A red flag in the global-warming battle

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday that any new standards regulating greenhouse gases would be "intensity-based," providing an indication to the oil and gas industry that Ottawa will do nothing to inhibit the development of emissions-heavy oil-sands projects.
The phrase "intensity-based" is a red flag in the long-running political battle over global warming.
Essentially, such standards set targets for emissions levels relative to economic output -- in the case of the oil industry, on a per barrel basis -- as opposed to the absolute reduction in levels that was envisioned by the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Industry argues that the relative measure represents a more practical approach and will require them to be more efficient, while environmentalists insist that it is a step backward because it allows emissions to grow, albeit more slowly than the economy as a whole.
A recent report from Natural Resources Canada said the growth rate in the country's greenhouse-gas emissions should slow to about 1.1 per cent a year from now until 2020, down from a 1.7-per-cent annual rate over the past 15 years.
As an intensity-based measure, that represents a significant improvement, but the same report noted that the absolute level of emissions is expected to climb by 18 per cent in the next 14 years.
The oil industry, which expects to double production over the next 15 years, is particularly insistent that the federal Conservative government adopt an "intensity-based" standard, as the Alberta government did in its proposed climate-change strategies.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers forecasts that crude-oil production will double between 2005 and 2020, with a quadrupling of oil-sands production offsetting declines in more conventional supplies. But oil sands projects are major emitters of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
As such, it would be a tremendous challenge -- if not impossible -- for the oil industry to reduce total greenhouse-gas emissions while achieving the planned growth rates of oil sands output.