Proportionality
by Richard Heinberg
Energy Bulletin (February 07 2008)
There is a strange clause in the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) that applies to only one country - Canada. The clause states
that Canada must continue to supply the same proportion of its oil and
gas resources to the US in future years as it does now. That's rather a
good deal for the US: it formalizes Canada's status as a resource
satellite of its imperial hub to the south.
From a Canadian perspective there are some problems with the
arrangement, though. First is the fact that Canada's production of
natural gas and conventional oil is declining. Second is that Canada
uses lots of oil and gas domestically: seventy percent of Canadians heat
their homes with gas, and Canadians drive cars more and further than
just about anyone else. The problem is likely to come first with natural
gas; as production declines, there will come a point when there isn't
enough to fill domestic needs and continue to export (roughly sixty
percent of Canada's gas now goes to the US).
That point is not decades in the future, it is fairly imminent.
Then there is the problem of Climate Change. Canada is committed by
treaty to reducing domestic emissions of carbon dioxide. But most of
Canada's emissions come not from consuming fossil fuels, but producing
them - increasingly, from producing synthetic diesel fuel from the tar
sands of Alberta. Even if Canadians decide to drive less and turn down
their thermostats, those efforts will do little or nothing to change
energy production rates (hence emissions rates), because any extra
amounts of fuel produced but not used domestically will simply be
exported south; in fact, they virtually must be by the terms of NAFTA.
So Canada's energy security and global climate security are both held
hostage by a provision within a trade agreement - a provision that is
unique in all of the world's treaties. Canada has every reason to
repudiate the proportionality clause, and to do so unilaterally and
immediately.
Of course, the current Canadian government will not do so. Nor will the
main opposition party. Both are securely bound to do the will of their
puppeteers in Washington. But what about the NDP, Canada's other main
(center-left) party? Couldn't it make the abolition of the
proportionality clause a key campaign issue? Surely Canadians care about
energy security and simple fairness. By raising the question, the NDP
would educate Canadians about the links between fossil fuel depletion,
globalization, and climate change, while forcing the other parties to
either identify themselves with, or abandon, a policy that imperils
their nation's future.
Party leaders might be wary of the US response, but the latter would be
fascinating to see. Of course the US would threaten all sorts of trade
punishments. However, the domestic US political fallout is delicious to
contemplate: in this case, US motives would require no speculation, as
do the nation's real goals in Iraq or elsewhere in the oil-rich Middle
East. Americans wouldn't be using economic muscle against demonized
Arabs on the other side of the world, but against people who are
culturally just like themselves who happen to live north of an imaginary
line. The unfairness of the proportionality clause would be apparent to
everyone and the idiocy of US energy and climate policy would also be
plain - not just to Canadians, but to the rest of the world and
(crucially) to US citizens as well.
With so much at stake, and with current policy leading inevitably toward
crisis, isn't it time for a bold move such as this?
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Original article : http://www.richardheinberg.com/node/280
