The Politics of Alberta’s
Carbon Tax*

Kevin Taft

The political struggle over Alberta’s carbon tax is a proxy for Alberta’s broader struggle to adapt to a world moving with increasing speed toward a low-carbon future. Alberta is a major producer and exporter of carbon fuels, and the province’s politics are caught between forces that want to hang on to a past made prosperous by carbon, and forces trying to move the province away from carbon toward a more adaptive future. The carbon tax marks this struggle, and most indications are that the anti-tax, pro-carbon forces are prevailing. This suggests Alberta’s transition to a low-carbon future is going to be more painful than it need be.

In Alberta’s May 2015 general election, the NDP under leader Rachel Notley won an unexpected majority government. A carbon tax did not feature in the NDP’s election platform;1 rather, it emerged from the work of the climate change advisory panel appointed by the NDP government in the summer of 2015 and which reported in November 2015.2 The government passed legislation establishing the carbon tax, the Climate Leadership Implementation Act3 (known as Bill 20) in June 2016, despite heated objections from opposition parties. This act was part of a framework of legislation and regulations that included phasing out coal-fired power plants and replacing their output with electricity from renewable sources (Bill 27, the Renewable Electricity Act); capping carbon emissions from oil sands production (Bill 25, the Oil Sands Emissions Limit Act); and reducing methane emissions. Phase one of the carbon tax came into effect on 1 January 2017, to be fully implemented one year later.

A carbon tax is an attempt to solve a problem of physics, using a solution from economics, applied through politics. So before we get to the politics of the matter, it’s important to have a basic grasp of the physics of global warming and of the economics of a carbon tax.

To this end, this chapter starts with a brief explanation of the basic science of global warming before providing deep background on the politics of the carbon tax, which is important for understanding today’s carbon tax debates. It then examines the economic principles of a carbon tax before moving on to an examination of the meaning of the carbon tax for the politics of Alberta. Finally, it considers the reaction to a carbon tax as an indicator of the province’s adaptability to a world moving with increasing speed away from fossil fuels.

The Basic Science of Global Warming

A few key points provide a basic understanding of the physics of global warming. First, all objects warmer than absolute zero radiate energy, and hot objects radiate more energy than cool objects. The sun, being very hot, radiates large amounts of many kinds of energy, including ultraviolet energy, infrared energy, and visible light energy, which our eyes see as sunlight.4 The earth absorbs a portion of all those energies from the sun, but being cooler, radiates them back out in just one form, infrared energy. Because the earth converts all these different forms of energy into infrared, it radiates a lot of infrared energy. We feel infrared energy as warmth but cannot see it (unless we’re looking through an infrared camera).5 Think of earth as an infrared heat lamp on its lowest setting, not glowing but gently warm to the touch.

Second, the infrared energy radiating down from the sun and up from the earth passes without effect through the nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere but is absorbed by water vapour, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and other trace gases in the atmosphere, causing those gases to warm. These are called “greenhouse gases.” The warmth of the CO2 and other greenhouse gases then spreads to the rest of the atmosphere and the planet’s surface. This warmth keeps the earth livable; without it, it would be a frozen planet.

Third, when fossil fuels such as coal, gasoline, and natural gas are burned, the carbon they contain, which has been locked underground for many millions of years, joins with oxygen to form CO2, which is released into the air. The more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the greater the portion of the earth’s infrared energy is absorbed by the atmosphere, and the warmer the surface of the earth becomes.

Fourth, since the start of the Industrial Age, humans have burned so much fossil fuel that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen 40 per cent above natural levels. The pace of this increase has accelerated in recent decades as energy consumption has increased and more countries, especially China, have industrialized. If nothing is done to slow the current rate of increase by curbing fossil fuel use, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is likely to reach 300 per cent or more of natural levels by the end of this century.6 CO2 stays in the atmosphere for many centuries, meaning that our accumulated emissions will affect the climate for many lifetimes.

The increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is already driving major environmental changes, including melting ice caps, rising ocean levels, droughts, and heat waves. As concentrations climb, the effects will become more severe, and to quote a presentation by American Petroleum Institute scientists to petroleum executives in 1980, they will bring “globally catastrophic effects.”7

The Deep Roots of the Carbon Tax Debate

The politics of the carbon tax in Alberta are rooted in the debate between those who heed the legitimate research and evidence of global warming, and those who choose to ignore or deny it. The basic science of global warming has been generally understood since 1965, when the science advisory panel to the US president Lyndon Johnson delivered a paper titled, “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,” which the president then made public.8 The paper, written by top US scientists and based on decades of research, concluded with a warning:

Through his worldwide industrial civilization, Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment. Within a few generations he is burning fossil fuels that slowly accumulated in the earth over the past 500 million years.

The paper found that fossil fuels were emitting so much carbon dioxide that the effect “may be sufficient to produce measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate” that could be “deleterious from the point of view of human beings.”9 The repercussions included global warming, melting ice caps, and rising sea levels.

Important research into the effects of carbon emissions on global warming was conducted by governments, research agencies, and the petroleum industry in the 1970s and ’80s. Scientists working for Exxon informed the company’s headquarters in 1978 of a “general scientific agreement” that the global climate was warming because of fossil fuel emissions, and that while some countries would benefit, “others would have their agricultural output reduced or destroyed.”10 This memo warned that even in 1978 the clock was running fast: “Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”11 In the next several years, further research by Exxon and many other organizations supported and strengthened these findings.12

In 1980, the climate change task force of the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s main organization in the United States, reported that fossil fuel use was putting so much CO2 into the atmosphere that big changes were coming to the climate. The timeline for the “likely impacts” of these changes was “1ºC rise (2005): barely noticeable”; then “2.5ºC rise (2038): major economic consequences”; followed by “5ºC rise (2067): globally catastrophic effects.”13 Despite these worrying findings, in 1983 the American Petroleum Institute shut down its CO2 and climate task force and in the late 1980s Exxon abandoned its global warming research program, though research at universities and elsewhere expanded.

By 1992, the science of global warming was so clear that more than one hundred heads of state gathered at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro to launch the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.14 Even the Alberta government’s Department of Energy acknowledged the danger of CO2 emissions and prepared a plan to reduce them.15 In the following decades the science continued to advance, and the evidence of global warming linked to the use of fossil fuels became clear and vast.

In the lead-up to the Rio Earth Summit, supporters of the fossil fuel industry began a sustained and well-financed campaign to deny and confuse public and political understanding of global warming science that continues to this day. This campaign, which has been well described and documented,16 shapes the politics of the carbon tax in Alberta. In January 2017, for example, Wildrose MLA Don MacIntyre told a news conference that “the science isn’t settled” on whether humans are the main cause of global warming.17 MacIntyre repeated his position in subsequent weeks,18 even while Wildrose leader Brian Jean supported mainstream science. When government MLAs challenged MacIntyre, he was backed up by members of the Wildrose caucus, including caucus whip Jason Nixon, who told reporters that NDP MLAs “should be more worried about getting rid of incompetent NDP ministers bringing in carbon taxes, making a mess of children’s service and tearing up confidence in Alberta’s economy.”19 MacIntyre’s comments were widely reported and were endorsed by newspaper columnist Lorne Gunter.20

Whether or not MacIntyre, Nixon, or Gunter knew it, the message that the science of global warming “isn’t settled” descends from a report done for the US Republican Party in 2002. The report, written by Frank Luntz, aimed to help Republicans improve their image on environmental issues, including global warming.21 Luntz, who admitted in the report that the scientific debate “is closing” against global warming skeptics, nonetheless advised Republicans “to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate” on global warming. It is a wrenching and cynical piece of political advice that has been followed countless times, and as Don MacIntyre’s comments show, it still echoes in the politics of Alberta’s carbon tax.

In the meantime, CO2 emissions have grown to levels barely imagined a few decades ago. The increase in atmospheric CO2 predicted to cause “deleterious effects” worldwide by the US president’s science council in 1965 was 25 per cent; in 2016 the increase passed 40 per cent and was rising fast.22

The Economic Principles of a Carbon Tax

As the science of global warming became clear, the need to reduce and then eliminate fossil fuel emissions became obvious, even to—perhaps especially to—the fossil fuel industry. An internal briefing titled, “CO2 Greenhouse Effect,” and given wide circulation to Exxon management in 1982, acknowledged the science of global warming and directly stated its implications: “Mitigation of the ‘greenhouse effect’ would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion.”23 Governments similarly recognized the need to reduce fossil fuel use, and unlike the industry, they pressed forward with reduction plans. These plans were formalized in a series of international agreements, including the Framework Convention on Climate Change signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992; the Kyoto Protocol in 1997; and the Paris Accord in 2016.

There are several ways for governments to bring down emissions. One is through regulations. Governments have passed a series of regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including higher fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles; better insulation standards for new buildings; and the mandatory phase-out of coal-fired power plants. Regulations are direct, clear, and generally enforceable, but they can also be inflexible, inefficient, and even misguided. They work best for relatively straightforward issues amenable to comparatively uniform solutions.

A second way for governments to reduce emissions is to impose a “cap and trade” system, in which a limit or “cap” is placed on all major sources of emissions, and then gradually lowered over a period of years. Emitters that exceed their caps pay penalties. At the same time, a trading system is established so that emitters that come in below their caps can earn revenue by selling their surplus allowance to those that exceed their caps. The cap forces the gradual reduction in emissions, and the trading creates incentives to reduce emissions through efficiency and innovation. Cap-and-trade systems were effective in reducing emissions causing acid rain—in which there were relatively few emitters of easily traced contaminants—but become complicated and open to abuse in the much larger world of CO2 emissions. Cap-and-trade systems are in various stages of development in Europe and a growing number of American states and Canadian provinces.

A third way for governments to reduce emissions is to increase the price of fossil fuels by adding a tax to them, a carbon tax. This uses the most fundamental principle of market economics: when the price of a product goes up, the demand for it tends to go down. By raising the cost of carbon fuels, a carbon tax will reduce their use, and therefore reduce emissions. A tax on carbon fuels, if sufficiently large, will induce consumers toward greater energy efficiency and toward alternative energy sources. A large enough tax would extinguish fossil fuel use entirely. Carbon taxes are simple and easily enforced and can be administered through existing sales tax systems. They allow consumers and markets to decide how to reduce emissions. The downside of carbon taxes is that unless they are continuously raised they lose their effectiveness because people adjust to the higher prices.

The Design of Alberta’s Carbon Tax

Within months of taking office, the Notley government appointed a panel chaired by economist Andrew Leach to prepare a report to advise the government on its greenhouse gas emissions policies. The report was made public in November 2015, and it subsequently became the basis for much of the government’s climate change legislation and policies, including the carbon tax. The panel recommended that a carbon tax be levied on about 90 per cent of carbon fuels on the basis that “putting a price on emissions leverages the power of markets to deploy both technologies and behavioral changes to reduce emissions over time. Carbon pricing is the most flexible and least-costly way to reduce emissions.”24 The government accepted the panel’s recommendations. One of the ironies of Alberta’s carbon tax debate is that the left-leaning NDP is implementing a market-based policy, which the right-wing parties are opposing.

Alberta’s carbon tax applies to gasoline, diesel, coal, natural gas, and propane. The tax is calculated according to the weight of emissions released during combustion, so coal incurs more tax than natural gas, which releases less carbon to produce the same amount of energy. The tax started at $20/ton of emissions on 1 January 2017, and rose to $30.00/ton of emissions on 1 January 2018.25 When fully implemented in 2018, the tax added ¢6.73/litre to the cost of gasoline; ¢8.03/litre to diesel; $1.517/gigajoule to natural gas; and ¢4.62/litre to propane. Various products are exempted from the tax, including farm fuels, inter-jurisdictional flights, biofuels, and fuels sold for export.

In 2018 the tax was expected to add an average of $101/year to gasoline costs for individuals and $205/year for couples with two children; and an average of $152/year to natural gas costs for individuals and $205/year for couples with two children.26

Alberta’s situation is complicated by the Specified Gas Emitters Regulation (SGER).27 The SGER was introduced in 2007 by the Progressive Conservative government of Ed Stelmach, and is sometimes called the first carbon tax in Canada. It is aimed at the largest industrial emitters of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and applies a tax per ton of emissions when a facility exceeds 100,000 tons of emissions per year. The tax applies only to those emissions above 100,000 tons, creating an incentive for industries to remain below that threshold. The tax was initially $15/ton of emissions above 100,000 ton, and rose to $20/ton in 2016 and to $30/ton in 2017. The SGER provides a complicated system through which emitters can purchase credits and offsets, reduce their emissions, or pay the tax. Revenues from the tax go into a fund that supports research and development of technologies for reducing emissions. The SGER will be replaced in 2018 by policies that integrate it with the government’s other climate change plans.

The new carbon tax, when combined with the SGER and its successors, will cover up to 90 per cent of Alberta’s greenhouse gas emissions.28 The carbon tax is expected to collect a total of $6.78 billion from 2016–17 to 2020–22, and the SGER and its successor are expected to collect $2.82 billion in the same period, for a total of $9.6 billion.29

The use of this revenue distinguishes Alberta’s plan from British Columbia’s. The BC plan, though now evolving, was set up so all revenues collected by the carbon tax were used to reduce other taxes. For example, carbon tax revenues helped British Columbia maintain some of the lowest personal and corporate income tax rates in Canada.30 The trade-off between higher fossil fuel prices and lower income taxes helped the province’s government sell the carbon tax to voters.

Alberta’s NDP government chose to use its revenues from the carbon tax differently, aiming a portion directly at “greening the economy.” Alberta’s carbon emissions are dramatically higher than British Columbia’s because of emissions from petroleum production, especially from the oil sands, and because Alberta relied heavily on coal-fired power plants while British Columbia mostly used hydroelectricity. As a result, emissions per person in Alberta in 2013 were 67 tons annually, while the yearly figure in British Columbia was 14 tons.31 By 2014, Alberta accounted for 37 per cent of Canada’s emissions, the highest of all provinces, and Alberta’s emissions were rising while those in Ontario, Quebec, and other provinces were falling.32 By some measures, this imbalance was misleading, because while emissions from petroleum production, particularly the oil sands, are pinned entirely on Alberta, other provinces benefit from their use of Alberta’s petroleum and from the economic activity its production creates.

Regardless, Alberta is an outlier, and with emissions per capita roughly five times higher in Alberta than Ontario, Quebec, or British Columbia, Alberta becomes an easy target for national and international criticism. As a result, Alberta’s NDP government chose to direct a substantial portion of carbon tax revenues to businesses, municipalities, households, and other organizations to help them reduce emissions. Of the $9.6 billion in gross revenues collected by the carbon tax and SGER, $6.2 billion will be invested in reducing emissions. Of this, $3.4 billion will be directed to large-scale renewable energy projects, innovation, technology, and bioenergy initiatives; $2.2 billion to emission-reducing infrastructure such as public transit; and $645 million will be directed through a new organization called Energy Efficiency Alberta to improve energy efficiency in the residential, commercial, and non-profit sectors.33 The remaining $3.4 billion will be used to help households, businesses, and communities adjust to the carbon tax. This includes $2.3 billion for consumer rebates; $865 million to reduce the small business tax rate from 3 per cent to 2 per cent effective 1 January 2017; and $195 million to help communities that are economically dependent on coal mines and coal-fired power plants to transition out of coal, and to help the transition in Indigenous communities.

Of special note are the consumer rebates, which came into effect 1 January 2017 and which were slated to increase with the rise in the carbon tax on 1 January 2018. The rebates are income dependent and will be up to $200 a year for single adults, $300 for couples, and $30 per child for up to four children per family. Two-thirds of households will receive a rebate, the large majority at the maximum, and rebates will be paid quarterly or semi-annually, depending on income.34

The carbon tax and the rebates are designed to work together to reduce emissions: the tax raises the cost of carbon fuels, encouraging consumers to use less of them, and the rebates enable consumers to pay for insulation, newer vehicles, and other carbon-reducing alternatives.

The Political Demographics of Alberta’s Carbon Tax

Three different public opinion polls conducted in the months before the carbon tax was implemented show the broader political backdrop against which the carbon tax debate has unfolded in Alberta.35 This backdrop held few surprises, and while it is bound to shift over time, it shows the demographic basis upon which the politics of the carbon tax are constructed. The details of each poll varied, but all three showed that a majority of Albertans opposed the carbon tax (sometimes called “levy” or “pricing” in the surveys). Opposition ranged from above 70 per cent in rural Alberta, to 66 per cent in Calgary, to 58 per cent in Edmonton. The carbon tax was supported by a majority of NDP and Liberal voters, but received very low support from PC and Wildrose voters (10 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively). Gender and income did not affect the level of support, but support was higher among university graduates than among those with less education, and it was higher among those under thirty-five than among those aged fifty-five and older. In short, public support for Alberta’s carbon tax was highest in Edmonton and among well-educated and younger voters, but even in these groups a majority did not like it.

One poll compared the opinions of Albertans to residents of other provinces, and in the process exposed a deep divide.36 Public support for carbon pricing topped 70 per cent in every province except Alberta and Saskatchewan (37 per cent and 32 per cent, respectively). This not only reflected the economic importance of fossil fuel production and coal-fired electricity in Alberta and Saskatchewan, but also portended the rise of a new chapter of fractious relations between these two provinces and the rest of the country, including the federal government. This is not a reprise of the politics of Western alienation that in the past has used the Ontario-Manitoba border to mark an East-West divide. Rather, this marks a newer divide, a “carbon divide,” that could box Alberta and Saskatchewan into a smaller and politically weaker alliance against the rest of the country, especially if both provinces end up with anti-carbon-tax governments.

This same poll found that support among Albertans for carbon pricing could rocket from below 40 per cent to above 90 per cent if it led to approvals of pipelines for Alberta oil, suggesting that public opinion could move a great deal if circumstances changed. This seemed to bode well for the Alberta NDP, which had defended their carbon tax by saying it would earn the environmental credibility required to win approval of interprovincial and international pipelines.

The NDP argument made sense while Barack Obama was US president, for he had refused the Keystone XL pipeline on environmental grounds, and it was bolstered by federal and BC approvals of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline. But when Donald Trump assumed office in January 2017, he broke the link between US pipeline approval and the carbon tax by supporting the Keystone XL pipeline and disregarding global warming. The NDP argument still held for pipelines within Canada, but not for those heading south of the border. (At the time of writing, no polling was available to assess the impact of the approvals of the Trans Mountain and Keystone XL pipelines on public support for carbon pricing.)

Factors in the Carbon Tax Debate from Outside Alberta

Alberta politics are part of a hyper-connected world, one that is softening the elements that have traditionally defined Alberta’s identity. The lines that solidly delineate Alberta on a map are remarkably porous in the real world, allowing the passage every year of tens of billions of dollars in trade, tens of thousands of migrants, more than twenty million air passengers, and countless digital connections.37 Alberta is tied into highly integrated national and international systems of finance, trade, recreation, communication, education, and culture, all of which influence its politics. Overlaying these is the physical reality of global warming, which becomes more pressing every year, and the need for sufficient global action to address it. Alberta’s carbon tax was not implemented in a vacuum.

What Does This Mean for Alberta Politics?

The NDP government of Rachel Notley is standing firm on its carbon tax. Meanwhile, the conservative political movement in Alberta has been transformed. The Progressive Conservative Party under the leadership of former federal Conservative cabinet minister Jason Kenney, and the Wildrose Party under the leadership of former Conservative MP Brian Jean, voted to merge into the new United Conservative Party. Kenney and Jean, the two front-runners for the leadership of the new party, both opposed the carbon tax. After winning the October 2017 leadership race, Kenney committed his new party to ending the carbon tax and the array of other measures the New Democrats put in place to deal with greenhouse gas emissions.

Both the Alberta Liberals and the Alberta Party seem likely to remain on the sidelines of Alberta politics with marginal levels of support, though some disaffected PCs may consider backing the Alberta Party to raise it to higher prominence. As many elections demonstrate, the unexpected happens in politics, and no one is to be counted out.

In many ways this turmoil is only detail. It seems certain that the carbon tax will be fought as one issue in a broader campaign. The conservative messages in that campaign may pivot on slogans of job-killing taxes, bloated public services, unsustainable public debt, competitive disadvantages, or the need for pragmatism over ideology, but no matter what the messages, the dominant purpose will be to defeat the NDP and protect the interests of small and intermediate oil producers. Ironically, if the United Conservative Party wins the election and goes on to dismantle the carbon tax, it may well damage Alberta’s oil industry by losing legitimacy in other provinces and even foreign markets. Until the physical reality of carbon emissions and global warming is fully accepted by Alberta’s political and economic leaders, the province’s future will see unnecessary turbulence and even self-harm. Alberta must travel with the rest of the world to a post-carbon future, or be left by the wayside.

The carbon tax serves as a marker for a larger package of issues and a symbol of people’s individual politics. It pits people and interests who are global warming skeptics, anti-tax, older, less educated, and more rural, against those who accept the science of global warming, regard taxes as the price of civilization, and are younger, more urban, and more highly educated.

It is quite possible that in the 2019 election, the NDP will hang on to the voters who until 2015 traditionally supported the Alberta Liberals, especially if Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley continue to work well together. If the weakness continues with the Alberta Liberal Party and the Alberta Party, then the NDP may be the only viable choice for the 30 to 35 per cent of Albertans who steadfastly vote progressive. This will be especially true if their main opponent, the United Conservative Party, assumes positions that are socially conservative and fiscally harsh. Progressive voters who have historically supported other parties may be drawn to the NDP, as was shown by the floor-crossing to the NDP of one-time PC leadership candidate Sandra Jansen. If the NDP win in 2019, Alberta will continue with its own carbon tax; if the party loses, Alberta will get Ottawa’s carbon tax. Either way, Alberta will have a carbon tax.

If the United Conservative Party wins the 2019 election, the party’s unwinding of the carbon tax will be a messy affair. The process won’t be as simple as cancelling health-care premiums or changing income tax rates. Cancelling the carbon tax will mean ending regular cheques to more than half of Alberta’s families; losing credibility on environmental issues in jurisdictions where environmental credibility is important (especially in British Columbia and Ottawa); and cancelling the billions of dollars’ worth of projects that the tax will be funding. It is also likely to entail a confrontation with the federal government, which will impose a price on carbon from afar if one is not imposed by Alberta itself, returning the province to a politics of resentment and confrontation vis-à-vis the rest of Canada. To be sure, the politics of resentment may suit some supporters of the United Conservative Party. And if Alberta’s economy continues to stagnate into the 2020s, which is certainly possible, it will be easy to fuel such resentment. But resentment will not change the underlying weaknesses in the province’s economy, nor will it alter the physics of global warming.

Global warming is going to disrupt a great deal more than our natural environment; it is going to disrupt our politics and economics too—more so in Alberta than most other places, because of our large fossil fuel resources. The carbon tax is just a precursor to much bigger disruptions in the future that will melt industries and political parties as surely as it melts the glaciers of the Alberta Rockies. Global warming is driving a much larger matter than the carbon tax onto the political agenda of Alberta: the operating of the provincial government without a gushing flow of royalties from oil and natural gas. Balancing Alberta’s budget looms on the near horizon as the much tougher, bigger, and uglier political sibling of the carbon tax, and whoever wins the next election will be staring that project in the face.

The carbon tax is a transition issue, a policy intended to start Alberta on a path toward a post-carbon future that is coming whether the province wants it or not. It is only a beginning in what will be a wrenching, decades-long process of replacing Alberta’s economic, social, and political foundations. The carbon tax will be overshadowed by other issues that each form a part of the same process: downward pressure on oil prices; slackening world demand for oil and bitumen; unemployment and recession; burgeoning provincial debts driven by gutted royalties; cuts in public services; increases in other provincial taxes, and so on.

The politics of the carbon tax are a small part of this larger struggle. How they play out will indicate whether Albertans are ready to face the reality of global warming and move forward, or simply want to hang on to a fossil-fuelled past that is melting away.

Notes

1. Alberta NDP, “Leadership for What Matters: Election Platform 2015,” April 2015, https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/themes/5538f80701925b5033000001/attachments/original/1431112969/Alberta_NDP_Platform_2015.pdf?1431112969 (accessed 18 January 2018).
2. Andrew Leach, “Climate Leadership: Report to Minister,” Government of Alberta, 20 November 2015.
3. A copy of Bill 20 may be obtained on line at http://www.assembly.ab.ca/ISYS/LADDAR_files/docs/bills/bill/legislature_29/session_2/20160308_bill-020.pdf.
4. See “The Radiation Balance,” Calspace, http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange1/02_3.shtml (accessed 18 January 2018).
5. See Janet Fang, “Snake infrared detection unravelled,” Nature, 14 March 2010, http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100314/full/news.2010.122.html (accessed 18 January 2018).
6. R. K. Pachauri and L. A. Meyer, eds., Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Geneva: United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014), 151.
7. “Minutes of Meeting, CO2 and Climate Task Force, American Petroleum Institute, February 29, 1980,” made public by Inside Climate News, http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/AQ-9%20Task%20Force%20Meeting%20%281980%29.pdf (accessed 25 January 2017).
8. Roger Revelle, Wallace Broeker, Harmon Craig, C. D. Keeling, and J. Smagorinsky, “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,” Report of the Environmental Pollution Panel, President’s Science Advisory Committee (Washington, DC: The White House, 1965), appendix Y4.
9. Ibid., 126–7.
10. Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song, and David Hasemyer, “Exxon: The Road Not Taken,” Inside Climate News, 16 September 2015, http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming (accessed 25 January 2017).
11. Ibid.
12. See, for example, the untitled memo from Roger W. Cohen, Director of Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences Laboratory, Exxon Research and Engineering Company, to A. M. Natkin, Office of Science and Technology, Exxon Corporation, 2 September 1982, made public by Inside Climate News, http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/%2522Consensus%2522%20on%20CO2%20Impacts%20%281982%29.pdf (accessed 25 January 2017).
13. “Minutes of Meeting, CO2 and Climate Task Force, American Petroleum Institute, February 29, 1980.”
14. United Nations, “UN Conference on Environment and Development (1992),” 23 May 1997, http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html (accessed 31 January 2017).
15. Energy Efficiency Branch, Alberta Department of Energy, A Discussion Paper on the Potential for Reducing CO2 Emissions in Alberta, 1988–2005, Executive Summary, September 1990, Alberta Legislature Library Sessional Paper 547/2002.
16. For examples, see the following: Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (New York: Anchor Books, 2017); Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Lines (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012); Chris Turner, The War on Science: Muzzled Scientists and Wilful Blindness in Stephen Harper’s Canada (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2013); and Banerjee, Song, and Hasemyer, “Exxon: The Road Not Taken.”
17. “ ‘Science isn’t settled’ shows Wildrose attitude to climate change, minister says,” CBC News, 3 January 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/science-isn-t-settled-comment-wildrose-attitude-climate-change-environment-minister-1.3919777 (accessed 1 February 2017).
18. Todd Vaughan, “Q&A with Don MacIntyre: Innisfail-Sylvan Lake MLA talks carbon tax and climate change,” Sylvan Lake News, 12 January 2017, http://www.sylvanlakenews.com/news/410553005.html?mobile=true (accessed 1 February 2017).
19. Emma Graney, “NDP demands removal of Wildrose critic over climate change row,” Edmonton Sun, 3 January 2017, http://www.edmontonsun.com/2017/01/03/ndp-demands-removal-of-wildrose-critic-over-climate-change-row (accessed 1 February 2017).
20. Lorne Gunter. “Don’t let climate alarmists muzzle your skepticism,” Toronto Sun, 7 January 2017, http://www.torontosun.com/2017/01/07/dont-let-climate-alarmists-muzzle-your-skepticism (accessed 1 February 2017).
21. Images of parts of the report are available at various websites, including the following: https://www.motherjones.com/files/LuntzResearch_environment.pdf. For further analysis on this issue see Anthony Leiserowitz, Geoff Feinberg, Seth Rosenthal, Nicholas Smith, Ashley Anderson, Connie Roser-Renouf, and Edward Maibach, “What’s in a Name? Global Warming versus Climate Change,” Yale Project on Climate Change Communication (New Haven, CT: Yale Center for Environmental Communication, 2014).
22. “The Keeling Curve,” Scripps Institute of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego, https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/ (accessed 31 January 2017).
23. Exxon Research and Engineering Company, “CO2 Greenhouse Effect,” 12 November 1982, made public by Inside Climate News, http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/1982%20Exxon%20Primer%20on%20CO2%20Greenhouse%20Effect.pdf (accessed 25 January 2017).
24. Andrew Leach, “Climate Leadership,” 5.
25. See Government of Alberta, “Carbon Levy and Rebates,” 2016, https://www.alberta.ca/climate-carbon-pricing.aspx (accessed 18 January 2017), and “Fiscal Plan,” 2016, http://finance.alberta.ca/publications/budget/budget2016/fiscal-plan-complete.pdf, 5–6 and 93–8 (accessed 18 January 2017).
26. Government of Alberta, “Fiscal Plan,” 96.
27. Leach, “Climate Leadership”; Government of Alberta, “Industrial Emissions Management,” 9 August 2016, http://aep.alberta.ca/climate-change/programs-and-services/industrial-emissions-management.aspx (accessed 23 January 2017); Alison M. Sears, “Changes to the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions in Alberta: The Government of Alberta announces first step in new climate change strategy,” Canadian Energy Law, 26 June 2015, http://www.canadianenergylaw.com/2015/06/articles/climate-change/changes-to-the-regulation-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-in-alberta-the-government-of-alberta-announces-first-step-in-new-climate-change-strategy/ (accessed 23 January 2017).
28. Government of Alberta, “Fiscal Plan,” 94.
29. Ibid., 6.
30. Government of British Columbia, “B.C.’s Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax,” 2016, http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/climate-change/policy-legislation-programs/carbon-tax (accessed 18 January 2018).
31. Calculated from information in Paul Boothe and Felix-A. Boudreault, By the Numbers: Canadian GHG Emissions (London, ON: Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management, Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario, 2016).
32. Environment and Climate Change Canada, “Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Province and Territory,” 14 April 2016, https://www.ec.gc.ca/indicateurs-indicators/default.asp?lang=en&n=18F3BB9C-1 (accessed 23 January 2017).
33. Government of Alberta, “Energy Efficiency Alberta,” https://www.alberta.ca/energy-efficiency-alberta.aspx (accessed 23 January 2017).
34. Government of Alberta, “Fiscal Plan,” 5.
35. Mark Henry, “Albertans’s Views on Climate Leadership Plan,” ThinkHQ, 29 September 2016, http://thinkhq.ca/albertans-views-on-climate-leadership-plan/ (accessed 24 January 2017); Faron Ellis. “Alberta Provincial Politics Carbon Tax and Coal-fired Electricity Generation,” October 2016, Lethbridge College Citizen Society Research Lab, http://www.lethbridgecollege.ca/sites/default/files/imce/about-us/applied-research/csrl/csrl_lethbridge_college_-_fall_2016_alberta_study_-_carbon_tax_and_coal.pdf (accessed 24 January 2017); Bruce Anderson and David Coletto, “Climate, Carbon, and Pipelines: A Path to Consensus?” Abacus Data, 18 October 2016, http://abacusdata.ca/climate-carbon-and-pipelines-a-path-to-consensus/ (accessed 24 January 2017).
36. Anderson and Coletto. “Climate, Carbon, and Pipelines.”
37. Government of Alberta, “Economic Dashboard,” 2016, http://economicdashboard.alberta.ca (accessed 26 January 2017).
38. Government of Canada, “Pricing carbon for clean growth,” 13 November 2016, http://www.climatechange.gc.ca/default.asp?Lang=En&n=32BC8D0A-1 (accessed 26 January 2017).
39. Tom Fletcher, “Clark applauds Alberta carbon tax plan,” Terrace Standard, 24 November 2015, http://www.terracestandard.com/news/353186211.html (accessed 26 January 2017).
40. Government of Alberta, “Climate Leadership Plan will protect Albertans’ health, environment and economy,” 22 November 2015, https://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=38885E74F7B63-A62D-D1D2-E7BCF6A98D616C09 (accessed 26 January 2017); Claudia Cattaneo, “Secret deal on Alberta’s oil sands emissions limits divides patch,” Financial Post (Toronto), http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/secret-deal-on-albertas-oilsands-emission-limits-divides-patch (accessed 27 January 2017).
41. Dina Ignjatovic, “What does the carbon tax mean for the Canadian oil sands?” TD Economics Special Report, 22 November 2016, https://www.td.com/document/PDF/economics/special/Canadian_Oil_Sands.pdf (accessed 22 January 2017).
42. “Canadian Intermediate Oil and Gas Listing,” http://iq.iradesso.ca/index.php?page=intermediates_listing (accessed 15 August 2017).
43. Gary Leach, “Welcome news on pipelines, but Trump’s agenda signals tough competition,” Calgary Herald, 1 December 2016, http://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/leach-welcome-news-on-pipelines-but-trumps-agenda-signals-tough-competition (accessed 27 January 2017.
44. Reid Southwick, “Smaller oil patch producers fear carbon tax fallout will restrict competition,” Calgary Herald, 5 October 2016, http://calgaryherald.com/business/energy/smaller-oilpatch-producers-fear-carbon-tax-fallout-will-restrict-competition (accessed 27 January 2017).
45. David Yager, “The problem with carbon taxes and why Alberta’s timing on $3 billion in new carbon taxes is terrible,” EnergyNow, 2 November 2016, http://energynow.ca/problem-carbon-taxes-albertas-timing-3-billion-new-carbon-taxes-terrible-david-yager-yager-management/ (accessed 27 January 2017).
46. Geoffrey Morgan, “Companies leave CAPP as divide over carbon tax policies widens,” Financial Post (Toronto), 21 June 2017, http://www.calgarysun.com/2017/06/21/companies-leave-capp-as-divide-over-carbon-tax-policies-widen (accessed 15 August 2017).
47. Alberta Hansard, 7 June 2016, 1545–57, Legislative Assembly of Alberta, 29th Legislature, Second Session, http://www.assembly.ab.ca/ISYS/LADDAR_files/docs/hansards/han/legislature_29/session_2/20160607_0900_01_han.pdf#page=5 (accessed 30 January 2017).
48. James Wood, “Wildrose Leader Brian Jean vows to scrap Alberta carbon tax, battle federal carbon tax,” Calgary Sun, 5 October 2016, http://www.calgarysun.com/2016/10/05/wildrose-leader-brian-jean-vows-to-scrap-alberta-carbon-tax-battle-federal-carbon-price (accessed 31 January 2017).
49. Wildrose Party of Alberta, “Stop the tax on everything,” http://www.taxoneverything.ca (accessed 31 January 2017).
50. Brian Jean, quoted in Alberta Hansard, 7 June 2016, 1552, Legislative Assembly of Alberta, 29th Legislature, Second Session, http://www.assembly.ab.ca/ISYS/LADDAR_files/docs/hansards/han/legislature_29/session_2/20160607_0900_01_han.pdf#page=5 (accessed 30 January 2017).
51. David Rodney, quoted in Ibid., 1546–8.
52. Unite Alberta: Kenney, “How high will NDP carbon tax go?” 5 December 2016, http://www.jasonkenney.ca/how_high_will_ndp_carbon_tax_go (accessed 31 January 2017).
53. James Wood, “Rempel slams big oilpatch players for carbon tax support,” Calgary Herald, 5 October 2016, http://calgaryherald.com/news/politics/rempel-slams-big-oilpatch-players-for-carbon-tax-support (accessed 31 January 2017).
54. David Swann, quoted in Alberta Hansard, 7 June 2016, 1549, Legislative Assembly of Alberta, 29th Legislature, Second Session, http://www.assembly.ab.ca/ISYS/LADDAR_files/docs/hansards/han/legislature_29/session_2/20160607_0900_01_han.pdf#page=5 (accessed 30 January 2017).
55. Greg Clark, quoted in Ibid., 1552.
56. “Gas prices in Calgary,” CBC News (n.d.), http://www.cbc.ca/calgary/features/gasprices/ (accessed 31 January 2017).
57. Helen Pike, “Nenshi says carbon tax puts unfair strain on municipalities,” Metro News, 14 April 2016, http://www.metronews.ca/news/calgary/2016/04/14/naheed-nenshi-alberta-budget-carbon-tax-municipalities.html (accessed 31 January 2017).
58. Paige MacPherson, “Alberta’s crippling carbon tax,” Financial Post (Toronto), 3 December 2015, http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/albertas-crippling-carbon-tax (accessed 27 January 2017).
59. Nola Keeler, “Carbon tax will lead to more Edmonton jobs, says mayor,” CBC News, 20 December 2016, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/carbon-tax-will-lead-to-more-edmonton-jobs-says-mayor-1.3904305 (accessed 31 January 2017).
60. Trevor Toombe, “What carbon pricing means for Canadian households,” C.D. Howe Institute, 19 October 2016, https://www.cdhowe.org/intelligence-memos/trevor-tombe-what-carbon-pricing-means-canadian-households (accessed 31 January 2017).
61. Sara Hastings-Simon, “FAQ: Carbon pricing,” Pembina Institute, 19 May 2016, https://www.pembina.org/blog/faq-carbon-pricing (accessed 31 January 2017).
62. Emilia Kennedy, “Ambitious, effective and achievable? Assessing Alberta’s new climate change strategy,” Greenpeace, http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/blog/Blogentry/ambitious-effective-and-achievable-assessing-/blog/54868/ (accessed 31 January 2017).
63. “$9M in ads to sell Alberta’s climate plan angers Wildrose, Tories,” CBC News, 7 December 2016, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/climate-change-advertising-blitz-1.3886612 (accessed 31 January 2017).