In anticipation of the upcoming federal election, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) asked the independent economic modelling firm, Navius Research Inc., to project the impact of each party's climate policy.
According to Navius Research modelling, the Green Party of Canada's Mission: Possible, the Green climate action plan, will reduce emissions by close to 60 per cent by 2030.
“I want to thank CBC and Navius Research for demonstrating that the Green plan Mission: Possible is the most ambitious and that we have the details that confirm it is achievable," said Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada.
"We are the only party with a target consistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warning to hold to the Paris Agreement goal of no more than 1.5 degrees C."
Read the full-text release by the Green Party of Canada below.
CBC/Navius modelling of our Climate plan.
We have a climate emergency. In an emergency, the first question you ask is not what will it cost, but what will it take. Of course it is important to proceed in the most cost effective way possible – in fact, the urgency demands that we make every dollar invested in the transition to a low carbon future stretch as far as we can.
The question is no longer and never should have been whether the transition to a low carbon future is affordable and therefore whether we should proceed or not, the question is how do we make that transition as quickly and cost efficiently as we possibly can.
The Green Party applauds CBC for attempting to understand our climate plan, but we are concerned
that this type of modelling is only marginally useful. It certainly is not real predictor of the cost. The analysis proves the Green Party is on track to meet the IPCCC target of 60 per cent reduction with some improvements over the next decade. And is far and away more comprehensive than any other party.
The Green Party applauds CBC for attempting to understand our climate plan, but we are concerned that this type of modelling distorts the costs. The models are not designed to model trans-formative change, which is what the Green Party’s climate and energy platform is all about.
The same can be said for our economic models, which treat the economy as an equilibrium system, which it is not, which typically represent the future as a bigger version of the past, when we know we are in a period of fundamental change.
Imagine it is the year 1919 and you are trying to model the automobile system and its future impact on the economy. Only one in 40 people owns a car. If you had a model of the economy, the transportation portion would have been completed dominated by railroad and shipping industries and the car would have been relegated to a secondary status, its historic economic potential hiding in plain sight.
By 1930, just 11 years later, half the households in Canada had cars and the auto industry was
established as a pillar of the economy. That kind of rapid trans-formative change is what we need now, that is what is happening now with the transition off fossil fuel. It will define the economies of the 21st century in much the way the car defined the economies and even the societies of the 20th century. We mustn’t let our backward looking models blind us to the future of opportunities offered by the low carbon transition.
We are beginning to see that the cost of the low carbon transition will be less than what we have been assuming. There are several reasons for this. One, the pace of innovation in technologies for making electricity from solar and wind resources, and for storing energy, has been bringing down the costs of these technologies at rates we did not dream possible even ten years ago. Two, the more we do the cheaper it gets. This is Economics 101.
There are tremendous economies of scale that come into play as the pace of the transition accelerates and the markets for the new technologies accelerate. As the demand for everything from heat pumps to high performance windows grows from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions, the prices come down. Three, the new business and financial models for the low carbon transition are slashing and even eliminating transactions costs, learning curves, and inefficient logistics and delivery methods that have contributed to higher costs in the past.
When a computer model produces outputs that show the transition to a low carbon future will be a drag on the economy, you can be fairly certain that there is a problem with the model. Setting aside all the problems with the use of GDP as a reliable indicator of economic well being, it is not the economy we get by making the transition to a low carbon future that we need to be worried about, it is the economy that comes global warming that we need to be worried about.
It is a future Canada that continues down the unsustainable path of fossil fuel dependence that will ruin our economy. A future Canada that runs on renewable, carbon-free energy will help us back away from climate disaster while renewing our economy at the same time.
