OTTAWA - Absolute, hard, intensity-based -- politicians have many ways of describing targets for reducing greenhouse gases, but are the words really that important?
Yes, was the resounding answer from opposition politicians and environmentalists Monday as they attacked Prime Minister Stephen Harper for selling the idea of intensity-based targets on the world stage.
But one of Canada's top economists, TD Bank vice-president Don Drummond, says it's all just semantics.
Harper told a business audience in Berlin, in advance of G8 leaders meetings this week, that his Conservative government's climate-change plan could be a model for some developing countries. The idea of intensity-based targets, which links greenhouse-gas reductions to a company's industrial output, could work to ease those countries gently into fighting climate change.
The idea is that the targets won't hamper economic growth.
"It begins a process of improvement on emissions performance, without coming down with a hammer blow for sectors that are growing,'' said Pierre Alvarez of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
The Alberta oilsands, for example, would be asked to reduce gases per unit of production -- but with a forecast of quadrupling production by 2020 the sector is expected to actually increase its overall emissions.
A hard target, on the other hand, would have the oilsands reduce emissions by a set amount, regardless of how many more million barrels of oil they produce.
"The prime minister said we will adopt intensity targets. That will let pollution gradually increase. Only a weak leader would propose a defeatist path at the G8,'' said deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.
"Why is the prime minister advocating a rise in emissions? Why is Canada giving up in this global challenge?''
A United Nations study released last month pointed out that while energy intensity decreased by 33 per cent between 1970 and 2004, the growth of global income and population still caused greenhouse-gas emissions to rise precipitously.
Canadian environmentalists, including those with the World Wildlife Federation and the Pembina Institute, have said they have little faith that reductions will actually be realized domestically if they're linked to growth.
"The problem with intensity targets is that they don't give you clarity about the absolute reductions,'' said Matthew Bramley of the Pembina Institute.
"When you're working with intensity targets, you only actually know how many emissions are going to be reduced when you know what your productions levels are, and that can't be predicted in advance.''
They also noted that economic forecasting can often prove to be off-base, especially when estimating far off into the future. If certain sectors see phenomenal growth, Canada's so-called absolute targets could be blown out of the water.
A 2005 Environment Canada document, the Liberal government's Project Green, said greenhouse gas emissions growth had been underestimated.
"Canada's economy is performing better than had been projected, and economic growth in key emissions-intensive sectors is now expected to be greater than had previously been projected,'' the document reads.
But Drummond of the TD Bank argues, like the Conservatives, that hard targets and intensity-based targets can both achieve the same absolute goal if the reductions are tough enough.
"To me the only issue that comes out is not intensity versus a cap, but how stringent you want the target to be,'' Drummond said. "I thought the whole debate is just one giant semantic trap.''
Still, Drummond won't assess whether the targets are strict enough. He says there are many question marks in the Conservative plan that make it too early to give it a grade. He said the Tories have so far only accounted for big industry, which accounts for roughly 40 per cent of polluters, leaving a gaping hole for what consumers and other sectors will be expected to do.
"I'm not trying to be overly critical of the Conservatives because they haven't been around for too long, but I thought this is pretty pitiful for a state of policy deliberation for something that we've been at for 10 years.''
