Greenwashing in Alberta

I happened to be in Calgary for work meetings last week when Premier Ed Stelmach announced their “Made In Alberta” plan for [not] cutting greenhouse gases. It’s a highly popular plan in certain circles, as noted in this article.

We need to be clear and call this what it is. The Alberta government’s stated target is to do nothing from now to 2020 and then cut to 14% below 2005 levels by 2050. What this equates to is 11% above 1990 levels. (Note: I do my calcs with Canada’s national emissions since I do not have access to individual provincial values.)

As a comparison, the Harper/Baird plan is a cut to 10% below 1990 (20% below 2006) by 2020 and 48% below 1990 levels (60% below 2006) by 2050

I make this point because I’m sick and tired of governments (specifically the Harper and Stelmach governments) moving the baseline in order to make it appear like their plan will actually accomplish something. Any base year could be chosen, but the world is using 1990 as the baseline year, like it or not, and I believe we should continue this practice so as to not muddy the waters.



We hear much in these announcements about how these are “aggressive plans” that are “economically realistic.” What we never hear is that these plans will meet our international obligations or avoid catastrophic climate change (if these cuts were modelled globally). That’s because they don’t, and they won’t.

Politicians need to tell Canadians the truth. And that is that there is no silver bullet. No easy fix. Doing what is required will require an economic hit. And we should get on with managing that rather than wasting any more time lying about it and making it worse through delay.

You can see our climate change plans in Vision Green.

UPDATE: A friend pointed out that I also failed to mention that both the federal plan and the Alberta plan make much of “intensity targets” for industry, so in reality these will not even reach the targets they have set.  Good point.