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Shutting down the Canadian fossil fuel economy is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for keeping climate change under control

One of the most striking features of the Leap Manifesto is that while its authors have doubtlessly spent time studying the effects of climate change, much less effort has been spent trying to understand the nature of collective action problems. The contrast with the Alberta New Democratic Party government’s climate change plan could hardly be starker. This takes pains to recognize that there are costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and that these costs should be taken seriously and minimized. More importantly, the Alberta plan recognizes that climate change is a global collective action problem, and there’s a limit to what can be achieved by going it alone. As the University of Alberta and climate change panel chairman Andrew Leach put it, “Until the rest of the world has policies that impose similar cost, you’re not actually reducing emissions to the extent you think. You’re just displacing the emissions and the economic activity to other jurisdictions.”

Shutting down the Canadian fossil fuel economy is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for keeping climate change under control. It’s not necessary, because there are many plausible scenarios in which the oilsands continue to be developed (albeit at a modest pace) while global emissions meet their targets. And it’s not sufficient, because if the rest of the world does not match our actions, those targets will be missed anyway.

(I should make it clear that while I am drawing some parallels between the Leap Manifesto and the Liberal government’s plan to increase government spending, there’s a crucial distinction to be made: the Liberals do not claim that their program will revive a sluggish global economy, and they are appropriately modest about its stimulus effects for the Canadian economy. The authors of the Leap Manifesto display no such humility.)