un to do recognize externality and then try to see if we can how solve a global problem.
01:00:09.920 --> 01:00:14.800
But I understand why Heather says, you know, she's betting on it, like in there's two things.
01:00:14.960 --> 01:00:16.960
Ask me what do I think humans will do?
01:00:17.199 --> 01:00:22.320
And I think it's it's it it I would agree with Heather, it's it's very difficult.
01:00:22.639 --> 01:00:25.280
But what do I think we should try to do in our lives?
01:00:25.440 --> 01:00:29.920
And I think we should try because we we have evidence where we have made some progress.
01:00:30.079 --> 01:00:38.480
And so I want to encourage people like Heather to think about making those policies happen in Canada rather than just tearing away uh any climate policies.
01:00:38.559 --> 01:00:41.280
And I'm not saying she's trying to tear them away, but anyway.
01:00:41.920 --> 01:00:43.360
I think that's really important.
01:00:43.519 --> 01:00:50.880
I'll be humble and say uh this is the first nuanced debate we've hosted to uh so far, uh, hopefully the first of many.
01:00:51.039 --> 01:00:57.119
So I have a lot to learn about trying my best to moderate and make sure each of you have the time to speak and share your reflections.
01:00:57.280 --> 01:00:58.639
But I took a lot away from this.
01:00:58.719 --> 01:01:06.239
I think one, knowing that there is areas of agreement, because I'll be honest, Mark, it feels like a lot of people are in Heather's court right now.
01:01:06.320 --> 01:01:08.800
It feels like that's where the culture is right now.
01:01:08.880 --> 01:01:14.800
And I'm I understand what you're saying, which is that that shifts and moves, and and you don't have direct control over that.
01:01:14.960 --> 01:01:20.880
But it feels like a lot of people are feeling a little bit hopeless about this topic right now, that we there is nothing we can do.
01:01:21.039 --> 01:01:23.840
That the last time we did do something big was the ozone layer.
01:01:23.920 --> 01:01:28.559
There's just this felt sense that we tried and it didn't work, and now we need to get back to business as usual.
01:01:28.719 --> 01:01:42.079
And so I really appreciate the energy you brought to this, reminding people hey, that there are other countries doing things, there are other countries putting their best foot forward and trying to make a difference and not making it political and seeing some results that we should be looking out for.
01:01:42.239 --> 01:01:50.000
Heather, I appreciate you bringing in, like, hey, some of those examples, there are nuances to what they did that maybe we can't replicate perfectly.
01:01:50.079 --> 01:01:52.320
And Mark, I think your argument is why not?
01:01:52.480 --> 01:01:55.599
And maybe we do it differently in order to get to the same spot.
01:01:55.679 --> 01:01:58.880
And so I just really appreciate you both challenging each other.
01:01:59.039 --> 01:02:05.599
I think you brought the perfect balance and tone of challenging each other and yet finding areas of agreement and pushing back against each other.
01:02:05.679 --> 01:02:10.239
Uh, so I took a lot away from this um and was very grateful for the opportunity.
01:02:10.400 --> 01:02:17.679
Can you each, uh, we'll start with you, Heather, tell people where they can find your work, follow you on Twitter, uh, wherever they can go to keep up to date with you.
01:02:17.920 --> 01:02:18.159
For sure.
01:02:18.239 --> 01:02:18.400
Yeah.
01:02:18.480 --> 01:02:27.440
So at McDonaldLaurier.ca, you can find our energy work, you can find my own individual work, and of course, I'm on uh X or Twitter as well at Xner Pro.
01:02:28.559 --> 01:02:29.199
Mark.
01:02:30.159 --> 01:02:38.800
Keith, just look for my name at Simon Fraser's University, and we've got a blog up there and information and so on about the research group.
01:02:38.960 --> 01:02:42.159
And Aaron, I just want to say I actually thought you did a great job as a moderator.
01:02:42.480 --> 01:02:46.400
You uh you you you kept us on the line of the topics, then you let us run.
01:02:46.480 --> 01:02:49.920
So I I kudos to you on uh on your job as a moderator.
01:02:50.000 --> 01:02:51.039
I'm really excited about that.
01:02:51.119 --> 01:02:52.880
I'd love to come on again one day.
01:02:53.280 --> 01:02:54.559
I look forward to that.
01:02:54.639 --> 01:02:58.880
Uh, to be honest with you both, I think you both handled this extremely well.
01:02:59.039 --> 01:03:02.079
I have had, I've been trying to get this started for some time now.
01:03:02.239 --> 01:03:08.320
And the amount of people who do not want to debate their ideas with another person, again, you guys didn't yell, scream, kick.
01:03:08.480 --> 01:03:11.920
This was not an episode of Pierce Morgan, but you guys still challenged each other.
01:03:12.000 --> 01:03:17.280
And I just find that finding people who are willing to do what you just did is really, really rare right now.
01:03:17.360 --> 01:03:21.360
So kudos to both of you for being willing to participate and bring that honest energy.
01:03:21.440 --> 01:03:24.400
Like, Mark, I could feel you being like, This, I know I've got this.
01:03:24.559 --> 01:03:26.079
Like, I've I gotta get my thought in.
01:03:26.159 --> 01:03:27.519
And and Heather, same with you.
01:03:27.599 --> 01:03:29.599
I could see you being like, I don't agree with you.
01:03:29.760 --> 01:03:34.159
And so I just thought you guys both handled uh this this format really well, and I'm just really grateful.
01:03:34.400 --> 01:03:35.280
Thanks so much, Sharon.
01:03:35.360 --> 01:03:36.320
I appreciate it.
01:03:36.559 --> 01:03:37.519
Thanks.