Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for inviting me. My name is Dale Marshall. I'm with the David Suzuki Foundation.
First of all, again, thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. I'm here to express my support for Bill C-377. This important bill seeks to write into law the science-based targets that are needed to ensure that Canada takes full responsibility for avoiding dangerous climate change.
If you will, allow me to go back to 1992. Canada and the world signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The ultimate objective of that convention was to avoid dangerous climate change. Of course, that begs the question, what does “dangerous” mean?
Over a decade ago the EU set two degrees as a threshold for dangerous climate change, two degrees Celsius of average global warming compared to pre-industrial levels. This limit now has widespread support from countries and scientists, including most recently the Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists.
Canada seems to be coming around on the issue of two degrees after, frankly, having ignored it for a long time. A document released by Foreign Affairs Canada concluded that setting the two-degree limit has been beneficial to the EU because it's allowed its 27 member states to, and I quote here, “focus policy development”. In the House of Commons in December 2007, Canada's environment minister, John Baird, stated that a rise of two degrees Celsius is unacceptable.
So the logical extension of the minister's opinion on this is that Canada now needs to set limits to ensure that greenhouse gas emissions don't rise to a level that would allow two degrees Celsius and for Canada to do its fair share in keeping the planet within that limit of warming. That's what this bill does.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that to have a reasonable chance of limiting warming to two degrees, developed countries would have to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 25% to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 and by 80% to 95% below 1990 levels by 2050. I'll note that the targets that are set in Bill C-377 are in those ranges but are at the lowest end of those ranges.
Those targets are also the ones that were proposed by the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute in our report from two years ago, “The Case for Deep Reductions”, based on what the science was saying about two degrees and based on Canada doing its fair share with respect to avoiding that limit.
Of course, these targets would also put Canada in line with the UN process and the international community. The IPCC target range of 25% to 40% is also one that Kyoto parties, including Canada and about 160 other countries, agreed to consider, both in Vienna and then again in Bali.
So there seems to be convergence, both in Canada and internationally, on the measures in this bill, both the two-degree limit and the greenhouse gas targets.
The next question becomes how Canada reaches those targets, and there's every reason to believe that Canada can meet these with very little or no economic disruption. The economic modelling work done by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy shows that Canada can reduce its emissions by 65% in the next 43 years by foregoing about one year of economic growth. So even with existing technology, we could spend one year of our future growth in the next 43 in order to reach the government's targets.
Now, the government's targets aren't the targets in this bill. The NRTEE's work did not consider 80% and did not use the 1990 baseline. It used the targets that the government set. But the report did state that further emission reductions are possible at slightly higher economic costs, and again, referring back to the IPCC, found that globally we could stay within two degrees Celsius with approximately two years of foregone economic growth in the next half century.
The David Suzuki Foundation has also commissioned some economic modelling to look at the medium-term target of 2020. Unfortunately, that report has not been released. It will be released three weeks from today. But let me share with you some of the findings.
It showed that Canada could get 80% of the way to the 2020 target that is laid out in the bill merely by applying a sufficiently high carbon price through either a tax or a cap and trade system. This, of course, does not include additional measures that could be taken, like regulations on energy efficiency for equipment and appliances, regulations on vehicle fuel efficiency, and stronger building codes for energy efficiency.
So what would be the macroeconomic price of this? Canada would forego 1% of GDP—about half a year's growth—between now and 2020 and join the global fight against climate change. In other words, between now and 2020, the Canadian economy would grow by 26% instead of 27%, while reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to well below what the government has laid out in its 2020 target.
By the way, all these findings are very consistent with international studies that have shown that where emission reductions have happened, they've happened at very low economic cost and they're consistent with economic projections for future emission reductions. Jurisdictions like Norway, the U.K., and California have all modelled the kinds of emission reductions that are found in this: 80% reductions. Norway has a target of 100% emission reductions by 2030. In other words, Norway is planning on being carbon neutral within a generation. Norway presents an interesting example because it is a country that has the same characteristics as our country, and those characteristics are supposedly barriers to Canada getting really serious on climate change. Norway, like Canada, is a northern country. It has a very small population compared to its land base. It's an oil and gas exporter, yet it is planning on being carbon neutral by 2030.
My point is that the costs of tackling climate change head-on are important, obviously, but so are the costs of not acting, or not acting fast enough, to limit warming to two degrees Celsius or below. The global costs of passing the two degrees threshold are unacceptably high--for people, our economies, and for the natural ecosystems we depend upon.
The most comprehensive economic report on climate change, the Stern review, found that the impacts of climate change, if we don't act, will be five to twenty times greater than if we do. Stern calls serious action on climate change the “pro-growth strategy” for the future. So the world must act on climate change, and Canada has to do its fair share. This act is an important step in ensuring that Canada does exactly that.
Thank you for your attention. Merci bien.