On Climate Denial and Market Hypocrisy

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Canada is neither a science-based society nor does it have a market-based economy. For proof, see our climate-change policy.

This is a science-based society, right? And we generally claim Canada's is a market-based economy. Well, if you accept this conventional wisdom, you’d be wrong on both counts.

Take just the threat of climate change. Public policy on climate at both the federal and provincial levels bears almost no relation to current climate science. Canada is wallowing in deep denial. We signed the Kyoto accord but still subsidize fossil fuel production; our carbon dioxide emissions are still increasing. Meanwhile, in a recent article published in The Open Atmospheric Science Journal top U.S. climate scientist James Hansen argues that, if humanity wishes to maintain conditions on Earth capable of supporting civilization: "…CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that."

Let’s hope Hansen is wrong because it is increasingly unlikely that any politically feasible policies will be able to deliver the dramatic reversal in emission trends necessary for stabilization at even 550 ppmv CO2e. Indeed, "an optimistic interpretation … implies that stabilization much below 650 ppmv CO2e is improbable." This is partly because, to achieve this goal, OECD nations would have to begin emissions reductions in excess of 6 per cent, per year within a decade, which would almost certainly require a planned economic recession (which, incidentally, would be preferable to the unplanned chaotic recession we are enduring now).

Too costly or too risky? Consider that atmospheric GHG concentrations of 650 ppmv CO2e imply a 4 C° mean global temperature increase, sufficient to turn much of China, India, most of Africa, southern Europe, South America and the U.S. into uninhabitable wasteland and permanently displace hundreds of millions (billions?) of people from their homes, villages and cities. What would be the cost of that? And just how prepared is Canada to receive a couple of hundred million new immigrants?

They may be coming, whether we like it or not. Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies argues that even a 2.5 C° warming could produce massive nonlinear events in the ecosphere that would give rise to massive nonlinear events in society: "The flooding of coastal communities around the world … has the potential to challenge regional and even national identities. The internal cohesion of nations will be under great stress, … as a result of a dramatic rise in migration and changes in agricultural patterns and water availability. Armed conflict between nations over resources … is likely and nuclear war is possible." One co-author remarked that rich countries could go through “a 30-year process of kicking people away from the lifeboat as the world’s poorest face the worst environmental consequences."

What about the market myth? If Canada – read "industrial capitalism" – truly believed in efficient markets, we would formally recognize climate change, systemic pollution and the depletion of essential ecosystems (to say nothing of their impact on human health and well-being) as unaccounted market "externalities." These problems (which are really symptoms of human ecological dysfunction) represent gross market failure. This means the market prices of manufactured goods and many services do not reflect the true social costs of production. The resultant under-pricing leads to over-consumption which, in turn, accelerates ecological decay, including climate change.

As any Economics 101 student should know (Prime Minister Harper is an economist, isn’t he?), if the market is destructively inefficient, the appropriate corrective is government intervention for the common good. Every market economist – and politician – in the country should be advocating resource depletion taxes, import tariffs and pollution charges (i.e., carbon taxes or a cap-and-trade scheme) to help fix the economy and get prices to "tell the truth" about production costs. A true market democracy would embrace broad-based ecological tax reform.

But we do none of these things. There is little popular or political support to require our domestic economy to act consistently with either sound science or market theory. Worse, we revel in cheap imports effectively off-loading associated health and ecological costs on people and ecosystems half a planet away. Pollution in China represents part of Canada’s ecological footprint.

Humans are inherently short-sighted and self-interested. We deny the truth and rational long-term policies, preferring to satisfy immediate selfish wants. In short, our current unsustainable state is an inevitable consequence of humanity’s innate tendency to hypocrisy and self-delusion. There can be no solution to the sustainability conundrum until we face this inconvenient truth.