Farmscape for July 4, 2018

Saskatchewan is calling on the federal government to stop its threat to impose a carbon tax on the province and instead seriously consider the made in Saskatchewan emissions reduction plan.
A University of Regina analysis has found a federally imposed carbon tax could potentially reduce Saskatchewan’s gross domestic product by almost 16 billion dollars by 2030, with little effect on emissions.
Saskatchewan Environment Minister Dustin Duncan is encouraging the federal government to abandon its threat to impose a carbon tax and look favorably at the plan Saskatchewan released last year call Prairie Resilience.

Clip-Dustin Duncan-Environment Minister Saskatchewan:
First and foremost we need to be ensuring that we are able to monitor, report and set targets when it comes to how resilient we actually are to the changes of climate change.
We know that Saskatchewan emits about 75 million tonnes per year.
Even if we reduce that to zero, that's not going to change the fact that climate change continues.
This is a global issue.
How do we ensure that Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan families and communities and our industries are resilient to the changes of climate change.
We're putting a large focus on those resilience measurements that we're developing.
We also already have a plan through SaskPower.
That's our power utility in Saskatchewan.
They already have a goal of 40 percent GHG reduction by 2030 and that exceeds even the 30 percent reduction that the federal government is looking for at a national level.
In the oil industry we have set targets for a 40 to 45 percent reduction in methane emissions.
Between el;ectricity and methan, that's about a 10 megaton reduction that we're going to see by 2030.
We're also going to be rolling out, and we're in the drafting process and the consultation process over the summer on perfromance standards for the heavy emeitting industries in our province.

Duncan sugests the Saskatchewan plan represents a broader bolder approach to emmissions reduction than a simple carbon tax and will be presented to the federal government this fall.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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