Even a broken neo-con is right sometimes

This is NYT columnist Tom Friedman on Real Time the other night:

Now, Friedman is an asshole. He was a huge cheerleader of the Iraq war, and became infamous for his Friedman Units (FUs) of roughly three to six months, after which the situation in that country would either get better or the war would be lost. This image illustrates the concept. Or more succinctly:



So anyway, he's a total douchebag.

But even douchebags are capable of being right from time to time, whatever their motivations or pretensions toward greater understanding.

This "Drill baby, drill!" nonsense is the saddest excuse for an energy policy that I've ever seen. Even Stephen Harper sees the logic in carbon markets (though he tries to avoid admitting it in public), but the American Right is intent on sticking their heads in the sand and desperately hanging on to an obsolete economy and an unsustainable lifestyle.

Offshore drilling is not going to save them from $4/gallon gas. Nor will it save the middle class. Ironically, the opposite course of action can.

Red Tory, also responding to Friedman, wonders why liberals have such a difficult time selling this simple message:

It drove me completely mental that during the last election, and leading up to it, Stéphane Dion was hopelessly incapable of creating a broader framework and context for his “Green Shift” and it therefore simply became, as described by the Conservatives, a “tax on everything.” Once again, liberals demonstrate how, in recent years at least, they consistently get outfoxed by conservatives when it comes to “framing” issues. When will they ever learn these simple lessons? Oy.

In some of the Liberal commercials they mentioned “green jobs” or something like that, but there was no substance to it other than being a pleasing expression. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why he didn’t discuss some of the exciting new technology that’s emerging that the government could have helped to facilitate with various incentives. Most people would probably agree that Stephen Harper isn’t exactly a man of vision — except to the extent of imaging Canada as being an “energy superpower” with oil extraction programs of “Brobignagian “ proportions (yes, he actually said that). And yet, we see our manufacturing sector and industrial infrastructure gradually falling apart — whether because demand for the products being made is diminishing (much of the automotive sector… wrong vehicles at the wrong time) or because it’s simply no longer “competitive” in a low-wage global race to the bottom. What’s needed is investment to revitalize that sector of the economy focusing on technologies of the future, not trying to prop up the remains of soon-to-be legacy industries.

This is going to be a tough perception to crack. The public, by and large, associates environmentalist policies with more government spending and thus higher taxes, and also stricter regulation that may hamper economic growth. The great challenge for environmentalists over the next few years is to demonstrate that this shift toward a greener economy is not only necessary, but possibly very beneficial for our economic prospects.

"New industries and new jobs" is the message that people should take away from this. Higher taxes on gasoline are beside the point, because the ultimate goal is to make gasoline itself obsolete.

Nearing the finish line

Canadians will go to the polls on Tuesday (if they haven't already), and most likely elect a Parliament that will probably have a few fewer Liberal seats, and a few more Conservative and NDP seats. The Greens will likely fail once again to elect a single MP. Harper tried to beat the clock on the financial crisis, and failed. But this only means a minority instead of a majority; not a Liberal government.

I'm a little depressed about this outcome, because I think the Liberals had by far the best platform of the major parties, with a bold (but not radical) attempt to address both climate change and a changing energy economy in one swift stroke, and also the promise of competent economic stewardship in a time of crisis.

On the other hand, Harper's Conservatives offered very little in the way of new ideas, preferring to run on "leadership", and present Harper as a cuddly teddy bear in blue sweaters, as opposed to the cold, emotionless robot that much of the public believes he is. The latter met with limited success, but the "leadership" thing was enough for some, including MacLeans and The Globe and Mail, both of which endorsed Harper.

I must say that I am troubled at the ease by which Harper shifts positions whenever convenient. Afghanistan is a good example; just a year ago, Harper was positively Mavericky, insisting that a timetable for withdrawal was a bad, bad idea. Now, he has announced a set date for a complete pullout, in direct opposition to NATO strategy overall. Then there was income trusts. And fixed election dates.

Harper has attempted to govern from the center, but he has one undeniable conservative accomplishment: getting money out of Ottawa. That was the rationale behind the GST cut, which was bad economics, but brilliant politics. That was the rationale behind "equalization" payments. And it has gone pretty much unnoticed.

Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your own beliefs. But there is a strong undercurrent of cynicism inherent in Harper's style of politicking.

No stranger to dirty politics, having been smeared as a crazy right wing nutjob who would put troops on our streets, Harper has turned the tables on his adversaries, and used much the same tactics in defining Dion as weak and indecisive, and convincing a sizable percentage of the Canadian population that a carbon tax is something to be feared, and a potentially disastrous blow to our stumbling economy. Harper knows this isn't true. Hell, the Conservative environmental plan (which would include indirect cap and trade markets, through carbon "credits" that can be earned by firms that beat their regulatory targets) kinda sorta puts a price on carbon too, but it's slightly more opaque. Here's Andrew Coyne:

In sum, the Conservative plan is just as costly (per tonne of emissions reduced) as the Liberals', twice as complicated (emissions trading markets are, as Europe has learned, fiendishly difficult to design: just the task of ensuring credits are based on "real, incremental, verifiable" reductions would take several pages to explain), and probably half as effective. (Not that there's anything wrong with cap-and-trade. But to get anywhere near our targets, we're probably going to need both a carbon tax and cap-and-trade, as indeed the Liberals propose.) The Tory plan has, however, proved unassailably superior in political terms. The very thing that makes the Liberal plan less risky economically — the costs are known up front — makes it more risky politically. The Conservatives have succeeded in implying, without quite saying, that the choice is between a costly scheme and no costs at all. They've hit the political sweet spot: enough of a plan to say they have a plan, but not so much as to get in anyone's face.

He goes on to note that while the Green Shift is unconvincing in its committment to revenue neutrality, and far from a perfect plan, the Conservatives take the cake in demagoguery:

But it is the Conservatives who have been the demagogues-in-chief in this affair. Among the long-term costs will be Conservative credibility. The same Conservatives who have told us for years that prices, in a market economy, are to be preferred to regulation as a means of changing economic behaviour, suddenly forget their economics when it comes to pricing carbon. The same Conservatives who have long insisted that tax rates are critical to incentives seemingly cannot comprehend the logic of shifting taxes from income to carbon. And the same Conservatives who have long lectured us that "corporations don't pay taxes, people do" — that any costs imposed on business will inevitably be passed on, usually to consumers — would rather we forgot they ever mentioned it.

Dion tried, and mostly failed, to make the argument that a Green Shift is not too expensive to risk, but too expensive to put off. We need a green economy to compete in the 21st century. No one who seriously considers the issue will deny this. And it isn't going to happen with intensity based targets and a 2006 baseline.

So yeah, I'm a little unhappy with the way things are going.

Election update

Like many Canadians, I missed the English leader's debate the other day, and I'm ashamed to say that I didn't even make much of an effort to read the news coverage the next day. Maybe I'll catch it on Youtube. But from what I'm reading now, it seems as though people were most impressed with Elizabeth May and Jack Layton. That's just wonderful; at this rate Harper will win 200 seats*, with the NDP and Greens fighting over the scraps of the Liberal party's carcass and the Bloc gaining ground in Quebec.

I did watch most of the French debate, and coming away from that, I was most impressed with Dion and his reasoned defense of the Green Shift. Harper was on the defensive most of the night, and was evasive in answering (or failing to answer) many questions. On the environment, he's at a clear disadvantage. And the worsening economic news is good for the opposition parties, as they will blame the Conservatives for it.

Honestly, that last attack is unfair. Harper has been PM for less than three years, and the deterioriating economic situation is largely out of our government's control. Our exporters depend on the US import market. Our stock market tracks with the US stock markets. Our financial sector (which, by and large, was smart enough to avoid the subprime mess) can't help but be affected by a crash south of the border.

From my perspective, the most obvious argument against Harper is not the economy but the utter cowardice of his environmental plan. Using 2006 as a CO2 baseline? "Intensity-based" targets? What this means, essentially, is at the same level of production, industries will need to reduce their emissions of CO2. It sets no hard cap on emissions. In fact, emissions could end up decreasing only slightly (or even increasing) by 2020 under this so-called plan.

You won't find an environmentalist (or economist) in the entire world who thinks this is a good policy to fight climate change. It is a farce.

Realistically, there are two options (or three, since a carbon tax can be combined with a cap and trade market), and both of them involve putting a price on carbon. It's the only thing that makes sense. The Sierra Club gives the Liberals a B+ and unsurprisingly gives the Greens (who advocate both a strict carbon tax and cap and trade market) an A- on this issue. The NDP gets a B, advocating a cap and trade policy only, since Layton can't be seen as agreeing with the Liberals. Since the Greens have no possibility of forming a government, and the NDP are a bunch of jackasses, that leaves the Liberals as the best option for those serious about changing our wrong-headed environmental policies.


*Or not, new polling suggests that the Tories actually lost ground after the debates, mostly in Quebec and Ontario. Still, I'm fearful that surging Green and NDP support will just translate into more Conservative seats.

Deep thought...

...this is a good ad:


(h/t Far and Wide)

Perhaps not entirely fair. It's not like electing the Liberals will instantly turn Canada into a lush, green eco-paradise. But it definitely provides a stark contrast between the parties and speaks a language that everyone instantly understands. If only Dion was as effective a communicator...

And how 'bout them Greens? Polling 13% in the latest Ekos tracker. They're actually out-polling the NDP in Alberta. I can't understand why Harper ever wanted to exclude May from the debates; she's eating into the Left's base, not his. The more seats the Greens win (if any; let's not get too ahead of ourselves), the fewer will go to the Liberals and NDP.

A closer look at the Green Shift

Read it here.

As I keep saying, I think the carbon tax is the single best environmental policy we can undertake. By taxing polluters directly for their emissions, you provide a clear incentive for polluters to pursue more eco-friendly practices. And with the increased revenue, the government can implement tax breaks that will help to offset expected increases in consumer prices.

Will it mean higher costs for the consumer? Yes. Well, maybe. It depends what kind of consumer you're talking about. For example, the consumer who leaves their television on all day and sticks with incadescent light bulbs will obviously pay more for electricity. But the consumer that is conscious of their power consumption, turns their television off when it isn't being used, and switches to compact flurorescent light bulbs will likely save a lot of money.

Gasoline is not set to be taxed, nor is diesel (at least not for the first year), and the reasoning behind that is that there are already taxes on motor fuel. Take that at face value if you want. Or not; personally, I think gas and diesel should be taxed much more heavily.

Look, I'll be honest, I'm a bit of an environmental extremist. Few things make my blood boil like reading about unsustainable farming/fishing practices or energy policies that literally consist of "more drilling". And I think anyone who poaches endangered animals for profit should be doused in barbecue sauce and thrown into a cage full of rabid hyenas.

So yeah, I'm biased. But the truth is that we'll need to start sacrificing if we want to continue to live unsustainable lifestyles. We may think it's cheaper to not have a carbon tax, but in the long run, it isn't. The costs associated with climate change and other environmental destruction are simply enormous, and they are not reflected in today's consumer prices. The market just isn't that effective in conveying the real costs of finite resources and unsustainable business practices.

The point of this isn't to take more of your money and give it to the government to waste, but to encourage a greener lifestyle. To make people think before they choose a hamburger instead of a salad, before they take the car out for a 1 km trip, before they buy the McMansion 50 miles outside of the city instead of a condo closer to their place of work, before they buy the SUV instead of the compact.

A significant Green Shift needs to happen at some point if we are to remain a viable civilization. Whether Stephane Dion is the guy with the right plan is up for debate, but at least his heart is in the right place.

Election roundup

1. It looks like Green Party leader Elizabeth May will be invited to the debates after all. I guess if they're polling 10% nationally, it's a little hard to argue that they should be excluded. Then again, they don't have a single elected member of parliament (the one Green MP was elected as a Liberal).

I'm not really sure what to think of the Greens. They're basically NDP to the max, with a heavier focus on environmentalism. I guess democracy is what it is, but does the Canadian Left really need to be even more fragmented?

2. Speaking of which, Jack Layton is really laying into the Liberals, saying the Green Shift will only hurt consumers, in contrast to the NDP's own cap and trade proposal. He accurately pointed out that the carbon tax is more of a blunt instrument, and does not let each polluter reach an individual cost-effective arrangement. But there are advantages to a carbon tax too, which I have blogged about previously. While cap and trade certainly has its merits, many economists will find Dion's proposal more sensible.

Of course, little of this will matter if the Tories win a majority, which is not an insane possibility, given the poll numbers at this time.

Civilizational decline

This is a popular subject among many socio-political commentators. Some wonder if the US (and by extension, Canada) is headed for a fall, and will be overcome by a rising China/India/Russia, both economically and militarily. Others, particularly people like Mark Steyn, wonder if Europe is destined to lose its cultural identity in the face of foreign immigration (particularly Muslims; google "Eurabia" and see what comes up), and regress into some dark age.

But other than the standard foreign policy/economic challenges that everyone's always so concerned about, one major one looms over everything else. We don't like to think about it, but it's staring us in the face.

Does anyone even realize, I mean really realize, that in ten years, we could be facing $300/barrel oil? Does anyone have the slightest idea of what that means for our North American way of life? If you compare Europe and North America's differing trajectories over the past half century, one thing stands out: our urban centres are made for cars, not people. Most people live way out in suburbia, and have at least an hour's commute into work every morning. But European cities have more concentrated populations. They have excellent public transportation systems, from buses to trains to subways. There is also a vast high speed rail network linking all major European hubs that almost makes air travel obsolete.

Why? Why have Europeans done this and not us in North America? A good place to start is gas taxes. While John McCain and Stephen Harper ramble on about reducing gas taxes, European countries have had vastly higher taxes on gas for decades. The prices that we moan and groan about are nothing compared to what they've dealt with for decades. And because they have, they've had to plan their cities around people, not cars.

We've had a free lunch. Our entire society is based around the idea that oil is cheap, that gas is cheap. But it turns out that nothing lasts forever. If we aren't at Peak Oil now, we will be soon. Prices will keep going up.

Our political discourse on this issue revolves around making gas cheaper . Around sustaining our unsustainable lifestyles. This is the wrong approach. Read Jared Diamond's Collapse for a good explanation of why.

People need to realize that was the past. We have to think about the future, about replacing coal with wind and solar, replacing oil with natural gas, replacing SUVs with hybrids and electric cars, etc. The exciting thing about all this is that none of this spells economic disaster. In fact, a green economy can create millions of new jobs, and generate billions of dollars in new revenue. It's not a downsizing of our economy, but a transformation. That's the way it needs to be framed.

That's not to say that it's going to be easy. We need the political will to do it, and preferably a huge investment not dissimilar to the Manhatten Project in getting us off of fossil fuels altogether. This shouldn't just be a national effort, but a broadly international one.

Oh, and the cool thing about all this is that if we do it soon, we might also avoid the cataclysms of climate change. Nice bonus.

Gas taxes and...puffin poop?

Look how cutthroat our politics are, compared to our mild mannered southern neighbors. We aren't even two days into the campaign and Stephane Dion is already calling Harper a liar. And it was only a "kinda, sorta" lie (Harper said Dion wanted to raise the GST; Dion actually said he would only "consider it"). Yet it's taken Barack Obama months to include some conjugation of the verb "to lie" in any of his ads or speeches.

Cutthroat perhaps, but they can also be juvenile :

An internet ad posted by the Conservatives on Monday night showed a puffin pooping on Stéphane Dion, in a nod to former Liberal leadership rival Michael Ignatieff's musings last year about the puffin while on a trip to Newfoundland.

Okay, let me be the first to say that puffin shit has no place in this campaign.

Anyway, the number one reason why I cannot justify voting blue this year:

Tories to cut diesel, jet fuel excise

WINNIPEG — In his first promise of the election campaign, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is pledging to cut federal excises taxes on diesel and aviation fuel in half within four years.

Mr. Harper is vowing he would the tax by two cents -- reducing it to two cents per litre from the current four cents.

He says it will offer welcome relief for consumers because it would reduce shipping costs for goods they buy, from food to furniture. The levy reduction will cost the federal treasury $600-million.

“It's modest, affordable and responds to real needs,” said the Conservative Leader, who used a Winnipeg warehouse of vegetables as a backdrop to illustrate the impact of fuel taxes on consumer goods.

Mr. Harper's pledge is a measure that would displease environmentalists, who together with the Liberals say that ratcheting up carbon taxes on fossil fuels is the best way to fight global warming and wean Canada's economy off its dependency on oil.

Today's promise is meant to contrast the Tories with Liberal rival Stéphane Dion, whose proposed carbon tax would hike excise taxes on diesel and aviation fuel by 7 cents a litre.

That's some epic fail there. It's a cynical ploy to draw a contrast with Dion and the carbon tax, all for short-term political gain. Gas/carbon taxes need to go up, not down. Much like John McCain's inane "gas tax holiday", I doubt Mr. Harper will be able to find a single economist (other than himself, of course) who thinks this is a good idea.

The sooner we adjust to the reality of scarce oil the better. Let's not prolong the illusion.

This is pretty cool

It seems Senator Biden is quite strongly committed to combatting global poverty and disease. This is very encouraging, since these issues are so intertwined with the great challenges that we face in this new century.

Extreme poverty usually means a lack of access to education and health care. As I've blogged about before, these factors combine in a cruel positive feedback loop to frustrate any attempts at economic progress. Lack of primary education, especially among girls, means larger family size and higher population growth, which in turn contributes to all manner of environmental problems and stresses on natural resources. And lack of access to health care has obvious economic impacts. An unhealthy workforce is an unproductive one. Quite apart from the millions dying of the disease, sub-Saharan Africa is rife with AIDs orphans. What chance do they have?

If we're to have any hope of reversing these dangerous trends, our political leaders need to get serious about making a difference. No more empty platitudes and symbolic foreign aid budgets. If Biden really is passionate about this, choosing him as VP was a step in the right direction.

Is gas really that expensive?

Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Even if you understand the reasons for the increase in gas prices over the past couple years, you probably think it's high enough.

Despite some recent decreases in the price of crude, gas prices have barely budged. Surely gas isn't really worth more than $1.30 a liter (in Nova Scotia). Those gas companies are just getting rich at the consumer's expense. Right?

Wrong.

The truth is that the market price for gasoline doesn't begin to cover the true cost of its use. That $1.30 goes toward the cost of discovering, pumping, and refining the oil into gasoline, and then the cost of delivering the finished product to your local gas station, as well as any taxes (which can be considerable, depending on which country you live in).

But that $1.30 doesn't begin to cover the costs of climate change, various tax subsidies for oil companies, and even the long term health care costs resulting from air pollution. Depending on who's doing the calculation, those hidden costs could amount to as much as three or four times the market price that we pay for gasoline.

This is the problem with waiting for the market to solve our environmental problems; the true cost simply won't become apparent until many years in the future. These costs are generally referred to as externalities in economics lingo.

The classic case study is that of a factory which pollutes a nearby river. The costs of this pollution are not reflected in the firm's balance sheet, but the environmental damage is considerable for the town; some people die of sickness related to the pollution, and the cleanup is expensive. The market has no way to account for these external costs, so government regulation is necessary to ensure that the firm accounts for its own externalities, either by paying for cleanup or improving their standards so they no longer pollute the town's river.

So a carbon tax on gasoline like the one the Liberals are proposing would be an attempt to account for the externality, but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that even a strident carbon tax will fully nullify the true cost of burning the stuff. I don't mean to be a broken record, but the only long term solution is to drastically cut back on our use of fossil fuels.

Canadian election watch, part II

According to this article from yesterday's Globe and Mail, Stephane Dion is "ready to go" for an election over his Green Shift (which a Liberal insider is quoted describing as very difficult to understand, even for Dion's own aides). Frankly, I'll believe it when I see it. This isn't the first time that an election has been threatened, but the Liberals keep caving.

As for the Green Shift, it's surely going to be a difficult centerpiece for a campaign, because no matter how Dion tries to sell it, it amounts to new taxes. And Harper's no fool; he'll paint it as just another attempt to transfer wealth from the West to Ontario. Never mind that Alberta's oil wealth is essentially unearned and is wreaking havoc on the environment, Finders-Keepers is the name of the game here.

It's all a little depressing, because the more I see and read, it's clear that we're going to need bold action on the environment if our civilization is going to survive this century. Isn't there any way for our political parties to make this crucial argument without sounding disingenuous or over-alarmist?

For example, the carbon tax should not be potrayed as an attempt to make expensive gasoline even more expensive, it should be portrayed as a plan to force the use of alternatives to gasoline, something which we can all agree is sorely needed. Right?

Alberta and the "Green Shift"

Following up on my earlier post, it's worth noting that the Prairie provinces are particularly at risk from climate change. Four Strong Winds summarizes the problem pretty well:

First, let's look at the Columbia Icefields – the source of the North Saskatchewan and Athabasca rivers (you
remember that last one, it's the one the Oil/Tar Sands need to produce all that
oil that's 'driving' our economy). The Athabasca glacier has lost half of its
volume in the last 125 years, and continues to lose 16,000,000 cubic
meters of ice a year. Further south, the summer flows of the North and South
Saskatchewan Rivers are at 66.6% and 53.8% of what they were in 1910. These
rivers (and their related systems) don't just provide drinking water for cities
like Edmonton and Calgary, but are the backbone of our farming, ranching, and
tourism industries. In 2003, the Bow was listed as one of Canada's most
endangered rivers. Sadly, you can't drink oil.

That 2-4 degree increase in temperature doesn't just mean less glaciers; it means less rainfall, and more
evaporation. It means the shifting of the climate found in the extreme southeast
of the province as far north as Calgary or even Red Deer. The effect this type
of a shift on our rural economies will not be minor by any stretch of the
imagination.

For all the handwringing over carbon taxes and what they would do to Alberta's oil economy, it does not seem to be a province that could easily weather the effects of global warming.

In any case, I think Alberta can handle some extra taxes. It's become an economic powerhouse, with oil prices through the roof, a per capita GDP 50% higher than the national average, and people making $15/hour at Tim Hortons.

I don't know how it's polling out west, but a large majority of Canadians are in favor of strong action on the environment, which gives, at least implicity, some kind of a mandate to Dion and the Liberals.

The Liberal Green Shift isn't a perfect plan, but it's a little depressing that Harper would rather duck the debate altogether, given how important this issue is, not only for his home province of Alberta, but for all of Canada. Also depressing that it's inevitably going to be cast in terms of the traditional East-West divide in federal politics. This shouldn't be about that; it's about how we as a nation are going to deal with climate change.

Nothing to fear from climate change?

And to stay on the subject of the environment for a minute, a new study concluded that Canada is the country best positioned to avoid the dangers of climate change. It's not just because we're a cold country that wouldn't mind some warmer weather (that viewpoint is dangerously wrong), but because we're a developed country with a low population density and a healthy economy that is better prepared to deal with environmental catastrophe.

I can't say I'm too reassured, because even if climate change fails to hurt us directly, there's nothing stopping it from hurting us indirectly. We live in a global economy, and environmental catastrophes around the world cannot fail to impact us, irregardless of how well equipped we are to deal with our own problems.

The problem with meat

Okay, I admit it. I like a nice, juicy steak as much as the next guy. I also like hamburgers, and lamb souvlaki, and pork chops, and bacon, and sausages, and just about every other red meat. It's just really good.


But at the same time, I try to limit my consumption of red meat, by opting for poultry, fish, or even vegetarian meals as often as possible. Why? This graph says it all:

(graph from here)

The production of meat, and especially beef, is just an extraordinarily inefficient way to feed the human race. One acre of land used for corn farming produces ten times as much usable protein mass as the same land used for cattle. And those cattle have to eat too. Check page 23 of the above PDF to see feed-to-product ratios; to get equivalent amounts of beef and poultry (the final product that makes it to supermarket shelves), cows need to be fed 3 to 5 times as much.

Ezra Klein sums up the problem pretty well here:

Bacon is transcendent. The words "porterhouse" and "steak" make my mouth water.
Pork belly makes me simultaneously believe in God and doubt my own religious
tradition. And because of this, I'm not a full vegetarian. But I should be. And
not liking liberals don't change the truth about meat: Industrial
agriculture is cruel, meat production is a huge contributor to global warming,
and the market for meat contributes to world hunger in a substantial and direct
way.

I won't convert to vegetarianism any time soon. Nor is vegetarianism necessary for the long-term survival of the human race. But at the same time, we should all do what we can to cut down on our consumption of meat, and especially red meat. It wouldn't just be good for the planet, it'd be good for ourselves as well. With obesity rates through the roof in North America (not to mention incidence of heart disease and other health problems resulting from poor diets), eating more veggies and less red meat is just what the doctor ordered.

The continuing scourge of deforestation

This report is not very encouraging:

There is between one-third and one-half less forest on Earth today. And in recent times, what remains has been disappearing at an alarming rate.

Each year, 13 million hectares of forest is lost, according to 2005 figures. That's an area roughly the size of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick combined.

When forest regeneration is taken to account, the net annual loss is still 7.3 million hectares, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization reports. (Some environmental groups, though, dispute this number as being too low.)

In addition to its obvious negative effects on forest eco-systems, deforestation also contributes to climate change:

When forests are cleared in a non-sustainable way, the environment receives a nasty double-whammy.

The cleared forests can't take any carbon dioxide out of the air, which means less of a filter for greenhouse gas emissions.

But the act of deforestation actually is a major cause of those emissions as well. Moist, dense rainforest soil contains even more carbon than the tree branches and leaves, and it's all released into the atmosphere when the forest is cut and burned.

The clearing of forests has helped Indonesia become the third-largest producer of greenhouse gases on the planet. Brazil is close behind.

And deforestation contributes roughly 25 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, according to various estimates.

That's more than 12 times all of Canada's emissions or, as one British newspaper theorizes, the equivalent of eight million people flying from London to New York daily.

The major loci of deforestation are mainly in the Third World, as land is cleared for agriculture, oil production (ironic, huh?), and obviously for logging. The article states that Canada has put a halt to deforestation, and in much of the developed world, the trends have even reversed, with Europe adding 661,000 hectares of forest per year. And there are some signs of progress elsewhere as well:

China, as well, added almost four million hectares of forest cover each year during the first half of the decade. Vietnam is adding two per cent annually.

And as awareness of the problem grows, countries are setting aside more land for conservation. The central African country of Gabon, to name one example, set aside 10 per cent of its forest land in 2005.

The UN has an initiative to plant 7 billion trees by the end of next year. You can go here for more information.

Liberal "Green Shift"

I'm always sympathetic to any bold move on environmental or climate change policy.

On the face of it, the Liberals' new Green Shift plan is a good one. It establishes a carbon tax, starting at $10/tonne of CO2, which will rise yearly. Taxing carbon directly cuts to the heart of the problem, and for that reason many economists believe it to be the best option. The Liberals also promise to use the revenue to pay for a variety of tax cuts and incentives.

As Andrew Coyne notes, this plan is not actually revenue neutral. In other words, all the revenue raised by the carbon tax will not be going to tax cuts. Actual tax cuts are small or non-existent. Much of the revenue will be ear-marked to pay for tax credits, which Coyne rightly equates with new spending initiatives that will do little to promote stagnant productivity growth, unlike meaningful tax cuts.

But tax credits are not necessarily bad policy, even if they are spending by another name. And a carbon tax may be long overdue.

Whether a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade framework is more cost-effective is open to debate. Theoretically, cap-and-trade should be, since each emitter is able to reach their cost-effective solution, while a carbon tax would be indiscriminate. Firms less able to reduce emissions would be taxed at the same rate as firms more able, and the end result would be a deadweight loss, with one group having surplus profits and the other having surplus losses.

But in practice, there are very real complications with cap-and-trade that make cost-effectiveness unlikely. There would be costs associated with uncertainty over emissions and abatement costs. There would also be major administrative costs associated with running such an inevitably complex scheme.

A carbon tax, on the other hand, would be simple to administer. Taxes are easy to understand, even if unwelcome. And the government would have increased revenues that could be invested in alternative energy and other green solutions.

The importance of oil and how to change it

The debate over fossil fuels is often in the context of global warming and alternate energies. But in fact, oil is one of the single most important physical resources that we as a civilization possess.

Just for fun, take a look around where you live. See any plastic? It's probably everywhere, even if you don't realize it, from plastic bags, to bottles, to toys, to compact discs, to rubber, to Goddamn model food replicas. All of that is made from oil. Look outdoors; you see the roads? Guess how they make asphault. I could go on and on; suffice to say that we owe a lot to oil.

It's really a crime that we burn any of it. And it's finite. We have maybe another few decades before it becomes prohibitively expensive. But little changes in our lifestyle make a difference. Ed from ginandtacos makes the point:

I wonder why people like McKibben don’t spend more time presenting these problems in a way that doesn’t overwhelm readers’ feelings that they can do something concrete about it. Not “write your Congressman” or “vote for environmentalists” but actually do something measurable. When he says “The planet is going to die and you have to fix it” there aren’t many people who think that’s a realistic goal. Maybe, for example, he could write a column about how re-usable canvas grocery bags can save 300-500 plastic (made from oil, of course) or paper bags per shopper every year. Even though suburban America is resistant to anything that asks for a lifestyle change or suggests that profligate consumption is not our birthright, most people will read that and think “Well that’s not so fucking hard.” I mean, honestly, how hard is it to use a different bag to carry groceries? It isn’t. At all. It’s so goddamn easy that….people might actually do it.

So we wean ourselves off of plastic grocery bags as a nation. McKibben has a tangible victory. An example toward which to point. “See? We changed something. And it was easy! Now let’s try…..” Because the problem here is not SUVs or lack of public transit or McMansions. Those are symptoms. The problem is that our entire national mindset is fucked up. We simply do not think about conservation, waste, or efficiency at all. We ask only two questions: What do I want? What is easiest/most convenient for me?

I'm not quite as negative as Ed; the environmental movement has come a long way, and most people are at least sympathetic to it. The problem is a lack of information. A lot of people just don't understand how important this is, and our governments need to show some leadership.

For one example, governments all around the world have passed legislation that will phase out or outright ban the use of incandescent lightbulbs in favor of compact fluorescents, which use only a fraction of the power. I think a similar committment is needed to limit the use of plastics and other petroleum products.