Politics

All Politics Is Local, Including Climate Politics – Bloomberg

Published

4 years ago

December 15, 2020

Nobody likes cheaters. Is it possible to hate them too much?

The 30-year record of climate diplomacy suggests the answer is absolutely yes, according political scientists Michaël Aklin of University of Pittsburgh and Matto Mildenberger of University of California, Santa Barbara.

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To understand how that could be, consider for a minute how we’ve been encouraged to think about international climate talks since 1992, when leaders agreed in Rio de Janeiro to the framework that still governs climate talks to this day.

Climate change is frequently called a “collective action problem,” meaning that victory requires participation from everyone and that any diplomatic agreement must prevent and punish “free riders,” or countries that benefit from global progress without cutting their own emissions. Yale economist and 2018 Nobel laureate William Nordhaus wrote in 2015 that treaties have largely failed because of “the strong incentives for free-riding in current international climate agreements.” The late Harvard economist Martin Weitzman wrote two years later that “the core problem” in global climate politics is “to overcome the obstacles associated with free-riding.”

The U.S. isn’t a member of the Paris Agreement anymore (a condition President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to reverse once he’s inaugurated in January). Leaders from Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey—all still parties to the 2015 pact—have been criticized for setting climate goals too lax to be taken seriously. By the logic of the free-rider doctrine, all these nations are cheaters. Fearing they’ll be taken advantage of, climate champions should also drop out of the Paris Agreement and unwind their climate policies.

So why did 75 countries announce stronger climate commitments this past Saturday at a virtual conference to mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris climate agreement and preview next year’s round of climate talks in Glasgow? The U.K. just tightened its 2030 emissions goal to 68% below 1990 levels. European Union leaders agreed to change their target to a 55% emissions drop by 2030. Denmark, the EU’s biggest oil producer, will phase out oil production by 2050. China shocked the world in September by vowing to zero out its emissions by 2060, a move heralded potentially as “the single biggest piece of climate news in the last decade.” While still woefully insufficient, climate efforts are growing stronger, not weaker, the U.S. and other cheaters notwithstanding.

There’s a better explanation than free-riding to explain how countries negotiate, Aklin and Mildenberger say: domestic political factions and special interests. The core problem negotiators face isn’t fear that other nations will betray them, it’s getting domestic support for their positions. “Climate policies create new economic winners and losers,” the two academics write. These potential winners and losers vie to control national discussions, and that’s primarily what guides the big talks.

Aklin and Mildenberger run through the history of climate diplomacy to show that the classic examples of the free-rider hypothesis in action don’t really hold up. Before world leaders—including U.S. Vice President Al Gore—signed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the Senate overwhelmingly voted against the idea over concerns that it wouldn’t bind developing nations as it would rich ones. The George W. Bush White House formally ended U.S. support for Kyoto in 2001 after relentless lobbying from the oil industry, and the treaty has entered collective memory as a missed opportunity.

Despite not solving climate change, however, the Kyoto Protocol raised awareness around the world, with national commitments increasing despite the U.S. absence, Aklin and Mildenberger write. The agreement prompted the EU to start its Emissions Trading System, and created a “clean development mechanism” that let rich nations buy carbon credits from emissions-avoiding projects in developing countries.

Opposition to free-riding “is an idea that’s very intuitive,” Mildenberger said in an interview. But what’s “created the most friction has been economic conflicts between winners and losers at the national level.”

But aren’t politicians such as the U.S. officials who point fingers at China for standing to benefit from U.S. emissions curbs clearly responding to the free-rider threat? No, the authors write. It’s a “rhetorical flourish to disguise just outright opposition,” Mildenberger said. By casting themselves as willing to cooperate under the right conditions, these officials are hiding the likelier fact that they are unwilling to cooperate under any conditions.

The Paris Agreement already represents a monumental shift in diplomatic approach. The pact is an aggregation of domestic pledges, not a centralized litany of instructions. It’s not “the kind of straight jacket that was imposed in the past,” Aklin said. “It also allowed each country to focus on what they were good at.”

The three most important stories to watch in the coming year aren’t related to Paris agreement sticking points at all, Aklin said, further underscoring the flexibility of this diplomatic agreement. How will Biden implement his climate strategy? What details can China add to its dramatic September announcement? And how will India phase out its coal?

In the next phase of climate diplomacy, cheaters are only cheating themselves.

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Politics

New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs kicks off provincial election campaign

Published

32 mins ago

September 19, 2024

Anne Joseph

FREDERICTON – New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs has called an election for Oct. 21, signalling the beginning of a 33-day campaign expected to focus on pocketbook issues and the government’s provocative approach to gender identity policies.

The 70-year-old Progressive Conservative leader, who is seeking a third term in office, has attracted national attention by requiring teachers to get parental consent before they can use the preferred names and pronouns of young students.

More recently, however, the former Irving Oil executive has tried to win over inflation-weary voters by promising to lower the provincial harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent if re-elected.

At dissolution, the Conservatives held 25 seats in the 49-seat legislature. The Liberals held 16 seats, the Greens had three and there was one Independent and four vacancies.

J.P. Lewis, a political science professor at the University of New Brunswick, said the top three issues facing New Brunswickers are affordability, health care and education.

“Across many jurisdictions, affordability is the top concern — cost of living, housing prices, things like that,” he said.

Richard Saillant, an economist and former vice-president of Université de Moncton, said the Tories’ pledge to lower the HST represents a costly promise.

“I don’t think there’s that much room for that,” he said. “I’m not entirely clear that they can do so without producing a greater deficit.” Saillant also pointed to mounting pressures to invest more in health care, education and housing, all of which are facing increasing demands from a growing population.

Higgs’s main rivals are Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon. Both are focusing on economic and social issues.

Holt has promised to impose a rent cap and roll out a subsidized school food program. The Liberals also want to open at least 30 community health clinics over the next four years.

Coon has said a Green government would create an “electricity support program,” which would give families earning less than $70,000 annually about $25 per month to offset “unprecedented” rate increases.

Higgs first came to power in 2018, when the Tories formed the province’s first minority government in 100 years. In 2020, he called a snap election — the first province to go to the polls after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and won a majority.

Since then, several well-known cabinet ministers and caucus members have stepped down after clashing with Higgs, some of them citing what they described as an authoritarian leadership style and a focus on policies that represent a hard shift to the right side of the political spectrum.

Lewis said the Progressive Conservatives are in the “midst of reinvention.”

“It appears he’s shaping the party now, really in the mould of his world views,” Lewis said. “Even though (Progressive Conservatives) have been down in the polls, I still think that they’re very competitive.”

Meanwhile, the legislature remained divided along linguistic lines. The Tories dominate in English-speaking ridings in central and southern parts of the province, while the Liberals held most French-speaking ridings in the north.

The drama within the party began in October 2022 when the province’s outspoken education minister, Dominic Cardy, resigned from cabinet, saying he could no longer tolerate the premier’s leadership style. In his resignation letter, Cardy cited controversial plans to reform French-language education. The government eventually stepped back those plans.

A series of resignations followed last year when the Higgs government announced changes to Policy 713, which now requires students under 16 who are exploring their gender identity to get their parents’ consent before teachers can use their preferred first names or pronouns — a reversal of the previous practice.

When several Tory lawmakers voted with the opposition to call for an external review of the change, Higgs dropped dissenters from his cabinet. And a bid by some party members to trigger a leadership review went nowhere.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.

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Politics

New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs expected to call provincial election today

Published

2 hours ago

September 19, 2024

Anne Joseph

FREDERICTON – A 33-day provincial election campaign is expected to officially get started today in New Brunswick.

Progressive Conservative Premier Blaine Higgs has said he plans to visit Lt.-Gov. Brenda Murphy this morning to have the legislature dissolved.

Higgs, a 70-year-old former oil executive, is seeking a third term in office, having led the province since 2018.

The campaign ahead of the Oct. 21 vote is expected to focus on pocketbook issues, but the government’s provocative approach to gender identity issues could also be in the spotlight.

The Tory premier has already announced he will try to win over inflation-weary voters by promising to lower the harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent if re-elected.

Higgs’s main rivals are Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon, both of whom are focusing on economic and social issues.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.

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Politics

NDP flips, BC United flops, B.C. Conservatives surge as election campaign approaches

Published

2 hours ago

September 19, 2024

Anne Joseph

VICTORIA – If the lead up to British Columbia‘s provincial election campaign is any indication of what’s to come, voters should expect the unexpected.

It could be a wild ride to voting day on Oct. 19.

The Conservative Party of B.C. that didn’t elect a single member in the last election and gained less than two per cent of the popular vote is now leading the charge for centre-right, anti-NDP voters.

The official Opposition BC United, who as the former B.C. Liberals won four consecutive majorities from 2001 to 2013, raised a white flag and suspended its campaign last month, asking its members, incumbents and voters to support the B.C. Conservatives to prevent a vote split on the political right.

New Democrat Leader David Eby delivered a few political surprises of his own in the days leading up to Saturday’s official campaign start, signalling major shifts on the carbon tax and the issue of involuntary care in an attempt to curb the deadly opioid overdose crisis.

He said the NDP would drop the province’s long-standing carbon tax for consumers if the federal government eliminates its requirement to keep the levy in place, and pledged to introduce involuntary care of people battling mental health and addiction issues.

The B.C. Coroners Service reports more than 15,000 overdose deaths since the province declared an opioid overdose public health emergency in 2016.

Drug policy in B.C., especially decriminalization of possession of small amounts of hard drugs and drug use in public areas, could become key election issues this fall.

Eby, a former executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said Wednesday that criticism of the NDP’s involuntary care plan by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is “misinformed” and “misleading.”

“This isn’t about forcing people into a particular treatment,” he said at an unrelated news conference. “This is about making sure that their safety, as well as the safety of the broader community, is looked after.”

Eby said “simplistic arguments,” where one side says lock people up and the other says don’t lock anybody up don’t make sense.

“There are some people who should be in jail, who belong in jail to ensure community safety,” said Eby. “There are some people who need to be in intensive, secure mental health treatment facilities because that’s what they need in order to be safe, in order not to be exploited, in order not to be dead.”

The CCLA said in a statement Eby’s plan is not acceptable.

“There is no doubt that substance use is an alarming and pressing epidemic,” said Anais Bussières McNicoll, the association’s fundamental freedoms program director. “This scourge is causing significant suffering, particularly, among vulnerable and marginalized groups. That being said, detaining people without even assessing their capacity to make treatment decisions, and forcing them to undergo treatment against their will, is unconstitutional.”

While Eby, a noted human rights lawyer, could face political pressure from civil rights opponents to his involuntary care plans, his opponents on the right also face difficulties.

The BC United Party suspended its campaign last month in a pre-election move to prevent a vote split on the right, but that support may splinter as former jilted United members run as Independents.

Five incumbent BC United MLAs, Mike Bernier, Dan Davies, Tom Shypitka, Karin Kirkpatrick and Coralee Oakes are running as Independents and could become power brokers in the event of a minority government situation, while former BC United incumbents Ian Paton, Peter Milobar and Trevor Halford are running under the B.C. Conservative banner.

Davies, who represents the Fort St. John area riding of Peace River North, said he’s always been a Conservative-leaning politician but he has deep community roots and was urged by his supporters to run as an Independent after the Conservatives nominated their own candidate.

Davies said he may be open to talking with B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad after the election, if he wins or loses.

Green Leader Sonia Furstenau has suggested her party is an option for alienated BC United voters.

Rustad — who faced criticism from BC United Leader Kevin Falcon and Eby about the far-right and extremist views of some of his current and former candidates and advisers — said the party’s rise over the past months has been meteoric.

“It’s been almost 100 years since the Conservative Party in B.C. has won a government,” he said. “The last time was 1927. I look at this now and I think I have never seen this happen anywhere in the country before. This has been happening in just over a year. It just speaks volumes that people are just that eager and interested in change.”

Rustad, ejected from the former B.C. Liberals in August 2022 for publicly supporting a climate change skeptic, sat briefly as an Independent before being acclaimed the B.C. Conservative leader in March 2023.

Rustad, who said if elected he will fire B.C.’s provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry over her vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic, has removed the nominations of some of his candidates who were vaccine opponents.

“I am not interested in going after votes and trying to do things that I think might be popular,” he said.

Prof. David Black, a political communications specialist at Greater Victoria’s Royal Roads University, said the rise of Rustad’s Conservatives and the collapse of BC United is the political story of the year in B.C.

But it’s still too early to gauge the strength of the Conservative wave, he said.

“Many questions remain,” said Black. “Has the free enterprise coalition shifted sufficiently far enough to the right to find the social conservatism and culture-war populism of some parts of the B.C. Conservative platform agreeable? Is a party that had no infrastructure and minimal presence in what are now 93 ridings this election able to scale up and run a professional campaign across the province?”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.

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