There are times – hopefully many – when threats of ecological degradation and weather destabilization, and the simple, hopeful notion of leaving a better world for future generations, are enough to inspire action. At other times, however, we require an appeal to the all-powerful bottom line. Money talks, to put it bluntly, and a new report released by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) recognizes this important truth, and attempts to frame climate change in terms that will get policy-makers to sit up and listen: dollars and cents, costs and benefits. The report, entitled Paying the Price: The Economic Impacts of Climate Change for Canada is the first in-depth exploration of what climate change will cost Canadians, and some of the numbers are pretty daunting.

The report, for instance, examines the effects of climate change on the forest industry, and finds that, in a scenario of high climate change and rapid economic and population growth, Canada could see a reduction in its GDP of $17.4 billion, or 0.33%, as a result of reductions in timber quantity due to climate change. Ontario, with its rich stocks of northern boreal forest, is hit hard, suffering a loss of $7.4 billion. Cumulative costs of climate change on the Ontario forest industry could hit $75 billion by 2080 if we do nothing to adapt.

In our cities, climate change will increase summer temperatures and worsen air quality, leading to increased mortality and illness. An unhealthy city is an expensive city. In Toronto, the cumulative costs of premature mortality risk due to heat and air quality impacts from 2010-2100 could hit $96 billion by 2080, and increased hospital visits due to reduced air quality could cost Toronto’s health care system $285 million over the same time period.

The NRTEE report closes each chapter with strategies for adaptation, and finds, with few exceptions, that the costs of implementing the strategies are significantly offset by the economic benefits of lessening the impacts of climate change. Proactive adaptation makes fiscal sense, which is to say nothing of the many non-economic co-benefits. These benefit-to-cost ratios reinforce the position I’ve taken in recent blogs and reports on why we need to put a price on carbon; it will help to decarbonize Ontario’s economy while hastening the transition to a clean-energy future.

There is only so far that the quantification of environmental impact can take us. We reach a point where the worth of our natural world simply cannot be expressed through market transactions. As the report explains, culture, well-being, sense of place, and health are treasured entities that largely exist outside of economic valuation. That said, in terms of getting our attention and inspiring action, this report is very meaningful. By 2075, climate change could cost this country $221 billion per year. Those are stakes that anyone can appreciate, and represent a compelling call to action.

In my latest Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Progress Report I talk about the potential for soil carbon sequestration as a tool for mitigating climate change. In fact, one of my four recommendations is that “the Ontario government investigate and publicly report on the potential for soil carbon sequestration as a GHG mitigation strategy.”

At the press conference following the release of my report, one member of the media asked why I was recommending a strategy that was costing billions of dollars in Alberta with very little in the way of results to show for all that expense. It was clear that the questioner had confused carbon capture and storage (CCS) with soil carbon sequestration – an understandable mistake given that the former has received a great deal of publicity and the latter practically none.

A World of Difference

Yet there is a world of difference between the two. CCS is a high-tech, high-risk, costly, and as-yet-unproven approach with no co-benefits. Soil carbon sequestration is a low-tech (but quite scientific), low-risk, inexpensive, and proven approach with a myriad of co-benefits.  The table below compares and contrasts these two distinct methods for reducing carbon in the atmosphere.

Will Soil Carbon Sequestration Work?

I’ve used very conservative assumptions in my report. Projecting forward, I think it is reasonable to expect that an enhancement in recommended management practices (RMPs) could result in the sequestration of close to 10 million tonnes (Mt) of CO₂ per year by 2020. It’s an exciting opportunity and I look forward to the government’s response to my recommendation to investigate and report on soil carbon sequestration’s potential in more detail.

Resources:

For more detailed information on CCS, see the Pembina Institute’s Canadian Primer on the subject at http://pubs.pembina.org/reports/CCS_Primer_Final_Nov15_05.pdf)

For more detailed information on Soil Carbon Sequestration, see the Ohio State University’s Extension Factsheet entitled Soil Carbon Sequestration – Fundamentals, at

http://www.envirothon.org/pdf/CG/carbon_sequestration.pdf

Several municipalities and other agencies in Ontario are exploring the practical implications of local air pollution hot spots and traffic corridors.  To learn more about who is working on local air quality problems, the ECO commissioned a small study in late 2009.  You can find the report here on ECO’s website.

Several large Ontario municipalities – including Ottawa, the Region of Halton, and Toronto – have been proactively assessing their local airsheds, and more are interested in getting started.  Municipalities have some very pragmatic reasons for examining local air quality: for example, neighbourhoods may be asking for help to cope with chronic road dust problems.  Planners may need air quality information to help set separation distances between new subdivisions and highways.  There may be emissions from industry causing conflicts between dischargers and nearby residents.  In all such situations, a local air quality assessment can help set the context for discussion and solutions.

We discussed this report in How’s the Air on Your Street? in our 2009/10 Annual Report.

Commissioner’s Remarks to the Green Infrastructure Ontario Coalition Launch:
November 22, 2010, Evergreen Brick Works, Toronto

A Vision for a Green Infrastructure in Ontario

So what is green infrastructure?  Before we can answer that we have to understand a more basic question: What is Infrastructure?

The Ministry of Infrastructure says that its objective is to make strategic investments that will meet the needs of a growing population and economy by identifying what infrastructure developments will most benefit key public sectors and the standard of living in Ontario over the long run.  They divide those investments into four major categories:

• Education
• Health Care
• Transportation
• Municipal and Local:
  • Safe drinking water
  • Environmentally responsible sewage and waste disposal
  • Health promoting parks and recreation facilities
  • Better local  roads, bridges and transit

Most of those investments are done through an agency called Infrastructure Ontario.  On its website, the following current projects are listed:

• 37 hospitals and health care
• 11 justice system
• 4 highways and roads
• 1 data centre

These projects are not driven by provincial mandate; they are based on applications received for capital projects from various institutions in our society.  So in a real sense, this is how “we” collectively see infrastructure.  And, although it seems that the goal of all those infrastructure things is to keep our water clean and safe, not pollute our environment and protect our health … we mostly do it by pouring a lot of concrete, laying a lot of asphalt and constructing a lot of steel and glass.

These are necessary things, but are they sufficient to meet the goal?  Sounds like drinking water is covered, and maybe sewage, but what about storm water … the water that runs off after rainstorms and feeds our streams and rivers?  In most urban areas its quality is not so great, and although there are rules and policies, storm water quality isn’t really reflected as a priority in this model of infrastructure.

What about air quality?  Surely urban air quality has public benefits and standard of living implications.  Certainly the emphasis on health and medical treatment helps us deal with the impacts of smog days and poor air quality – but how does our infrastructure spending model help us improve air quality?

What about thermal control?  Our urban areas are often heat islands, accumulating heat well in excess of suburban or rural landscapes surrounding.  Of course this adds to our air conditioning energy costs but, more importantly, we must recall the European heat wave of 2003 that killed 35,000 people … we have been spared this type of event so far, but for how much longer?  How does our infrastructure model address that risk?

And there are other public benefits and implications to our standard of living.  I mentioned energy costs: does our infrastructure paradigm reflect the growing need to improve our energy productivity and control costs?  Do we require or even endorse distributed electrical generation?  Do we take advantage of ground source or solar thermal heating opportunities?  When surplus heat is available, do we capture it in district heating systems like the Europeans do?  On a global level, we have a responsibility to reduce our GHG emissions, is such a reduction a natural function of our infrastructure investments?  And on a more local scale, are we building infrastructure and protecting it in a way that will maximize its life and thus minimize our replacement costs?

Since there are these other benefits and improvements to our quality of living in the long term that are available, perhaps it would be wise if we reconsidered our perspective of what infrastructure is and how we could bring in other tools and approaches into our infrastructure toolkit. Many of those tools could be things we have come to characterize as green initiatives.

We actually have a lot of interesting green stuff around the province.  Toronto and some other cities have some pretty sophisticated systems to improve and maintain tree biodiversity and coverage within the city.  We have some urban parks and sometimes have ravines or escarpments that are ecologically rich natural systems.  Some municipalities like Richmond Hill have added to these lands by building quite sophisticated and naturalized storm water management facilities.

Toronto has a green roof by-law which in increasing greening its roofscape, but I don’t think it has anything yet like the rooftop of the Rideau Centre in Ottawa where four stories up there are lawns and gardens and trees 25 cm or more in diameter with baby rabbits hopping around.  And there are only a few instances where the carpet of living things we put on top of our buildings is encouraged to spread down the sides and integrate into the grey water and storm water management systems and other landscaping.  The techniques of actually designing for building integrated vegetation (BIV) are in their early stages of development.

There is a great renaissance in urban agriculture occurring across the province.  Although it’s worth noting that what may be new to some, has always persisted in the yards of many immigrant neighborhoods.  Nonetheless, it is growing and spreading and presents a different view of the urban landscape.

We love to make our urban surfaces hard to support the weight of our various machines and the high volume of human traffic, and so far our hard surfaces are impermeable to water.  Unlike living soft surfaces which absorb water and process pollutants, hard surfaces collect wastes and pollutants during dry periods and shed them rapidly into streams and rivers during rainfall and snow melt events.  We know how to build permeable hard surfaces, but their adoption is limited so far.

So there are green tools for the infrastructure toolkit.  But they are just pieces, scattered around, not integrated into the normal course of business, because they are not seen as parts of a greater infrastructure approach.  The benefits of cost savings and improvements to the quality of life they offer are lost because we see infrastructure as just the buildings and pipes and roads and wires that we construct.

Perhaps it would be useful to step back and consider another complex infrastructure that we are familiar with … it is called a forest.  It was here before the urban areas of Ontario were built and it functioned quite well.  It ran exclusively on renewable solar energy and had a large built environment that was self sustaining.  It produced 100% of the food for its inhabitants and recycled 100 % of its waste.  The air in the forest was clean and cool and the shaded environment did not experience photo degradation.  The streams of this infrastructure flowed clear, clean and cool.

The forest (much modified) is still with us, of course.  It’s all around us and if you look at Google Earth for Toronto, for example, you will see how the forest seamlessly penetrates the urban landscape right down to where we are standing.  It is still here and it is still functioning to some extent … still cleaning the air and the water and where we don’t rush in to pick it up, processing its own wastes.  It is part of our infrastructure and it is providing benefits and improving our quality of life.

We can’t have the all the environmental benefits of a forest in a human occupied urban landscape, but we can learn from nature.  We can see what works and why and investigate the interconnectedness of the systems.  We can do things differently.  We can make a human landscape that not only utilizes all those tools I have listed to get the benefits described but does more than that.  We can have a living environment rich with living things to which people intrinsically respond in a positive and relaxed way.

So my task was to define what green infrastructure is so that the coalition can get on with its task …

Green Infrastructure is a new way of conceptualizing our urban landscape … a way of integrating life and life forces into our urban living spaces that maximizes the utility of ecosystem goods and services thus lowering operating costs and capital replacement investment while improving our well being.  Green infrastructure is about good business and a good life.

Thank You

This section of our 2009/10 Annual Report, Redefining Conservation, is now online.

Ontario faces many challenges as it enters the second decade of the 21st century. The economy is recovering from the effects of the recession that began in late 2008. But, the economy is changing, moving away from such “high carbon footprint” primary industries as iron and steel and pulp and paper to a “greener” economy based on more efficient manufacturing, renewable energy and information technology. At the same time, the environment is facing unprecedented challenges from a growing population, increased pressures on aging infrastructure and a continuing upward trend in greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

The Ontario government has responded to this “perfect storm” of challenges – and opportunities – with an ambitious agenda of legislative initiatives and policies to green the economy while fostering a “culture of conservation” within the energy sector. This part of the Annual Report describes the role that the Green Energy and Green Economy Act, 2009 will play in helping to bring about this fundamental change. As well, this part describes the promise (and pitfalls) of fast-tracking renewable sources of electricity and the development of a “smarter” grid.

This part also describes amendments made to the Environmental Protection Act that are designed to provide a better understanding of where greenhouse gas emissions originate in the province – through mandatory reporting of these emissions by companies within key sectors of the economy. As well, the amendments have established the legislative basis for pricing carbon emissions through the introduction of a cap-and-trade system. Pricing carbon and identifying the big emitters are necessary precursors to the development of a low-carbon economy.

The need to develop a conserving society underscores the maxim that “the economy is the wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment.” We ignore this principle at our peril. But, in embracing the spirit and intent of these legislative initiatives, we should not lose sight of an equally important principle: to safeguard every citizen’s right to a fair, transparent and open process of consultation and public participation in this crucial decision-making.

Read More:

• Powering the Future: The Green Energy and Green Economy Act, 2009
• Ramping Up Renewables: MOE’s Renewable Energy Approvals
• MNR Approvals for Greening the Grid
• Mandatory GHG Reporting: What gets Measured gets Managed
• Pricing Carbon: Can a Cap-and-Trade System Deliver the Tonnes?

Toronto, September 22 2010 – The government is failing to follow through on all of its environmental promises, says Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller. “This government rightly prides itself on the progress it has made in passing legislation to protect the environment,” says Miller, “but actions on the ground often undermine it.”

In his 2009/2010 Annual Report released today, Miller points to a number of cases where bureaucratic or political inaction has ended up threatening the environment and undermining the government’s stated environmental policies.  The Environmental Commissioner’s report found:

• The Ministry of the Environment has failed to keep an up-to-date inventory of closed landfills that could be polluting nearby groundwater.
• Municipal wastewater discharges are worsening the pollution of our Great Lakes because the Ministry of Environment’s discharge rules fail to factor in the rapidly increasing population of southern Ontario.
• Ontario’s air quality standards are not airtight, allowing the government to exempt whole sectors of industry from tougher provincial rules.
• One billion more trees need to be planted in southern Ontario – far more than the government’s target of 50 million trees by 2020 – to conserve biodiversity and respond to the challenges of climate change.
• Legislation has been introduced to protect half the boreal forest in the Far North, but ineffective oversight by the Ministry of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry has allowed mining service companies to set up illegal camps and landing strips.
• The government made a commitment to protect the dwindling number of caribou in the province. But the Ministry of Natural Resources has not protected their habitat from mining or forestry to prevent their likely disappearance from Ontario.

The Environmental Commissioner also says Ontarians need to develop a new approach to conservation, or face the significant consequences of climate change and biodiversity loss. Miller says “current policies have already degraded the environment in the long-term and significantly compromised the ability of future generations to meet their needs. We must make do with less, and use what we have more wisely. This is not a choice for us but a reality imposed by the world we have created.”

Click to download the full 2010 Annual Report (.pdf).