Last summer, I had the chance to sit down with my friend Christian Matossian at ÉEM. He is their stakeholder engagement director. Stakeholder engagement is becoming more and more important to modern-day business. Top-down management simply does not hold water, partners, communities and organizations need to be included in discussion right from the start. Some legislation is now forcing businesses to actively consult with affected parties prior to development or expansion work. Take a look at our video where we talk about the return on investment of stakeholder engagement, its increasing importance and other items.

The oilseeds in Alberta are one of the world’s largest environmental dangers. Not only are the greenhouse gas emissions astronomical, the tailing ponds can be seen from space and the nearby rivers are heavy in toxic metals.

But, the same could be said of 1960s pulp and paper operations across the country. What did it take to clean up the pulp and paper industry? Leadership from government and pressure from local people. Something we are unfortunately short on.

The tar-sands have very deep pockets and they push hard for less government oversight, but at the end of the day it is government who will force the industry to reform. This article outlines some promising new technologies to cleanup the industry, but it also outlines how the costs involved are too risky for business to take, so the government must step up to the plate. So far, they have refuse.

I would like to think the tar sands can be exploited in a reasonable way, but to do that will require great political courage. However, the technology that would be developed in the process could be a revolutionary, after all, as the article above states, it is government-funded research that allowed the tar-sands to be commercially viable in the first place.

Not sure how productive Copenhagen was, but this blow by blow account of the negotiations has Obama getting down in the trenches and making things happen, good read. Any agreement on emissions targets has two very large issues to confront:

1. Attaining the targets and
2. Verification of claims that targets were met.

For example, most countries signed onto Kyoto, but pretty much none have reached the goals set out under the document. In fact, Europe has had carbon emissions increase, so what does this say about the power of these “binding” agreements. If no one enforces the application of an agreement, there isn’t really an agreement in place. The US team seems to be pushing very hard on transparency in China and in general. My guess is that they feel that without transparency and accountability there will be a lot of fudging of the emissions numbers. Making predictions is a dangerous business, but my sense is that the only way to get countries to respect an international greenhouse gas treaty is to impose import tariffs on products from places who fail to comply. We shall see.

The team at Environmental and Engineering Magazine graciously allowed us to write an article last summer, it was published in their September issue, which can be found here. The article is title, Ontario’s new Green Energy Act makes energy from biogas even more economically attractive by Yves Faguy on page 54.

The team at ESEMag also organizes the CANECT tradeshow in Toronto, visit them there.

We have previously mentioned that there may be more important issues in the world today than climate change, malaria is one of them. The disease kills thousands of people every year and dramatically slows the economic growth of many african countries by keeping children out of school and parents sick at home. Some climate change enthusiasts claim that increased global temperature will lead to an increase in Malaria, this is simply false – for a variety or reasons.

Malaria is not a tropical disease, it used to be quite prevalent in Canada, and its eradication has to do with human efforts of pest control. Read this good article on the realities of Malaria and then watch Bill Gates TED talk to understand why it is such an important issue.

More from the über-optimist, Bjorn Lomberg, who argues that we could adapt global warming more cheaply than we could prevent it.

Take malaria. Most estimates suggest that if nothing is done, 3% more of the Earth’s population will be at risk of infection by 2100. The most efficient global carbon cuts designed to keep average global temperatures from rising any higher than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (a plan proposed by the industrialized G-8 nations) would cost the world $40 trillion a year in lost economic growth by 2100—and have only a marginal impact on reducing the at-risk malaria population. By contrast, we could spend $3 billion a year on mosquito nets, environmentally safe indoor DDT sprays, and subsidies for new therapies—and within 10 years cut the number of malaria infections by half. In other words, for the money it would take to save one life with carbon cuts, smarter policies could save 78,000 lives. (via Future Pundit)