The Climate for Business

Last night a packed hall in the well-heeled community of Rockcliffe Park Village in Ottawa heard a “friendly debate” on climate change from two of long-time protagonists for the pro and anti-Kyoto positions. Tom d’Aquino, head of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (formerly the Business Council on National Issues) and I squared off on Kyoto and it was fun. Tom and I have known each other since October 1991 (at least) and have an ability to genuinely like each other even while vehemently disagreeing! The debate on Kyoto was hugely aided by the release yesterday of the Corporate Knights magazine special feature on how Kyoto could be met. Even Tom liked it. And he expressed a preference for carbon taxes, while he expressed deep skepticism about it ever happening. The Corporate Knights special feature is a substantive contribution to how we meet our targets. Like the Green Party, the Corporate Knights magazine research supports reaching our Kyoto target, using some international credits to get there, but primarily relying on getting the prices right through carbon taxes, and creating an innovation fund for low-carbon technologies for part of those funds. With the permission of Corporate Knights, we are placing the whole feature on our web site. The key point is: we do not need to be motivated by fear and panic. We can reject the fear-mongering of economic ruin from the Harper government and move to meet Kyoto and well beyond those preliminary targets by mobilizing ingenuity to seize a new economic opportunity in a low carbon economy. Link to "The WAR on Global Warming"