A Tale of Two Policies

Okay, perhaps to call on of these a policy is stretching a bit, but it is more than a little revealing that the Canadian Federal Government and the European Union both released the details of their enivonmental action plan today. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is focusing on cleaning up Canada's air, hoping to reduce emissions by 2020, eight years after the next proposed Kyoto deadline. Furthermore, the actual targets are to be determined in consultation with industry groups, a tactic that the Liberal government used to delay progress on Kyoto as well.

In Europe meanwhile, the focus is on energy awareness and reduction, something that Mr. Harper's government recently eliminated funding for. The European approach is two-pronged: first by increasing consumer awareness of the energy demands of various consumer goods, the hope is that they will opt for the item with lower consumption, second, measures are being introduced through tax incentives for manufacturers to switch to more energy efficient processes. The crude simplification here is that the less energy used, the heat-trapping emissions produced.

One the surface, the difference with the Canadian approach may appear to be one of semantics. After all, aren't emissions bad, and so cleaning the air will remove them? Some heat trapping gases, like nitrogen dioxide give smog its brown haze, but others, like carbon dioxide cannot be seen. The proposed Clean Air Bill will make no impact on carbon dioxide levels. In fact, there's a small irony here: the Harper government is trying to imply that it's Clean Air Bill is a more practical approach to global warming than Kyoto, when it actually barely addresses the same concerns, the cynical smile comes in that many of the visible particulates that "dirty" the air actually reflect light and heat, contributing to global cooling . . .