Okay, hello. Good afternoon, everyone. Hello, my name is Lynn Brockington. I'm Community Experience Coordinator at the West Vancouver Memorial Library. Welcome to our virtual library. Today's webinar is part of Climate Future, a community-driven initiative to share knowledge and inspire action to address the climate emergency. Climate Future includes a reading challenge, a toolkit, and a number of public programs. Today, for one of these programs, we are very pleased to have with us Mark Jacquard. Mark has been a professor since 1986 in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University. His academic career was interrupted from 1992 to 97 when he served as CEO and chair of the British Columbia Utilities Commission. Mark's PhD is in energy economics from the University of Grenoble and his research focus is the design and application of energy economy models for assessing climate policies. Internationally, Mark has served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, and the Global Energy Assessment. Domestically, he's been on the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy and the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices. Mark is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the C. D. Howe Institute, and in 2009 was named British Columbia Academic of the Year. He is one of eight professors at SFU, awarded the title Distinguished Professor, and has published over 100 academic papers. In 2006, his Sustainable Fossil Fuels won the Donner Prize for Top Policy Book in Canada. So today, Mark will be discussing and taking your questions about his latest book, Citizens Guide to Climate Success, Overcoming Myths that Hinder Progress. So I'm going to stop talking now and I'm going to ask Mark to join us. Great. And wonderful. Thank you, Mark. Good to be here. Thank you for inviting me. And as Lynn said, I think you said I'm going to be talking especially about the book that I've published this past February called the Citizens Guide to Climate Success. It's a book for, well, the goals of the book are to help climate concern citizens, detect deliberate delusions and inadvertent myths, elect climate sincere politicians who do effective policy, and also think about how to eliminate your personal emissions, but in a much more simplistic way than we're often told, much less complicated. A key theme about the book is if we're going to be effective as climate concern citizens, we need to really be thinking about human biases and how we can challenge ourselves and others with those biases about critical thinking. And I'm especially referring to critical thinking about those things which we ourselves believe. And I'm going to start to bring this focus with a couple of quotes. And the first quote is from Upton Sinclair, who was a writer, an American writer about 100 years ago. And this quote, some of it, it'll be familiar to some of you. It's, it is difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it. I think you may have heard that. And then I have another quote that is similar but not identical. And it's from Bertrand Russell, who was a philosopher in England, also writing about 100 years ago. And he said, what some of the leaves on closely insufficient evidence is an index into their desires. So you may detect a bit of a distinction between these two quotes, one of them is really focused on how our self interests can bias us. And then in the case where it isn't strong self interest, it can be just wishful thinking about our desires about the world. And that becomes important, especially when I'm talking to climate concern citizens, because they might be able to detect self interest bias among those who are resistant to act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions people for example working in the fossil fuel industry, but may not may not see their own challenges. And to bring that point home. My next slide refers to part of my teaching exercise that I do. For almost 30 years now, I've taught a graduate seminar at Simon Fraser University so it has PhD and master's students. Some of them are from the University of British Columbia, most of them from Simon Fraser University. And the class several the classes are held in my own dining room, which you can see behind me and you can see in the photo I put extra tables together. And what I want to talk about is what I do in the very first class with these this very bright group of students, I asked them to state their opinion on something related to how we can address climate change so usually a technological option like large hydropower or nuclear power or biofuels, or still using fossil fuels but capturing the carbon dioxide and bearing it underground. So they, I say what's your view on this what give us the you know what your view is and explain it. And so they do that, and they do quite a good job, and they're usually negative on all the options that I just happened to mention because they're from an environmental program and and so they're they're more interested in renewables, renewable energy and energy efficiency. But after each one of the makes that argument I then say to them now present for us the very best counter argument to what you just said if you're against nuclear power, explain why we should have nuclear power, and I want the very best argument. They try to do that. And almost invariably they do a very bad job. You realize that even this very bright group of critical thinking people have never really seriously considered all of the best arguments and evidence for the alternative to what they believe about something. And they do it sort of dispassionately in some kind of, you know, laboratory experiment, but when it comes to sort of our real options and something like decarbonizing our economy, they have a lot of trouble with that. So I make them do it over and over again. And, and then soon some of them get better, although it's amazing how many don't get that much better. And that's a real good learning exercise though, because it tells you that they're not thinking like real lawyers who should be excited about rejecting what they're believing and be excited to learn the very best evidence that runs counter to what they believe and instead behave a bit more like lawyers who are paid to only look for evidence and arguments to defend a particular position. It doesn't mean that lawyers aren't good thinkers, but they are paid to think in a certain position if they're defending a particular position. So what is the outcome of this exercise? Well, hopefully people become better critical thinkers. Sometimes they may still end up with the same position at the end of the day, but a better informed position and a better defended position. And sometimes though, they may even change their minds. And in fact, that's a quote I would end with is from one of my favorite economists, very famous, again, almost 100 years ago, John Maynard Keynes, who said, when the evidence I see changes, I change my mind. What do you do? So now let's apply that critical thinking and say what does what do the sort of the leading thinkers in the world agree on? Not when it comes to climate science, because that's, this is to say, we all know they agree on the climate science. I'm asking on the climate solutions on, you know, how do we have success with climate? What do they agree on? Well, when we get to what they, they first of all agree, we have to stop burning fossil fuels. We have to stop burning coal, oil, and natural gas. That's the key thing. If we don't, that's 75, 80% of our greenhouse gas emissions, if we don't progress rapidly on that, the rest of it won't matter. And we know that's what we have to do. The experts know that. But then when we apply our critical thinking, we see that there are some really big challenges. And the challenges, the three that I'm going to refer to are ones that amazingly a lot of people don't seem to understand that the leading experts all agree on these. And the first of these key challenges is that there's a myth out there. So with the illusion that fossil fuels are expensive. The other things are cheaper. So, but in fact, fossil fuels are plentiful, high quality and low cost. The Earth's crust is chock-a-block full of them. They are really plentiful and we innovate all the time to reduce their cost. Secondly, the price, if we did innovate and innovation that we do that might create renewable energy. There's also innovation that makes it cheaper to get fossil fuels. So their price is actually, if we correct for inflation, their price is falling over time. And that's the long-term trend with fossil fuels, even though we say they're a non-renewable resource, but there's so much of them and we innovate. And even if we were to decarbonize, so stop burning, reduce our burning of coal, oil and natural gas, that declining demand would also reduce the price of fossil fuels. And just as an evidence for that is kind of a short run phenomenon, we've just seen that happen with when we've shut down for COVID-19. We've seen how the price of fossil fuels will fall when their demand declines, whether quickly over long term. And finally, all of this means that fossil fuels still offer the cheapest development path for the four to six billion people now and coming on this planet who are going to want to raise their standard of living. And we look at the example of China from 1990 to 2015, but this is the example out there for Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Tanzania, Kenya and so on. And just looking at China, though, from this graph of CO2 emissions over time, we see that China's rapid economic development was also associated, it was based on their cheapest fossil fuel source, coal. And that meant a rapid increase in greenhouse gas emissions. And then on the next slide, if we look at, oh, well, before I go to this, one of the things people think is they say, okay, so fossil fuels, you know, we must be using less of them now because all we ever hear from any environmentalist and others is that we're using more and more of renewables. So renewables are finally winning against fossil fuels. I'm afraid to say that that's a wishful thinking bias. It's a delusion. Here's some evidence from the sources are listed underneath there, but they're credit, they're the most reliable sources that we have for data.  And the green, our net increase or decrease, it says renewables and nuclear, but since nuclear has been mostly stable, let's just say it's renewables. And what you see is that even over the last 20, 30 years, fossil fuels have continued to outpace renewables in growth. And what's interesting there, one of them is if you look at the one time when fossil fuels had negative growth and renewables were about stable, that was in the big recession of 2008, 2009. Look what happened in 2010. Fossil fuels, all that equipment we had that ran on fossil fuels, we started to use it again, and the economy started to grow and was rejuvenated and fossil fuels took off again. We had a bit of a decline heading towards the Paris Agreement in 2015, but people said, well, the Paris Agreement, now all the countries of the world have committed to move away from fossil fuels to renewables. Well, what happened since then? Fossil fuel consumption actually increased faster than renewables. So the emissions from fossil fuels are climbing, and renewables are not winning in absolute terms against fossil fuels. So it will be interesting to see what happens in 2020-2021. My prediction is that of course the fossil fuels will be negative in 2020 because of COVID and maybe even renewables outgrow them, but next year it will be the opposite, just like you see there in 2010. So, and what is causing fossil fuel growth on the planet? It's the developing countries. Developed countries are guilty as charged for having caused most of the emissions that are in the atmosphere, and it helps with our economic development. But in the last while, developing countries, which includes China, but now other countries are becoming even more important as Chinese emissions start to stabilize. And other countries, so this graph shows you both a historical and then from about 2017 on a forecast where all the growth is really happening in those developing countries. So that's the important reality to keep in mind when we're thinking about the future of greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel use. That was one of the myths, which is that fossil fuels are expensive. They're not. They're cheap and their use is growing. So that's a reality we have to take account of. The second one is the myth that we can have a voluntary global agreement. We can have a global agreement one day. It won't be voluntary. So global decarbonization. And remember, it's a global problem. You do all you want in Canada, but you have to be doing that as part of achieving a global effort. So we need a united international effort, but we don't have a global government and we have poor global governance because of poor global diplomacy. And so because of that, we don't make progress on an international agreement. And because of that, that makes it really difficult for individual countries to act alone. If politicians are sincere in one country and they want to act, they're putting their own industry a disadvantage because fossil fuels are so cheap. They're making steel or cement or aluminum or whatever. And therefore it's very difficult for countries to take significant steps. So it's a global problem needing a global solution, but we don't have global governance. And the third part of this though is that because we keep getting together to have this voluntary agreement negotiated, those negotiations for 25 years now have continued to fail. And the key reason is that the rich countries and the poor countries disagree on how to share the costs of forgoing fossil fuels in favor of renewables, perhaps nuclear, or perhaps using carbon capture and storage when we're burning fossil fuels. That costs money. And the rich countries always say to the developing countries, the poor countries, oh yeah, we agree that we should pay some of that. And then they bring their numbers to the table at the annual meeting, and the numbers are miles apart, and they will be miles apart because the cost of getting people to forgo fossil fuels in the developing world would require us to shut down a lot of things in rich countries and transfer that wealth to developing countries for them to have a cleaner non fossil fuel energy system. And so, and so we've been trying for 25 years to negotiate this voluntary binding agreement and the negotiations are a failure every year. And one way to depict this is a cartoonist looked at said okay this is the year 2040.  He's pointing out that this is going to take a very long time. And in fact he to emphasize it has the ocean levels all the way up to the top amount Everest where they finally reach a binding international agreement to control control greenhouse gas. This is second the myth of a voluntary global agreement. The third is the myth that rat that domestic policy making in democracies or elsewhere is an entirely rational process, and it definitely is not. So the task for climate sincere politicians when we're lucky enough to elect them is still extremely difficult. So most likely because of that cheapness of fossil fuels, the international the lack of an international agreement. And climate sincere politicians have some real difficulties. So as I said, first, fossil fuels are incumbent. So financial self interest motivates corporations and individuals to trumpet benefits from their continued use. Remember that the quote of up in Sinclair. Secondly, climate insincere politicians can fake it by setting distant, you know, we have to decarbonize a system that takes time. So they can say, oh, I'm going to achieve a target 20 years from now. And but I'm not going to do any of the policies that you're actually going to need to get there because people might not like those. They impose some cost as I'm going to show in a minute.  And they can also lie climate insincere politicians can lie about the economic harm from the policies that are effective. And we've seen this especially in exploiting the concerns that a percentage of citizens and it doesn't have to be a large percentage. It can be two to 5% of citizens who believe that a carbon tax is harming them, even when independent experts will show that the government is giving the money back in checks or in tax reductions or in subsidies for renewables. They're not going to believe that they're going to believe that they're being exploited. And again, it can be a small percentage. So you'll end up with things like climate insincere politicians in Ontario campaigning and winning an election to scrap a carbon tax. Or in France, you can see people demonstrating and in a truly French fashion, very dramatic demonstrations against the increase of a very small increase in a carbon tax affecting the price of gasoline. Okay, so we've got those three decarbonization challenges that I mentioned, right? Fossil fuels, cheap and incumbent, the global problem that we need a global agreement, but how do we actually get there? And then the challenges of policymaking in an individual country because of that bigger problem and then the ability for people to lie and mislead when it comes to policymaking about climate. And so, you know, people will look at that and that leads to this long delay. And it also means that everybody's adding their ideas about why we're not solving this. It's not those three things. It's this thing. We got to do this. We got to do that. And so I've picked out here a quote to talk about how some people, most people in fact, according to surveys, see the solution, the decarbonization challenge is an extremely complicated one. Here's a quote from last November from a writer in ProPublica called Lisa Song, and I just picked it almost at random. There are so many. And she said, fossil fuels are so integrated into our lives that phasing them out would require us to change everything about how and where we live, how we get around, and how we make money. So what do you think about that? Does that sound right? Well, in this book, I'm going to explain why the decarbonization, I explained why the decarbonization path is actually very simple. And in the next few slides, I'm just going to lay out what I mean by simple and believe me, it's very simple compared to what I think most of you would believe and have heard. The first is that we have to focus on key actions in key sectors of our economy. Now, what do I mean by that? What's a key action? Well, I've already said this. Rapidly phase out the burning of coal, oil, and most uses of natural gas. So always ask yourself that. If the politician is not talking about that, they're not sincere. And where would we do, so, you know, we do have this. Canada now has a coal phase out. Other countries do as well. The second, and also phasing out the use of gas. So China is moving towards electric vehicles. So is Norway, you know, and some are moving, so is California, but some faster than others. What are the key sectors? Well, I've just kind of mentioned them. One is electricity and the other is transportation. Now, why is that? Because emissions come from other areas as well. Well, first, we have the technologies and we already know from what's been done in other jurisdictions that the costs are relatively modest. Electricity will be a bit more expensive in some jurisdictions as you decarbonize. Moving around in vehicles will be a bit more expensive in some jurisdictions as we decarbonize. But the costs are manageable. They're manageable for us as individuals and for our economies. The second thing is that we can act unilaterally in these what I call domestic sectors, unlike our trade exposed sectors such as that our heavy industry that uses a lot of energy and generally produces a lot of emissions to manufacture steel and cement, aluminum, chemicals, pulp and paper and so on. When you try to act in those other sectors, because we don't have the global agreement, then other countries that are laggards on climate policy that are not decarbonizing, they're going to have lower production costs for steel or cement and so on. And they're going to be able to undercut your industry. So it's very difficult to work on what we call the emission intensive trade exposed industries, but it's easier therefore to work on our domestic sectors. And there's good news to this. So we can go now on electricity transportation and in leading jurisdictions we are, and there's some good news about Canada in that regard and our various jurisdictions. As I say, what Ontario did in electricity, the fact that much of Canada is hydropower in any case, the fact that Alberta itself under the Notley government initiated its own effort to close down coal plants, which is still ongoing now with more of a federal effort. More of a federal initiative. But the good news about all of this is that when we look into the future into the year 2050, sort of a planet that is not progressing well enough. The forecasts show that most of the greenhouse gas, at least 50% and actually more of greenhouse gas emissions will be coming from these two sectors and most of that in the developing world. So this next slide I have, I just need to explain it for a minute. There's a few things in here. One, as you can see, it's two different pie charts. These are pie charts of greenhouse gas emissions. And it's from developed countries, OECD, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and non OECD, so the developing countries. And you see that in what we call a reference case, so it's a forecast to the year 2050. You see that emissions are larger in the developing countries than non OECD countries. So that's total sort of energy related emissions. And then in yellow and red, I've got the emissions from just those two sectors, electricity and transport. And you can see that in the developed world, electricity and transport, in a future in which we're not progressing as we should be, are more than 50% of the emissions. So if you can decarbonize those two sectors, you've gone a long way. And in the developing world, it's about 50% in our forecasts. And that's a huge amount of the causes of climate change into the future. Now, so this path is simple. But one other part of it is, so that's the actions, right, the actions are to decarbonize the sectors are electricity and transportation. How does that happen? Well, you have to implement compulsory policies. And what do I mean by that? Well, so compulsory. So those are the actions, right, decarbonizing electricity and transportation by not facing out the burning of fossil fuels. How do they happen? They only happen with compulsory policies. And here's a very simple schema of climate energy policies, the policies that would help us to decarbonize. So what are they? Well, look at the split there in the first branch compulsory versus non compulsory. What is non compulsory information programs, labels on things. Subsidies from government to put more insulation in or buy even to buy an electric vehicle or government action itself, government saying we're going to insulate our buildings or green our vehicle fleets and so on. Sadly, for almost 20 years, governments only, most governments, including in Canada, only implemented non compulsory policies. And that's all they did and they said these will reduce greenhouse gas emissions while experts said no, they won't. Thankfully, in the last decade or so, some governments leading governments have stepped out and started to implement compulsory policies and that means either carbon pricing or regulations.  And industries that can do it cheaper, do more reductions, they have surplus permits that they sell to those who find it more expensive. The combined effect that trading price is the same as a carbon tax in terms of how it affects the economy and the decarbonization effort. But you can also have regulations and regulations have actually been very significant. Okay, so here's a sort of bringing all that together now in a series of bullets, the basics. So you must have carbon pricing and or regulations to drive decarbonization. Now how many times has someone said, yeah, so we have to have a carbon tax? Well, that's not true. I say and or pricing and or thus carbon pricing is not essential. If it's too difficult to do politically because climate insincere politicians keep lying about it and they succeed politically, then you could replace it entirely with regulations. And what do I mean by regulation? Well, there's a long rain is a wide range of regulations. But I'm really talking about more flexible regulations that can be politically easier than carbon pricing and almost as low cost for the economy. I don't have enough time to go into detail on these, but an example would be in British Columbia. We have a clean electricity standard. So it means that you can't build a coal plant. You can't build a natural gas plant to make electricity. It's a regulation, but it's flexible because it doesn't say you have to build wind turbines or you have to do everything in a certain way. It allows flexibility within the industry. We also have a zero emission vehicle regulation. It says in the industry you got to sell more zero emission vehicles, but it doesn't say you got to sell more hydrogen vehicles or more electric vehicles. And it doesn't say each company has to do that. You trade among yourselves and you let the consumers and industry working together pick the winning technology. So that's what I mean by the word flexible. But what we do see is when we have those kind of flexible regulations, they're often more important than carbon pricing. And the next slide just gives you an example from California, which is the I would argue the leading jurisdiction. I think the evidence is pretty strong in North America for decarbonizing, although British Columbia is following behind. And here's an analysis of California's reductions from 2010 when they really got started. So some historical data, but also to 2025. So some forecasts all combined. The size of the pie is the size of the reductions from where they would have been. And so this is a fairly good estimate for California. And then the slices of the pie, the yellow slices are those flexible regulations that I was talking about. And the red pie wedge is the cap and trade, a kind of carbon pricing that I mentioned. So the point of this slide is that most of the reductions in any jurisdiction you look at, but certainly California is one example. British Columbia, the same are from the regulations, not from pricing. And yet that's often not the mindset or the assumption of climate concern citizens because all they hear about is the battles over carbon pricing. And that's why I bring up this possibility. So to summarize what I've said so far, for three decades, experts have known that a coordinated global effort won't happen voluntarily. And that electricity and transportation is achievable for decarbonization and it's globally critical at the same time. And third that renewables are not going to beat fossil fuels without carbon pricing or regulations. So we know all of these things. So if experts know this, then what is holding back global decarbonization? And so my last group of slides here, and I'm going to go quite quickly because I want to leave time for question and answer. And we can always go back to individual slides. So I'm going to skim over these and my flip it answer if it went too fast is, well, then you need to read the book. So here we go. What's holding back decarbonization? The first are deliberate delusions. And I can go quickly because I think you can guess these fossil fuel interests deliberately promote myths to stall action. For a long time we heard the climate science is uncertain. You'll still hear that in the United States, less so in Canada. You'll hear that this next fossil fuel project is essential. My goodness in British Columbia, we hear that all the time, whether it's a pipeline or whatever. And another is we have to wait for major innovations to decarbonize. And that's not true. We have all the technologies. And finally, there's no point acting until there's a binding global agreement. And strategically there is some truth to that, which is why we have to make our efforts things that we try to parlay into a global effort and be thinking about that all the time. So guess what about these myths? The fossil fuel industry has been really happy to promote those. What else is holding back decarbonization? Well, rigid pro and con views. Now some of you are maybe not going to like what I point out here, but this relates back to what I was getting my students to look at, which is ask yourself, am I being helpful to the solution or not if I have very rigid views about particular things? So we've got climate concern people who will hold rigid pro and con positions on our decarbonization options. We must use nuclear power. We must not use nuclear power here that as well. Same with large hydropower. Same with biofuels. Same with carbon capture and storage. And even that those were actions. And then when it comes to policies, we have to have carbon taxes. We don't have to have carbon taxes. These strong positions. So the fossil fuel industry, by the way, loves this rigidity. And my next slide, and so my message is that we should not let perfection be the enemy of good. This is not a time to indulge yourself with having a rigid position. This is a time to say, look, if nuclear power works in Ontario, I'm not going to be against it. If carbon capture and storage works in Alberta, I'm not going to be against it. If biofuels work in Saskatchewan or Brazil, I'm not going to be against it. I don't have a rigid, this is, I can't afford to have a rigid position for decarbonization because it's already so difficult. And one slide I have here, I won't spend a lot of time on it, was the book I wrote. And it was, as Lynn said, the one that won the Donner Prize was my fossil fuel book. And I published this 15 years ago, Sustainable Fossil Fuels, The Unusual Suspect and the Quest for Clean and Enduring Energy. And perhaps not surprisingly, you know, this was a book that was really sort of about how to solve climate change, but recognize that maybe you'll still use fossil fuels in some jurisdictions where they're plentiful and so on. But there was also a cold human delusion, human bias element to my motivation in writing that book, because I was tired of environmentalists I knew whose message to a jurisdiction like Alberta or any region that was fossil fuel in doubt, is that, oh, by the way, we need to annihilate your economy in order to deal with climate change. And not surprisingly, for me, it was so obvious that the reaction would be that people in those jurisdictions would devote a lot of resources to deluding themselves and then deluding others. And that it would make us keep us further from the solution rather than moving us closer. And so I say those of us who are unwilling to compromise, unwilling to recognize that there are many paths and they can be different in different jurisdictions are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. So I point that out to everyone. Another one is wishful thinking biases. And again, I'm going to go quickly on this. But it's this idea that, you know, it's got to be a certain things that are, we know are true that like energy efficiency investments save money. Some of them do. Most of them don't, they won't dramatically reduce emissions. We need to understand that. And others that renewables are out competing fossil fuels. Well, I've already given you evidence to show that that's not the case, but you'd be amazed at how often people say that. But what it does is it just enables the politician to say, Oh, good, I can just sit back. I don't have to do carbon pricing. I don't have to do regulations because I didn't want to do those things. So thank goodness, the environmentalists are saying that renewables are going to win anyway. I'll do nothing. That's gone on for 30 years. Who's responsible for that problem? If we were actually deluding ourselves and others that renewables were out competing fossil fuels. Another is that removing fossil fuel subsidies are a game changer. They're not. I can't spend time on these divestment campaigns. So I'm sorry to just touch on it and move on. I explained it all in the book. And of course, the fossil fuel industry loves these wishful thinking biases. How about a fourth agenda hitching biases? Now, some people hitch their personal agendas arguing that decarbonization requires dramatic behavioral social economic revolution in two decades. And in the book, I explained why that, you know, the big challenge are the three things I talked at the beginning. And some of these other things are not necessary. Stopping population growth, stopping to eat meat or flying airplanes or driving cars or abolishing capitalism. Some of these things might be desirable on their own, but people hitch this as they're desired entity and say, This is how you solve climate. And that makes it way more challenging. That doesn't take us closer to success. The goals may be laudable, but the gain it's a reason why the fossil fuel industry just loves agenda hitching. And finally, climate insincere politicians, we have to be able to identify them. Now, this is the part in my talk where when I show this slide, I get a lot of laughter. And so I'm going to assume that there's some laughter out there right now. And my point here is so this and also this is only when I give a Canadian version of this talk, but you can find something like this for some other countries. These last while candidates have been quite egregious on this across the US as well.  So how would you do that? Well, now I'm going to bring back the points from my entire talk, right? A climate insincere politician would deliberately confuse actions and policies would implement only non compulsory policies and would exaggerate the cost of compulsory policies like the carbon tax. And of course, the fossil fuel industry loves and rewards these politicians. So the task of the climate concerned citizen is to find and support climate insincere politicians. And what will they do? They'll implement compulsory policies and electricity and transportation. And of course, also in things like buildings and light industry, they'll implement a mix of policies that drive innovation and low cost decarbonization in those trade exposed industries. And they'll link up with other countries who are also climate leaders to have a multi country coal and oil phase out campaigns. And this is what our federal government has done with its with its efforts for phasing out coal is called powering past coal as an international movement, which Canada was started with the UK. And they will have to start implementing carbon tariffs. Now that's something I haven't talked a fair bit about again, perhaps some people want to pursue this in Q&A. So here's where I show this picture. And it's funny, you get different reactions in different parts of the country. In British Columbia, you know, a lot of people say, well, no, I mean, how can a climate sincere politician build a pipeline? And I'm not going to answer this for you. You're going to have to decide for yourself. But I've already given you the indicator that experts use internationally to recognize those few governments that are being that appear to be climate sincere. So what has our government done since 2015? What's the main policy approach? It's been a reliance on compulsory policies that is pricing and regulations with rising stringency and leveraging our domestic efforts into a global effort. And just to give you a bit of specifics on that, the coal plant phase out that Ontario did and then Alberta started to initiate under the Notley government is now a national policy with all coal plants shut down by 2030 at the latest. Our economy warring carbon price is rising in $10 increments, at least to reach $50 per second by 2022. And we have a carbon pricing system for those trade exposed industries I talked about, which has a similar marginal incremental price on it. We're developing methane regulations and we're developing a flexible regulation called the clean fuels standard, especially that will affect oil, but also coal and natural gas. So then you have to ask yourself, gee, I wanted to be angry with this government, but is it climate sincere and sincere? And how do I act strategically when it comes to supporting or not supporting that government? So we're going to have to simplify as climate concern citizens. We're going to have to elect and support climate sincere politicians, push them to implement flex-regs or carbon pricing, push them to make alliances for global coal phase out and carbon tariffs. And ourselves now, say a citizen of British Columbia, like me, because we had success with electricity and in preventing coal plants and keeping it almost 100% clean, I can now own an electric car as I do and have an electric heat pump. But how do we get those sincere politicians? Now here I have a slide that shows how you figure out if they're sincere and it maps out this. I'm going to go fast through that because I want to get to the question and answer period. So apologies that this happens really quickly. You can get access to my slides and this is also in the book. So I'm going to get to the last part here.  Now, Bill McKibben, a writer that some of you will know about says, Planet Earth is miles outside its comfort zone. How many of us will go beyond ours? Now, and that's a question that's bedeviled me as well.  I have expertise in this area. And so I sometimes get listened to by governments. This is an example. It's me appearing before in Washington DC before the committee of the US Congress. I'm speaking against the Keystone pipeline. So I have that kind of opportunity. But at the same time, as Bill McKibben said, you're going to have periods where you have very insincere governments. And in the era in which we have the Harper government federally and the Christy Clark government here provincially, I finally was pushed in my own conscience to say I need to show more. I need to be out there willing to demonstrate. And in this case, in fact, even willing to risk legal sanction and even financial penalty being sued, for example, by coal companies. This is me as one of several people, 13 people being arrested for blocking coal trains all day in White Rock, British Columbia. And that's the the police officer of me and handcuffs as he's putting me into the paddy wagon. So what in the end, I want to ask what can our citizen activism, what effect can it have. And I think a few photos can can help us think about that. No one is too small to make a difference. You see how she started. And that's why I think of a quote of Margaret Mead, never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. And I'll end you with one last quote to those with the privilege to know, also have the duty to act Albert Einstein. Thank you. Mark, there are two questions in the Q&A, but there's also a couple in the chat. So I'll just let you decide how you want to deal with those. Okay. Yeah, I see about six in the chat. So Richard. So Richard has asked. Here's the easiest one. Nancy asked, will we have access to the slides and the answer is yes. So I'll make sure that you have them, you can post them. And Richard asked, is it effective to build transport infrastructure that use a lot of fossil fuels in its construction. And that's a, that's a common question. So people are saying, well, if I'm building, if I'm building wind turbines, aren't I, what about the steel I make. So what's the embodied emissions in that equipment, or if I'm making a transit line. What about all the cement and steel. And so here's what you should know that the amount of emissions in the production of something that we're going to use all that we're using energy all the time, like something that moves people like a transit system versus car. The embodied energy in the, the infrastructure, the network or the capital equipment themselves is miniscule compared to the emissions caused in the using of it. So the burning of energy, the consuming of energy. And so that's often a, that's also a myth out there, the data wise, it's very clear. And so what that is, as we do move to to decarbonizing, then there won't even be much embodied carbon in, even in the biofuels you consume or in that turbine or the transit system because of the way you'll be making cement and so on. So those kind of things don't change. Finally, had no point in Canada reducing submission. Oh yeah, the counter argument that there's no point in Canada reducing its emissions because they count for such a small percentage. That's a valid point. And that's the point I was, I was getting at. So what you have to ask yourself though, and this is why it's challenging is you can't just sort of go in there and say, Hey, everyone's going to be like me and they're going to say, Canada should just act and we'll be leaders and everyone will follow us. It's not quite like that. And countries can be very selfish. The developing world isn't just going to follow us. So we have to figure out how to get other people to go along. And what it's most and what experts said 30 years ago is still valid today. It is not going to be a gentle world. It's going to be a world in which countries who are leading are going to put carbon tariffs on say that, you know, say that China wants to, you don't have to use China like India is developing and building more coal plants, let's say, and they want to import products into Canada. We will be putting tariffs on those. We should have done it 30 years ago, and the world would have evolved very differently. And if we don't do it over the next 30 years, we will not get to this global agreement. It's not going to be by raising a lot of taxes on on people in the wealthy world and transferring that money. The reason is we're too selfish. But for the developing world, it is much better that we act on climate. So from a global equity perspective, even though their economies might not grow as fast, the devastation for the developing world will be way less. They are the ones were less able to handle the devastation of climate change. And so I argue that this is a more realistic global equity kind of strategy. I've been a bit long on that answer, but it's a very important one. And also, finally, you know, your counter argument, if you want, especially if you're talking to conservatives who say we shouldn't be doing this is to say, wait a minute, so you don't think Canada should have participated in World War Two to stop the threat of global domination by Nazism, for example, because we were only about 2% of that effort.  Now I'm going to go over to the chat. So apologies to those who actually use the Q&A. Okay, I just need to move my Q&A over there. Okay, I got to work my way back up to the top. Someone's written a very long one. Yeah, it's a really long one. Yeah, I think Mark, everybody can actually see it because they sent it to all the attendees. Okay, so yeah, what the person was asking was the big challenge, as I said earlier, was that people can, insincere politicians can make promises into the future. And then, you know, the only person who knows that they're not going to achieve it is an expert who can simulate the inertia in the system and the effect of individual policies. This is why in the Harper era, I also worked a lot for Canada's Auditor General and other Auditor Generals across the country, because they were trying to assess the sincerity of policies such as those of the Harper government. If I'm to provide an update for where we're going to get to in 2030, another tick mark for the Trudeau government is that the Trudeau government has been very good in that it has said to its group of modelers and to the parliamentary budget officer or whatever. It has just been hands off and said, you tell us if we're going to meet the Paris target with these policies. And so we were able to see that the policies we have in place right now, with the carbon tax rising to 2022, but like saying, maybe it won't rise much after that, what will be the other policies, they're still not becoming stringent enough to achieve the Paris target. You maybe get 70% of the way there from where you otherwise would have been without these policies. So that's a big step, but it's not far enough. But the tools that are used by the federal government are virtually identical to tools that I use and tools that former students of mine who are the leading modelers in the country and some of them leading modelers globally. We all use about the same tools right now. So I'm able to say that when the Trudeau government said by how much it would miss its Paris target, I achieved about the same number.  And he didn't say like where he would say, I'm going to get rid of the carbon tax, but we'll have a voluntary this or that. And so I was able to take the model. I ran it. And I was somewhat surprised, but not totally surprised that emissions under Andrew Scheer had even elected as a majority and implemented his policies would actually start going up again, instead of going down. So those are the kind of things that we can say and I provided that in a journal called policy options before the election and it was used a lot during the election to say the conservatives would actually increase emissions. So now I'm going to go further down and I should mention mark some of the chat is only to the panelists, and some is to panelist and attendees so I was wrong. The attendees can't see all the chat. Oh, so maybe I'll go back over to see Sue says, I'm going to kind of construct the policies are possible regarding international airline industry. So I told you about what we call a mission intensive trade exposed industry steals cement aluminum. Well, international airlines are like that as well. You're really going. So the Europeans did try, I don't know a decade ago to start to go after international flights, they're obviously well placed for that because, you know, are there are a whole bunch of small area, and then they could put that restriction on flights coming in from Asia from North America and so on. And it would be the best policy. When we get it but it'll be difficult because it's like stealing cement is some kind of a sector specific accord that says we're going to require a rising blend of low and zero emission fuels in with jet fuel. And you already, I've flown on a jet airplane in Brazil that was 100% biofuel, and the Russians had hydrogen airplanes, a few of them experimental in the 1950s. So we can get to zero mission jet fuel. And that is where we've got to go and there are some leading firms, I think it was jet blue and maybe Richard Branson's, you know, the airline industry will be in a bit of trouble right now but they were willing to do a little extra to start down blending the fossil fuel content in their fuels but what we really need is some country to take a lead on carbon tariffs or a set of countries so Canada working with Europe over the next while on airlines would be a big deal. And that's that's something that I have argued that the government should be doing. And Nancy said, I've been contacting municipalities that have declared a climate crisis and how ask other policies have changed, and how they're building permits have changed is that at all helpful, absolutely. And you've got even better possibilities now, just in the last couple of months, the city of Vancouver now the city of Vancouver has more authority than other municipalities in British Columbia, or at least initially in terms of its building code. But the provincial government, I hope I get all this right has set things up so that it has this step code and municipalities can adopt it voluntarily ahead. And so actually there's British Columbia now in North America is becoming an ideal model because of Vancouver city for for what what would happen in smaller towns in British Columbia in terms of billing codes and then right across the country. And there are some jurisdictions in North America that are doing this as well. And that is for example saying you can't build a new building. It's connected to something burning fossil fuels so natural gas. And you know, 40% of our residences in British Columbia are using electricity for space and water heating. So it's not like it. Yes, natural gas is very cheap. That's my whole theme, but we've been able to use policies. And there's some other cost advantages that that can can can get us away from burning natural gas and buildings and having heat pumps and so on, as per the photo I showed. So I think that's a really good strategy Nancy. And now you can say to them, and why aren't you, why aren't you copying Vancouver. Now Ben asks, there's been a call for green investments as part of the recovery from COVID-19. Do you have thoughts on what that would constitute good government investments so I'm really glad that you asked that question then because I mean I am speaking a lot about that is actually nice to say, not to speak about it, but I should. And, and I am involved. I'm on British Columbia's climate Solutions Council, which advises the provincial government, the cabinet, and I'm on the Canadian The Canadian Institute for Climate Choices, which is a federal entity created by the Trudeau government, and both of these entities have already debated and thrashed out what kinds of aspects we might recommend to governments in terms of, you know, when they try to do stimulus and I could talk about this for a long time so I'm going to give you a very abbreviated version, but there are places where you can hear me more on this one of them. People can email me and ask but I, or I can give a link to Lynn. I did a show with Matt Galloway on CDC's the current a month or so ago on this it was about a 14 minute interview, and I went into it in some detail, and the basically, I reminded people that not all government, you know, when government has to step in, in a way that we talk about John Maynard Keynes like to stimulate, it's not always the same. Sometimes it's investment. Sometimes it's just handing out money to people, a bridge. What governments are doing so far is just handing out money. Now they don't know if the economy will then just when we are able to reduce the physical distancing, if the economy will just take off like people will start, you know, doing a lot of the same things or even if they do them differently, even if they work more from home, they still might be buying goods, and the economy will be moving along and they'll be still going to restaurants and getting their hair done and so on. So and going to schools eventually. So when all that happens, how much investment will government do well because government spent a lot of money bridging like just here's some money. Don't worry future generations will pay for it. Governments are going to be severely constrained spending wise as we get out of this process. What could they spend money on when they if they're trying to stimulate us partly to get it out of this process. It should only be things related to fuel switching.  They'll love it if you stay connected to natural gas, stay with gasoline vehicles, keep making electricity from coal and natural gas. But if, for example, if government said, you know what, we're trying to move to zero mission vehicles in cities, they'll mostly be electric. So we're going to need every townhouse and condo that every parking space should have access to an electric charger. So we're going to make that a regulation that phases in over the next five years and we're going to provide a lot of government money to help pay for that. As part of the stimulus and it's really good because it creates jobs throughout the province. It creates skilled labor jobs. And at the same time, it makes it because research has shown that people charge their electric cars, especially at home, not in a public place and I can say that in a year and a half I've charged my electric car maybe four times in a public place it's always at home. So that's the green investment one and thank you for that question. And Lynn, I know we're getting close to deadline so I'll just answer. Well, it's kind of up to you Mark. Someone just asked me. But you know, we, the account is not going to crash on zoom will let us stay so it's up to you and I really thank you for being so generous about answering all these questions because yeah there's a lot. Yeah, well that's good. So I will, I'll probably go at most another 10 minutes just so everyone knows. Okay, and that that might help some people to know if they were like, Oh, it's this guy going to go on forever. So if you want to stay to the end, it should be about another 10 minutes and then maybe you can just look at your watch and give me a little bit on that as well. So now I had Richard, or let's see. Do you think it is possible encourage greater long term sequestration of carbon and forest by conservation restoration right to lock it up. So this is this whole question of capturing storing carbon in biomass so biomass just a word for anything shrub brush, you know, plant coverage and not even just plant coverage but also in carbon in the soils and so on and and yes there is, but where. And so what does that mean it means reforestation, preventing deforestation finding areas that you can replant a forestation. But when you say lock it up for centuries. I'm not so sure about that it is and what is really problematic. Oh, wait a minute, my usual test for you as I had in my talk. Do you think the fossil fuel industry loves this or doesn't love this. Guess what they love it, because what it means is people will use this argument and say oh this is and governments love this, we're going to put some money into planting trees, instead of a carbon price or a regulation which phases out the burning of coal oil and natural gas. Because politicians want to do those things, take taxpayers money, plant some trees, they want to do those things that are easiest politically and unfortunately you put up those trees and you don't know, you don't know if climate change is going to burn down those trees. You don't know if, let's say a lot of programs have said oh I know this is a way to transfer money to the developing world. So let's give money to preserve a range part of a rainforest in Guatemala or Brazil. But you don't have control five years from now, 15 years from now in the election of a populist political leader who says we have a growing population, people need that land for grazing cattle for meat production, which is going up with our population. You can't stop those kinds of things. So I am very, well I don't denigrate or deny the importance of all of these things about storing carbon and biomass. I think it is, we need to do it. I resist when we present it as a solution and enable climate insincere politicians off the hook from what absolutely has to be done. So again, always ask yourself that test. I'm going to swing over back to the chat. Just trying to find out where I, there was the long question. And so then I had John, can renewable technology, wind, water, solar, geothermal, hydrogen totally supply our energy needs. Yes. So the question ends up becoming more of cost. So just financial cost, you know what will energy services costs moving around people in goods, heating, getting electricity, cooling buildings because that's a huge part of the energy use in the future of course as the wealth growth is in the developing world and therefore the energy demand. So it will be cost and environmental impact. Because there is, that's part of my, even my previous books, Sustainable Fossil Fuels and this book and other books, Hot Air that I wrote with Jeffrey Simpson of the Globe and Mail, is that there are every one of our energy choices involves trade-offs. And that is why letting the energy get more expensive and using less of it is a good thing and being more efficient. There's nothing wrong with that. But we have to do fuel switching, which brings up energy costs. And then while we're doing that, we have to really try to develop those renewable energy forms in ways that there's going to be some impact. You know, it's not zero, but we really don't want to have huge impacts from that.   And so then you might go for more run of river hydro, but it's not nearly as valuable. It's going to be higher cost and you're going to have to twin it with some kind of energy storage before you store the water behind the dam. Now you might need batteries or some other things that cost you more. But credible institutions for 20 years, and I'm talking about the intergovernmental panel on climate change or a big process that I was involved in seven or eight years ago called the Global Energy Assessment. We ran scenarios in which we got emissions way down to stop climate change, you know, to prevent going beyond two degrees Celsius, for example. So to minimize climate change, I should say. And in those scenarios, we had scenarios in which there was no nuclear power. You know, we had scenarios in which there was no carbon capture and storage, so we stopped using fossil fuels completely. So we had scenarios that were completely renewables. They were more expensive. So that's, that's why I had that slide about rigidity. Do I really care if Alberta wants to use some of its fossil fuels to get energy and then captures the carbon and varies in the western sedimentary basin, which is a very safe place. So those are the things that that I ask, but yes, it's possible. Oh, and then, okay, and then Lynn asks, how do you think carbon tariff, you know, will the carbon tariff trigger some kind of trade tension. And I was asked to answer this question for some government just just recently. And my answer basically went like this is absolutely it will. So and so off for 30 years, people have said we can't do carbon tariffs, because it might make some people unhappy and it might, you know, it might lead to some trade tensions and maybe some retaliatory tariffs and so on. So let's not do it. And you see where that's gotten us. Right. So we are going to have to take difficult decisions and take some risks. You know, if you get the right government in China or the United States, and the Chinese government's got a little more interest in this, or you get the Europeans, the Europeans now are talking climate tariffs again, because they're starting to move more aggressively. They've now got even gotten buy in from some of the Eastern European countries that I didn't think they get. So the Europeans now are talking about carbon tariffs in a more serious way than I've ever heard before. So if you get the right government, the US government, 10 years ago, when it had when it was bringing in policies under Obama and even before that when John McCain was in the Senate in 2006 2007. They were bringing in cap and trade policies that effectively had carbon tariffs in them as well. So globally, we have come close to this. And I actually think that if the US government finally acts. Obviously not a Trump government. But if we get the world changes for us, that tariffs would be a big part of it.  And when they do the whole tension thing. Well, there's there's tariff tensions already. It won't be any worse. That's that's my prediction. Okay. Oh, someone at Richard asks, I've heard we need another four or five sites sees if we electrify the transport sector does this sound right. So, one of the things. So, yes, but I qualify. One of the things that is that the fossil fuel industry loves is all or nothing solutions. So people will say, oh, transportation, you want to convert all the electricity, look at how much energy you need that's huge, or, you know, the steel industry or electricity generation, like that will happen all the time. But we see in the in jurisdictions that do decarbonize. It's not like that. And so I've done some simulations again, I can send people some of these reports are published. Some of them are refereed and published. Some are not yet refereed. And where we found a British club in Canada, that significant decarbonization of the Canadian transportation sector between now and 2050, let's say an 80% reduction in emissions would lead to biofuels becoming about would replace, first of all, efficiency. Motors are more efficient. And you just get more efficient some transit and so on efficiency does about 15 to 20% of the reductions, and then biofuels do about 15 to 20% of the reductions as is now happening the data shows in Norway, Sweden and Finland. And whereas for us, it's more like 5% so far. And these are biofuels that you can make in ways that they're not causing emissions, they're net neutral. And so that and that, then suddenly electrification is only 60%, or 65%. Now, then do you need site sees you need a lot of electricity.  But you're going to need a lot of electricity. We're lucky in that, depending on the jurisdiction wind and solar are getting very cheap. They're intermittent. So we need to match them with something that can fill in when the windows is not blowing or the sun is not shining. But that's happening now. It's happening in Texas. It's happening. You know, it's happening in many jurisdictions in the world. And so, fortunately, a significant amount of electricity worldwide is going to come from wind and solar. But that's also going to have a big land footprint. But still, it's a trade off worth doing, I think. I mean, in Europe, you just see a lot more wind happening offshore. Now, where am I at? One more? I think you could take one more question. Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, I'll stay over on this side here because this is something that oops, it just jumped past it. Oh, yeah. Do you believe the total cost of ownership of EVs is now cheaper than gas powered cars say over 10 years? So that's a great question. And you need to take my energy course, which is a third year undergrad course is about 100 to 150 students every year. But it's always in the January to April period. So we had to finish it off online this year. And the one of the main assignments is we give people a big spreadsheet and they have to calculate, you know, whether it makes sense to buy an electric car if you only care about financial. And that's funny because I'm someone who has never had a parking. I've always taken the bus or bike in so many things. I believe in cars. I love cars, but I've just been someone who's always sort of preferred an alternative. Partly my environmentalism, but I've never preached to others and I've taught in the book I talk about why people use cars. There's some really good reasons. And but because I'm someone who only puts about 5000 kilometers a year on a car, the extra capital cost of the electric car, 10 $15,000 more expensive for an equivalent car. You need to have a lower operating cost and the operating cost of an electric car. Well, before the gasoline price fell, so let's say it about $1.20 when gasoline to the $1.20 a liter in Vancouver, or $1.20 $30. Then if you use the electric car sort of to go the typical Canadian, which is almost 20,000 kilometers a year with their car, then it would pay itself off. I forget the calculations now, but like in six, seven years, something like that. In my case, it never pays itself off because I don't drive enough. I don't save enough in operating costs to compensate me for the original cost of buying the car.  I'm someone who I've insulated seven different old homes in my life. Don't even get me started. And I've calculated that they never paid themselves off, not once. But of course I did it. And I've done a lot of research on what percentages of house retrofits and so on actually do pay themselves off. The reason I'm doing it, of course, and some other people like me isn't for the money. It's because I'm thinking about the extra cost of the pollution. And so that's why I do it. So that's kind of my answer to that question. We do need government subsidies or even the ZEV, a flexible regulation we have in Canada, in British Columbia now and in Quebec and in California. And it's supposed to, if we do it right, and we're not quite there, it forces the sellers of vehicles to cross subsidize the electric vehicles because they have to meet sales targets or pay penalties. What it means is they'll slightly increase the price of the F-150 truck they're selling, but the buyer won't know, you know, but maybe it's $100, $150 more so that cumulatively when they're selling electric cars, they can bring the price down by three or $4,000 of each car. And so that's part of this idea of flexible regulations. That's a whole nother area. But if you look at my chapter on policy in the book and it's written for non-experts, that's when I explain how some of those things work. So I'm happy that I was able to get to a fair number of questions and I'm really happy to see all the questions that were out there. And I do invite you, you can look at my website, markjacker.com, which tells you, it looks at reviews of the book in grist and wired. I've been very happy that there's been such favorable reviews. It's a book for non-experts and it tells you how to quickly get the book, both from a whole list of independent booksellers that you can order online and or quickly from Amazon or wherever. So I encourage people to get the book and if you like it, encourage others as well. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mark. Thank you so much. Yeah. Of course, we have it at the library. People want to borrow it, but you can purchase it too. Thanks so much. Thank you for such an informative talk and spending time with us during your expertise and really giving clarity to a very complex issue is really interesting. And I think, thank you to the attendees actually. Thank you for coming out on this. Good afternoon and great questions and discussion. I'm really happy to see all that. Thanks a lot. I will forward anything that Mark sends me to all of the people who attended today. Great. Okay. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Okay. Bye.