Economics experts question Tory environmental approach

Gotta love this - even the same economists that Baird used to help him trash Kyoto are now saying they're skeptical of Baird's own plan:

Bernard and others were skeptical about the government's plan, which requires industry to reduce the intensity of their emissions instead of making absolute reductions. Opposition parties and environmentalists have criticized the intensity approach, favoured by the Bush administration in the U.S., since companies with increasing emissions can still meet the targets if their pollution levels are rising more slowly than their overall rate of growth.

"Basically, the intensity cap and trade program for large final emitters looks like it has far too many loopholes (so-called flexibility provisions) to cause much in the way of GHG (greenhouse gas) reductions in Canada," Mark Jaccard, a professor at B.C.'s Simon Fraser University's school of resource and environmental management, said in an e-mail. "It sounds tough to talk about six per cent emissions-intensity reductions per year, and then two per cent per year, but how much of that will actually be 'real emissions reductions?' My preliminary sense is 'not a lot.'"

With the economists now deserting him, soon Baird's only friend will be Buzz Hargrove. (Talk about your strange bedfellows!)