The 2% solution

I’m not sure about anyone else, but I’m frankly tired of those who claim that Canada does not have a responsibility to do anything about our GHG emissions, or that it would do little good if we did, merely because we are only responsible for 2% of global emissions.

For a little bit this morning I was sidelined by this blog, which argues that we should not be focusing on the airline industry, which only represents 2% of global emissions, and instead should focus on automobiles which are far and away the single largest transportation contributor. This sounded a lot like the argument that says Canada doesn’t matter and that we should focus instead on the US, China, India, etc.

I could even see the logic presented even though emissions at 30,000+ feet are more potent that emissions at ground level, and international flights were never part of the first round of Kyoto due to arguments over which country was responsible. And his points about the media are spot on.

But then I realized that this 2% has nothing at all to do with Canada’s 2% of global emissions.

Consider this analogy. If you are in debt, say you owe $3,000 on a credit card at 18%, another $10,000 on an unsecured line of credit at 10%, and then have your $150,000 mortgage locked at 6% for 5 years, and you find yourself with a bit of extra money, which debt do you pay off first? The entire financial industry would advise you to pay off the highest interest rate loan, regardless of the relative balances that you owe.

In the same way, the easiest, fastest, and most effective GHG cuts that can be made are in those jurisdictions with the highest per capita emissions.

In other words, we can consider the stock of CO2 built up in the atmosphere to be the debt, our annual emissions to be the deficit, and the per capita emissions to be the interest rate on the debt that we have built up for the worlds future generations.

Beyond this, there are still several other valid arguments to justify Canada leading on GHG cuts:

• We cannot reasonably argue for cuts in the international community unless we are taking action ourselves.
• As a developed nation, we are in large part responsible for the “debt” represented by the existing stock of CO2 in the atmosphere, so we have a greater responsibility to address it (along with other developed nations, of course) than do developing nations.
• We have built our economy on cheap energy.  Climate change reductions require higher efficiency and expensive energy.  We cannot expect the developing world to carry the cost of developing their economies with expensive solutions while we continue with the cheap energy model.
• To be fair and equitable to the rest of the world, we need to calculate a tolerable total emission level, divide by 6.5 billion, and then assign allowable levels of emissions to each country based on population. (This is the argument put forward by George Monbiot in Heat.)  Regardless of what numbers you use, Canada will still be required to make drastic cuts.
• If we forge ahead and start to develop clean and efficient technologies before our competitors (specifically to the south as we are already well behind Europe), just think of the markets that will be open to us!

So you think Canada’s 2% doesn’t matter?  Think again.