Corporate Knights reached out to conservatives in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. who are hoping to steer their parties toward a more sustainable future. We asked all three the same question: what is your prescription for green conservatives? Read our introduction here.
There is a habit among politicians, on all sides of the political spectrum, to judge a policy not on its merits but on its lineage. If an idea was born on one side of the aisle, it is unlikely to find support on the other side. In the last few decades this habit has metastasized into a psychosis, both in the United States and in Canada, especially among my conservative tribe, and especially in regard to the issue of climate change. We have wandered into a fever swamp, and our inability to find a way out may end up being one of Canada’s greatest tragedies in the 21st century.
At first, we conservatives argued that climate change did not exist. Then, drowning in data, we retreated to “It exists, but it is not man-made.” After that, we fell back to “It may be man-made, but it is not necessarily harmful.” As global climate disasters increased, we retreated to “OK, it is bad, but there is nothing we can do about it.” This brings us to today, as the conservative movement takes one more futile step backward and declares, “Fine, something might be done, but it would be too expensive.”
It is possible that in the very near future we will finally reach the terminal phase of this debate and announce that “in the face of the catastrophic costs of not doing anything, we clearly could have afforded to do something, but now it is too late.”
That, however, is still a choice for us to make. Conservatives can stop this humiliating decades-long retreat. We can abandon the constant rearguard actions. We can lead again, as we once did on acid rain, and we can start by embracing the core principles of conservatism.
Of course, there are many flavours and camps and dogmas among the political right, and not all values are shared. So, allow me the indulgence of proposing that the vast majority of us can agree on a few items.
First, most conservatives believe that for societal or economic transformation, gradual evolution is usually better than radical change. Therefore, it should also be easy for the right to agree that the climate changes we are already witnessing, and which are predicted to accelerate, will be extraordinarily disruptive to our society.
We are already seeing the beginnings of rapid shifts in agriculture, threatening farming families in Canada and around the world. Unprecedented damage from storms and droughts is quickly creating an existential crisis for the insurance industry, which has underwritten more than a century of economic growth and stability. And rising sea levels, loss of livelihoods and resource scarcity are now driving increased global migration to levels previously unseen.
If conservatives value stability over revolution, then we must see climate change as the single greatest threat to our society. As such, doing something should be our highest priority, regardless of cost. And, if conservatives value our sovereignty and the right of Canadians to dictate their own laws, then we should be rushing to do more on climate action.
We conservatives often argue that Canada is not the problem in terms of global climate change – that we contribute only 1.6% of greenhouse gases. That may be true, but whether we agree or not, the issue is becoming one of the most pressing priorities of our allies and our trading partners. And, as Canada is the second-highest greenhouse gas emitter per capita among the top emitting countries, it is only a matter of time before those allies see Canada as a climate laggard.
If we continue to dither on climate action, those same allies will almost certainly impose harsh decarbonization measures on us through our bilateral trade and security relationships. This would be similar to the way the Western community imposed drastic economic reforms on Eastern Europe in the 1990s. The results were disastrous for those countries and could be similarly disruptive for Canada, regardless of which party is in government. That concern alone should be motivation enough for Canadian conservatives to stop retreating and start working energetically on climate action.
If the Canadian conservative movement can make that shift, to simply accept that the climate needs to be at the heart of all policy decisions, we can finally stop the decades of retreat and begin to lead again. Alas, at that point, we will have to grapple with the single most debilitating symptom of our partisan psychosis: the carbon tax.
Ironically, if partisans judge policy by its lineage, conservatives should be swooning over a carbon tax. It was originally championed by Republicans in the United States, such as Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, George Shultz, and George H.W. Bush’s chief of staff, James Baker. They liked it because it is a market-based solution that gives consumers and businesses the economic freedom to make their own choices. It does not involve more regulations, and it does not require the government to pick winners and losers – something it is notoriously bad at.
Unfortunately, because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the bête noire of Canadian conservatives, made the carbon tax one of his central policy planks, the political right instinctively lined up against it and has spent most of the last decade telling voters it will not work and it will be too expensive.
Of course, as has been documented in numerous jurisdictions, it does work. In British Columbia, where a right-of-centre party adopted the tax in 2008, data show it has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 5% to 15%.
And, it is not too expensive. Economists of all political stripes have calculated that it is the most efficient means of reducing carbon, bar none. Canadians, particularly among the lower and middle classes, are realizing that the carbon-tax rebates are a significant assistance in the face of rising living costs.
A brave conservative leader would finally accept this, stop the retreat and lead by keeping the carbon tax and then finding ways to make it more efficient and effective, by closing loopholes that allow the largest emitters to pay the lowest rates, for example. But, this being Canada, political bravery does not run in our veins, regardless of ideological DNA.
So, let us assume the current leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada takes that off the table. The good news is that there are still many other policy options, albeit less effective and less efficient, that will help. Chief among these would be to accelerate the decarbonization of our energy sector by regulating reduced methane emissions, championing the use of nuclear and renewable energy, and replacing more carbon-intensive power sources such as coal. We can also spend more on new sequestration technologies and create new fuel standards.
Happily, these are already policies that the Conservative Party of Canada supports. If they made good on their existing promises, if they made climate action the centre of their political strategy, then there may still be time to find our way out of this partisan fever swamp. But, if this issue continues to be nothing more than a political game, it will be a tragedy for Canada. We will be left less prosperous, less stable and less independent. And that is a legacy no conservative would ever want.
Scott Gilmore is an entrepreneur, a writer and a Canadian conservative – albeit not a popular one.
