The Green Shaft

I was deadset against the Green Shift gambit from the outset.

It was precisely the type of core policy you don’t advance while you’re in opposition. It takes the power of government to tackle something of that magnitude.

You have to be able to present a cohesive, coherent policy that you can explain in detail and at length to a skeptical voting public. That takes money and resources, plenty of both. The Liberal opposition had neither the time nor the money to take that on.

Mr. Dion allowed the plan to be uncovered weeks before it was unveiled. That allowed Mr. Harper to exploit his party’s powerful financial advantage to frame the policy in the public’s mind and then kick it to the curb. By the time the Dion Liberals got around to presenting this policy the damage was done, the Green Shift was fatally gored.

It’s not as though Mr. Dion didn’t know better. In today’s Toronto Star, Linda Dobeil writes that the party’s own pollster warned Dion that the Green Shift was a vote loser seven weeks before it was unveiled:

“Despite the confidential warning to senior campaign officials April 29 from pollster Michael Marzolini, the Dion team pressed ahead and, with great fanfare, announced the plan on June 19.
Johanne Senécal, Dion’s chief-of-staff, emailed campaign co-chairs – Senator David Smith, Mark Marissen and Nancy Girard – that more focus group testing was required in order to sell it properly.

“Tell (Marzolini) that SD (Dion) is putting his political career at risk here and that we would be insane to let him go forward without testing the messages,” she wrote in a May 8 email.

http://www.thestar.com/FederalElection/article/519051

The article makes clear that Dion gambled, and lost, not only his own political career but the electoral fortunes of the Liberal Party by ignoring these warnings.

What in God’s name was he thinking?

 

Remember When We Worried About Global Warming?

Anybody notice how much attention has been paid to environmental problems since the housing bubble burst triggered the subprime mortgage crisis that triggered the derivative securities crisis that triggered the debt crisis that triggered the credit crisis?

The environment? Global warming? Go away kid, I’m busy saving banks here!

And so it goes. The Environmental News Network has a story today that shows how intractable the carbon emissions problem can be. Norway had plans to be the leader in curbing carbon output. Way back in 1991 Norway enacted a carbon tax. It also imposed powerful emissions regulation on its offshore oil industry. So where is Norway today? Carbon emissions are up 15%.

“Although the tax forced Norway’s oil and gas sector to become among the greenest in the world, soaring energy prices led to a boom in offshore production, which in turn boosted overall emissions. So did drivers. Norwegians, who already pay nearly $10 a gallon, took the tax in stride, buying more cars and driving them more. And numerous industries won exemptions from the tax, carrying on unchanged.

Norway’s sobering experience shows how difficult it is to cut emissions in the real world, where elegant theoretical solutions are complicated by economic changes, entrenched behaviors and political realities.

A few countries have cut emissions without injuring their economies. Sweden and Denmark, both of which introduced a carbon tax, have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by 14% and 8% respectively since 1990 while maintaining growth. Their emission reductions can’t be attributed to the tax alone, economists say. Additional moves to encourage energy efficiency and renewable energy, which are government-subsidized, played a part.”

Wait a second, did I read that correctly? These countries have had carbon taxes since 1990 – almost two decades – and they didn’t explode? What’s that? Their economies remain strong? Didn’t they get Stephen Harper’s “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid” memo?

By the way, New Zealand has just enacted a “green shift” policy much like that proposed by Stephane Dion. Maybe our Furious Leader can let us know when the folks down under fall into the sea.

 

Rescuing Stephane Dion

It didn’t have to be this way. If Keith Davey was still around, it wouldn’t be.

Stephane Dion’s Green Shift has been a disaster in its introduction and in its marketing.

We all know that the Green Shift stumbled at birth. Mr. Dion lost control of its introduction. It was uncloaked before it could be unveiled. It was released when it was most vulnerable to empty, alarmist attack and before it could be explained, defended and sold to the public.

Steve Harper was able to tie the Green Shift around Mr. Dion’s neck and keep it there. After that, there was no separating the two which ensured that it would be Dion, not Harper, on the defensive in the critical opening weeks of the election campaign.

Everything we complained about Harper, every excess, every anti-democratic and authoritarian abuse, the scandals, every broken promise – it all got swept away. Harper hasn’t had to defend his record at all, not even remotely. It’s as though none of that stuff ever happened.

Harper’s shield, his cloak of invisibility? Mr. Dion’s Green Shift.

At no time since Mr. Dion assumed the party leadership have the Liberals been strong enough to launch an initiative of the scope of the Green Shift. It’s much too big for a party to attempt from a position of relative weakness.

The Tories have held a huge financial advantage over the LPC throughout Mr. Dion’s leadership and there was no sign he was ever making any inroads on that. That alone ought to have set the alarm bells ringing. The Liberals didn’t have the luxury of launching a major and controversial initiative. They couldn’t afford it.

The one thing the Liberals didn’t have to buy was the litany of Harper’s excesses. That was free. People had watched it all unfold – Cadman, Mulroney, Afghanistan, In and Out, accountability, environmental stonewalling, gagging the military, and secrecy, secrecy, secrecy.

So, why isn’t Harper being forced to hop and dance around his own record right now? Why is he able to recast himself as an average guy in a sweater vest? It’s because he grabbed the opportunity, back when the Green Shift unveiling was so terribly botched, to put Dion on the defensive and to keep him there.

The Liberals didn’t have enough money to launch a Green Shift platform. They didn’t have enough money or enough time. It’s not a policy suited to an opposition party in any case. It takes a massive information campaign, meetings and discussions with the public and every key player, a building of consensus. That’s a job only a government can tackle.

Dion needed sage advice and it seems he didn’t get it. He needed to take the initiative and go on the offensive. He needed to frame the issues.

A – The first step ought to have been to assure the public that a newly elected Liberal government would absolutely not introduce Green Shift legislation unless certain key conditions had been met. In other words, Mr. Dion ought to have removed the Green Shift as an election issue altogether.

B – Mr. Dion should have promised broad consultations with the Canadian public and the most heavily affected sectors – transportation, energy, agriculture and so on. Mr. Dion ought to have made clear that his party would then seek to hone that input into the strongest possible consensus behind an effective carbon reduction programme. In opposition, the Liberals have neither the funding nor the time for an undertaking of that magnitude. Restating the obvious isn’t a sign of weakness.

C – And then – the third condition – would have been to promise a plebiscite. Let the government come up with a policy, explain it properly to the public and then seek public approval. Promise the Canadian people that they would decide the Canadian response to global warming. After all, if you introduce policies they don’t support, they’ll do the deciding anyway in the next election.

The logic of this approach ought to have been obvious to any Quebecker. This issue shares a lot of the complexities of a sovereignty referendum. It’s something that has to be sold to the voting public. They have to decide it’s fate, they have to support it or send their government back to the drawing board.

Getting Dion and the cash-strapped LPC off Harper’s hook ought to have been as easy as A-B-C. Then it might have been possible to make this election a verdict on Harper’s greasy record of the past two years.

I’m not sure there’s still time for Mr. Dion to drag himself out of the Green Shift hole that Harper has dug for him. But, damn, he’s got to try!

 

Chicken Licken and Carbon Tariffs

Business doesn’t like the idea of carbon tariffs. So, what else is new? That didn’t stop the National Spot from heralding the warning of falling skies received by the OECD from… why, from 36 business associations.

The Stain gleefully points out, in the first sentence, that carbon tariffs are favoured by the Libs in their Green Shift plan.

Apparently citing no particular evidence for the claim, Big Biz nevertheless warns that imposition of carbon tariffs aimed at punishing (make that “reforming”) big emitters like China could lead to trade wars. Not quite the same sort of wars predicted by the Pentagon and British Ministry of Defence should global warming not be stopped but at least some sort of war, almost, – war by the seller against the buyer. Think that one through for a minute.

Now in the Fantasyland of globalization, the new home of Big Biz and the National Spot, the distinction between land of the buyer and land of the seller is heavily blurred. Vast confusion and boundless uncertainty. In the real world we know this is so much bunkum.

Carbon tariffs might just create jobs back at home again, levelling the playing field for domestic industries. Who knows, they might just compel countries like China, with their gigantic sovereign wealth funds, to invest a portion of their windfall on cleaning up their own industries.

Naturally, neither the one-dimensional business associations nor the equally one-dimensional National Stain championed any other means to achieve the same objective targeted by carbon tariffs. What they want is no action at all. Nothing that might impede the free flow of profit regardless of lasting environmental impact.

Dion is essentially right on the Green Shift and carbon pricing/carbon tariffs. It’s too bad he’s done such a lacklustre job of explaining and selling the policy that he’s left it vulnerable to agitprop from second-rate outfits like the National Spot.

 

Okay Lardo, It’s a Command Performance Now

Our Furious Leader, little Stevie Harper, may have to think twice about spurning Stephane Dion’s challenge for an “adult debate” on the Liberal Green Shift proposal.

A Toronto Star/Angus Reid poll found 70% of respondents absolutely keen on the debate idea.

The Big Greasy Splotch is going to have to tread carefully through this one. If he doesn’t debate, he won’t look good to most Canadians. If he does debate, he runs even greater risks. He might just give Dion the opportunity to show he’s not a wimp. Worse yet, he might give Dion a forum to showcase the real merits and limited downside effects of the tax shift proposal.

Poor old Lardo. He’s great at sniping from the weeds but now he’s being called out – by the Canadian people.

 

An "Adult Debate" on Climate Change?

Stephane Dion seems insistent on bringing Stephen Harper into the floodlights over climate change.

Dion has struck back, challenging our Furious Leader, Mr. “We’re Screwed” Harper, to an adult debate on the Liberals’ “Green Shift” plan to reduce carbon emissions.

“I call on the Prime Minister to debate with me any time on TV on this issue in a respectful, meaningful and adult way.”

No word yet on whether the Great Greasy Spot will take Dion’s challenge.