No one should be surprised if Prime Minister Stephen Harper endorses some form of carbon pricing before he leaves office, despite the histrionics of last week. Shocked, perhaps, but not surprised.
First, his career is marked by head-spinning reversals - followed by bland denials that he ever thought otherwise. Second, all his government's big decisions are made behind closed doors with minimum public engagement and little advance warning: government by remote control.
And, finally, acknowledgment that climate change is a problem - politically and economically, as well as environmentally - is growing and spreading, even within conservative circles.
Alberta Premier Alison Redford, for instance, insists that energy producers - governments and companies - need a "social licence" to operate in light of growing global concern about fossil fuels. Rather than demonizing environmentalists and blindly defending the industry, as her federal counterparts do, she talks about sustainability.
Many jurisdictions internationally and in Canada - notably B.C., Alberta and Quebec - have already experimented with carbon taxes without visiting economic ruin upon their populations. (Arguably, the problem is that green taxes are too low to influence behaviour and significantly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.)
Among those who see carbon pricing at the federal level as inevitable, there is still strong disagreement about targets and tactics. Some, like NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, prefer cap-and-trade to straightforward taxes on gasoline, heating oil or polluting industries.
Others - Stéphane Dion's doomed "Green Shift," for instance, or the B.C. carbon tax - want carbon taxes offset by equal reductions in income tax and targeted aid to rural communities, seniors, low-income earners and others disproportionately affected by increasing energy costs. Still others advocate directing carbon-tax revenues to the green-energy sector.
And the oil industry's embrace of sustainability is still mostly a public-relations exercise aimed at countering the "dirty oil" label that threatens markets for Alberta crude.
But only the Harper government treats carbon taxes as an unmitigated evil, "a tax on everything," useful primarily as a blunt tool for bludgeoning the opposition.
"Canadians and people around the globe know we have a government smart enough to reject dumb ideas, like a $20-billion carbon tax," Harper insisted this week, in his shrill campaign to undermine the NDP (which has, of course, long argued against a carbon tax).
But, increasingly, it is Harper's argument that sounds dumb and discredited - and, ultimately, unsustainable. Nor will our reputation as environmental laggards advance Harper's campaign to vastly increase energy exports. Only this week, a group of British MPs called for a halt to oil exploration in the Arctic until safeguards are in place - part of a growing international chorus of mistrust.
Even within the Ottawa bubble, there is impatience to move from denials and denunciation to adult discussion - the kind favoured by the late Alberta premier Peter Lougheed - of how to limit emissions and move to cleaner energy.
As for Harper's almost religious distaste for raising taxes, he was once similarly offended by deficits. Then came the crash of 2008 and a change of heart.
As he explained in November of that year: "I think we've done a good job of educating the public to the view that deficits are generally bad. We may now be in a period were we have to educate the public to a somewhat less simplistic view. There are times when deficits are not only not necessarily bad, they are essential."
There have been other stunning changes in direction, from asbestos exports to gay rights - which John Baird is now championing abroad - to that apparently mythical contract to buy F-35s.
In 2006, Harper declared Canadians did not want to "sell out" Canadian values to "the almighty dollar," when it comes to dealings with China. This week, his government is poised to approve a $15-billion purchase of a Calgary energy firm to China's state oil company.
Oh, sorry. Watch him "educate the public to a somewhat less simplistic view."
Susan Riley is an Ottawa Citizen columnist.
