Interview with Benoît Rittaud author of Le Mythe climatique (in french)
¶ Published Tuesday, May 11th In Environment, Video - No Comments »
See the french version.
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The ocean is broken
¶ Published Thursday, May 6th In Environment - No Comments »
A terrifying (and timely) presentation by Jeremy Jackson, a world expert in marine biodiversity and conservation from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In this Ted Talk, Jackson shows how much marine environments, particularly coral reefs, have been drastically altered before his own eyes. He describes an environment in extreme decline that began two centuries ago but that continues to accelerate, principally because of overfishing, pollution and ocean warming. The most telling images are the photos of amateur fish catches today compared to those of 40 years ago. It’s grim, very grim — but he does hold out hope that it’sRead the Rest…
No leave for Friends of the Earth
¶ Published Thursday, March 25th In Environment - No Comments »
The Supreme Court of Canada has dismissed an application for leave to appeal last year’s Federal Court of Appeal’s decision in Friends of the Earth Canada v. Ministry of the Environment. Friends of the Earth (FOTE) had launched the suit to force Ottawa to comply with the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, which requires the federal government to take concrete action to meet its international commitments to fight climate change. It’s hard to disagree with FOTE’s contention that the government is, in this case, disregarding the will of Parliament. But the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that the law itself wasn’tRead the Rest…
Existing laws to fight climate change
¶ Published Tuesday, March 16th In Environment - No Comments »
First-generation pollution control laws are hardly ideal for fighting climate change, but they do offer worthy tools in the absence of GHG-specific legislation. The Obama administration has been signaling for some time that the Environmental Protection Agency will use its Clean Air Act authority to regulate GHGs (though incredibly, the U.S. Senate will soon vote on a measure that would block the EPA from enforcing the Clean Air Act to fight global warming). Interestingly, the EPA is now considering using water law to fight ocean acidification — the other major climate change issue facing us. Following a law suit settlementRead the Rest…
Bill Gates, climate champion, presenter extraordinaire
¶ Published Tuesday, February 16th In Environment - No Comments »
Who thought this could happen, Bill Gates gives a stunning presentation on climate change. Famous for his cluttered slides and disorganized presentations, Gates has seriously improved his game. Soon, he might be toting an iPhone and wearing black turtlenecks. Here is a rundown of the presentation by design gurus at Duarte. But just look at some of these slides, gorgeous.
Climate change litigation on the rise
¶ Published Wednesday, January 27th In Environment - No Comments »
The New York Times has an item on a series of climate change lawsuitsthat are making their way through the courts around the U.S. Already, two federal appeals courts have reversed decisions by federal district courts to dismiss climate-change decisions. One of the cases (Comer v. Murphy Oil USA (5th Cir. Miss. October 16, 2009)), a decision of the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, involved Gulf Coast property owners who claimed property damage resulting from Hurricane Katrina. The plaintiffs sued several large energy and power companies for compensatory and punitive damages, charging that these were caused by greenhouseRead the Rest…
Time for a new climate change strategy?
¶ Published Thursday, January 7th In Environment - No Comments »
Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel Laureate and Professor in Economics at Columbia University, concludes that world leaders at the Copenhagen climate conference failed not only to reach a binding agreement, but also to agree on how to save the planet. An entirely new strategy is needed, he says, to effectively address climate change: “Perhaps it is time to try another approach: a commitment by each country to raise the price of emissions (whether through a carbon tax or emissions caps) to an agreed level, say, $80 per ton. Countries could use the revenues as an alternative to other taxes –Read the Rest…
Time for Plan B?
¶ Published Wednesday, December 23rd In Environment - No Comments »
Both environmentalists and climate change skeptics should read this opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by Nigel Lawson, who for years was Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher’s Government. Lawson is long-time critic of the Kyoto Protocol and, for a while at least, sided firmly with global warming skeptics. He’s nuanced his arguments in the last few years recognizing now that global warming is a reality that will have a negative, albeit moderate, impact on us. But he has little time for alarmist and apocalyptic statements from climatologists and climate change policy advocates. Lawson proposes we “abandon theRead the Rest…
A question of trust
¶ Published Wednesday, December 16th In Environment - No Comments »
Eric Reguly of the Globe and Mail reports from Copenhagen that Canada is clearly in the proverbial doghouse. And indeed, one gets the feeling it’s Canada’s amateur hour at the talks. Still, the seemingly unanimous chorus of disapproval is odd, considering that our reduction targets are broadly similar to those of the U.S. But the difference is: Canada ratified Kyoto. The Americans didn’t. They took their licks when the Bush administration decided to withdraw U.S. support for the Protocol. Defenders of Canada’s position tend to argue that we must not share the burden alone, or that China should do more.Read the Rest…
Climate auditor
¶ Published Tuesday, December 15th In Environment - No Comments »
Stephen McIntyre is the Toronto-based editor of Climate Audit, a blog that brings a critical perspective to climate data. He was recently profiled in this Macleans article and in a Toronto Star piece this weekend. Interestingly, according to the article, McIntyre was mentioned over 100 times in the Climategate leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. The suggestion is that McIntyre’s work is one of the motivations behind the suppression of data by climate change advocates involved in the scandal. Fans say he at least has the merit of holding scientists accountable — never a badRead the Rest…
Quote of the day
¶ Published Monday, December 14th In Environment - No Comments »
“This is the day that will define our century. Canada is fully acknowledging its historical climate debt and the legal responsibilities that follow. Today, we no longer have to wait for a COP20 or COP100 before the voices of our children are heard. Now that we are friends, I can say it is high time Canada changed.” – Margaret Matembe, MP and member of the Climate Committee of Uganda Too bad “the staged response” was in response to the fake news release claiming that Canada had done an about turnaround on its carbon emissions targets. The hoax has created suchRead the Rest…
It’s about politics
¶ Published Friday, December 11th In Environment - 1 Comment »
It’s about politics
All eyes on Copenhagen
¶ Published Monday, December 7th In Environment - No Comments »
The Copenhagen climate change summit opens today and will run until December 18. Depending on who you read, either the Canadian government won’t buy into “the hype” and won’t be rushed, or will “push for a binding deal.” Though Climategate still looms in the forefront, members of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) have released the Copenhagen Diagnosis — a review of hundreds of peer-reviewed research papers published since the IPCC’s last assessment in 2007 — which concludes that the climate situation is much worse than the IPCC has so far reported. The lesson in all this isRead the Rest…
Getting the right agreement
¶ Published Sunday, December 6th In Environment - No Comments »
Martin Wolf of the Financial Times offers three criteria for post-Copenhagen climate change policies to be truly effective. First, we need prices for carbon that apply over relevant planning horizons. That price cannot be fixed forever, but must change with events. But it needs to be far more stable than in the European Union’s market for permits (see chart). A tax seems more attractive to me than “cap and trade”, for this reason. Second, where the abatement occurs must be separated from who pays for it. Abatement needs to happen where it is most efficient. That is why emissions ofRead the Rest…
Ontario’s new GHG reporting rules
¶ Published Wednesday, December 2nd In Environment - No Comments »
Yesterday Ontario passed O.Reg.452/09 which requires large emitters to report their greenhouse gas emissions to the MOE. The first step is for companies to supply emissions data to the Ministry to draw up the province’s emissions profile that can serve as a basis for creating a cap-and-trade system. O.Reg.452/09 starts by imposing a reporting requirement of specified GHG data by all facilities emitting annually 25,000 tonnes or more of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), and annual reporting of GHG emissions thereafter, starting in 2010 with a NPRI-like June 1 deadline for emissions reports each year. The regulation also introduces third partyRead the Rest…
