Despite some encouraging leaks about mandatory targets, the early reviews of the Conservative Green Plan seem to be mostly negative. A lot of the criticism seems to stem on the fact that the targets will be intensity based rather than fixed caps, which means emissions will continue to rise over the next few years. Here are a few of my preliminary thoughts on this:

1. It’s a little unfair to slam the “intensity” based approach until we see what the requirements will be. I mean, if you force an industry to cut back their per capita emissions at a larger rate than the industry is growing you have, for all intents and purposes capped that industry.

2. Mandatory intensity based targets are better than voluntary intensity based targets which is what the Liberal Kyoto plan called for.

3. Given that oil sands production is expected to double in the next decade, would it even be possible to put a hard cap on emissions for this industry? Without causing an armed uprising in Alberta, that is.

4. That said, given that the oil industry is the biggest emitter in Canada, that Alberta is the province with the most emissions and that six of the top 10 worst polluting companies are in wild rose country, Harper is going to have to upset some people in his home province if he wants to make any sort of progress on this file. No Prime Minister has ever had as much political capital in Alberta as Stephen Harper does right now so if there is every anyone who can afford to burn some political goodwill for the good of the country, Harper is the man to do that. As I said above, you don’t need to cap oilsands production, but you need to come down hard on the oil and gas sector if you want to make real changes.

5. The timeline for this is really bad. Another year of consultation and no mandatory limits until 2010? There’s been enough talk, it’s time for some action.

6. The Conservatives are counting on future technologies to cut greenhouse gases in the long term. This marks the first time a Conservative government has ever put their faith in science…

7. Since he’s the resident environmentalist in the comments section here, I invite everyone to check out Green’s Clues’ take on this.