‘I’m not a denier’

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 12:25 PM - 0 Comments

After Megan Leslie tried once on Monday and three times on Tuesday to get Joe Oliver to explain his position on climate change, Evan Solomon gave it a shot on CBC’s Power & Politics yesterday evening. Here’s how that went.

Evan Solomon: She asked you three times, Do you believe in climate change, are you a climate change denier? She said she couldn’t get an answer. Could you give us an answer? She asked you, Do you believe in man-made or human-made climate change?

Joe Oliver: Look, I’m not a denier, but you know, this is a matter of science. It’s also a matter for my colleague, the Minister of the Environment, you know, and I don’t think we want to get into that. What I said to her and what I said to the House was we will not proceed with any project unless it is safe for the environment and safe for Canadians. That’s my responsibility.

Evan Solomon: So I just want to clarify one last time and then I want to ask you one last question. So you would say you do believe in the science of climate change?

Joe Oliver: Well, look, I’m not a scientist. Most scientists, overwhelmingly it seems, do believe, you know, do have that view. There are a number who do not. And I certainly take account of the fact that overwhelmingly, as I said, scientists appear to have that view.

Yes or no?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 4:19 PM - 0 Comments

Megan Leslie didn’t get an answer from Joe Oliver yesterday, so she asked him again this afternoon to clarify his understanding of climate change. And then she asked him again. And then she asked him again. Here’s how that went.

Megan Leslie: Surely the minister knows the basics of his file and he must know that hydrocarbons are a leading cause of climate change. So can the minister tell us if he agrees with the scientific link between hydrocarbons and climate change, yes or no?

Joe Oliver: Mr. Speaker, what I said yesterday, as the government’s policy, is that we will only approve projects that are safe for Canadians and for the environment. We are in favour of projects which will create jobs and economic activity and which will be nation builders for Canadians right across this country, from coast to coast to coast.

Continue…

Do you believe?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 30, 2012 at 4:37 PM - 0 Comments

Megan Leslie’s second question for the Natural Resources Minister this afternoon.

Mr. Speaker, we really do have a minister for the 19th century because the Minister of Natural Resources fails to understand the impact of Conservative inaction on jobs, on the environment and on future generations. Instead, he attacks people who actually care about the environment. It makes me wonder if the minister actually believes in climate change. Is the minister a believer or a denier?

Joe Oliver said—”since we are into theology”—that he wished to inform the House that he believed “no project in Canada should go ahead unless it is safe for Canadians and safe for the environment. He proceeded with his complaints about “radicals” who are “are opposed to any development of hydrocarbons,” none of which seemed to answer Ms. Leslie’s question.

See previously: Pop quiz

Keystone XL wars: Much ado about nothing, basically

By Erica Alini - Friday, January 20, 2012 at 4:38 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Levi, a  senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, has written a must-read list of myths about the (temporarily) defunct Keystone XL. Levi takes aim at climate change scaremongering with the same delight with which he debunks job creation and energy independence fairytales. Here’s a synopsis:

1. The pipeline would have been catastrophic for global climate change. Verdict: false.

2. The pipeline would have reduced U.S. reliance on oil from the Middle East. Verdict: pipe dream.

3. The pipeline would have created hundreds of thousands of American jobs. Verdict: gross exaggeration.

4. The pipeline would have set back the green economy. Verdict: umm… not true.

5. If we don’t build the pipeline and buy their oil, Canada will sell it to China. Verdict: so what?*

*hem, this, of course, from an American point of view.

Read the rest here.

The question of the weekend

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, January 14, 2012 at 4:37 PM - 0 Comments

Liberals are spending much of the day discussing the concept of “evidence-based policy”—this curious and revolutionary and courageous notion that the government’s actions and promises should acknowledge demonstrable reality. Munir Sheikh, the former chief statistician, addressed the convention this morning. Delegates have spent the rest of the day in sessions dedicated to discussing this novel approach in the context of various policy areas.

One of these sessions was to deal with the environment, which thus seemed like something of a test: could the Liberal party have a discussion about evidence-based environmental policy that didn’t deal with the preferred prescription of the vast majority of expert analysts?

The answer is: almost. But with a few minutes to spare in the hour a young man from the riding of Mount Royal stood and put the Liberal soul up for discussion. Continue…

Dewar on the environment

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 3:24 PM - 0 Comments

Paul Dewar wins the endorsement of Linda Duncan and releases his platform on energy and the environment, which includes cap-and-trade, the elimination of oil subsidies and a “green grid.”

Paul Dewar’s Greening the Grid Agenda would prioritize working with provincial and territorial governments to promote renewable energy innovation and development.  It will support regional interconnections that will enable the sharing of renewable energy sources, enhanced grid reliability and development of local green energy initiatives and the reduction of costs to consumers through enhanced grid efficiency and the avoidance of unnecessary new generation.

Paul Dewar aims to build a truly “smart” electricity system that will leverage Canada’s existing knowledge of electricity systems to make our country a green innovation leader.  The green grid is the backbone Canada will need to spur the development of a green economy in areas such as new renewable energy, energy efficiency, electricity system management, and green vehicles.

‘A fiscally responsible, economically literate, socially progressive NDP government’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 12:03 PM - 0 Comments

The prepared text of Brian Topp’s speech to the Economic Club of Canada today.

Thank you very much. It’s wonderful to be here. I hope everyone had a good holiday break. I got a few moments sleep and a little time with my family. And that’s good, because now the sprint begins to the finish line.

The NDP leadership race is just over half way complete. And I must say it’s been very good for our party. We have an excellent team of candidates. All of whom bring huge assets to the race. But as I said last week in the press, the race will start to get just a little “boring” if we don’t start talking about where we stand on the issues. The time for introductions is over – the time for real debate about the future of our party and our country is now. And, perhaps no issue is more central to Canadian politics than the state of our economy. A question where there may be some interesting differences among the candidates for leadership. Continue…

The enemy without and within

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 8:29 AM - 0 Comments

To clarify its concerns about “foreign special interest groups” and “jet-setting celebrities,” the Harper government points to the National Resources Defense Council. Joe Oliver singles out Tides Canada. Tides Canada is unimpressed.

But a Tides Canada official says support for energy-related issues like the Gateway pipeline amounts to less than 5 per cent of its funds devoted to overall charitable and environmental work in Canada. Often, the group works with governments on conservation, clean water and sustainable agriculture, and was involved in a sustainable aquaculture project announced by federal Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield in Campbell River, B.C., on Monday.

“I think this whole funding controversy is a diversion. it’s like creating a fireworks show to distract people and stop them from focusing on things that Canadians are really concerned about,” Tides Canada associate Merran Smith said.

Here is the Harper government partnering with Tides Canada Initiatives Society in 2010. Here is the Harper government partnering with Tides in 2009. And here is John Baird, as environment minister at the time, appearing alongside Tides Canada CEO Ross McMillan at an announcement in 2007.

Elizabeth May and Sierra Club director John Bennett have respectively penned responses to Mr. Oliver’s letter.

Get your environmental concerns off Joe Oliver’s lawn

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 9, 2012 at 12:51 PM - 0 Comments

The Natural Resources Minister takes on the environmental regulatory system, environmentalists, celebrity, air travel, foreigners, America and civil law.

Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade. Their goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. No more hydro-electric dams.

These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda. They seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. They use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources. Finally, if all other avenues have failed, they will take a quintessential American approach: sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further.

This is perhaps reminiscent of the rhetoric directed at the NDP in the House last month—see here, here and here.

Norway’s butter bailout

By Alex Ballingall - Tuesday, January 3, 2012 at 4:47 PM - 0 Comments

Heiko Junge/AP Photo

It was Saturday night, the week before Christmas, and two Swedish men were driving over the border to Norway. With them, in their small van, they carried more than 500 packets of butter—for a total of 250 kg—which they hoped to sell for more than 62,500 Swedish krona (CAD$9,187), according to Norwegian police.

Like countless profiteers before them, the two Swedes were trying to take advantage of the scarcity of something in high demand. In this case, it happened to be butter.

Norway, it turns out, is in the midst of a severe shortage of the fatty dairy product. Over the holidays, butter prices in the Scandinavian country spiked. Shoppers frustrated with store shelves devoid of butter took to the internet, where a one-lb. stick would sell for as much as $465.

Continue…

The Commons: Tomorrow’s problem

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 6:26 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. Turning to the English portion of her remarks, Nycole Turmel attempted to round on the Prime Minister.

“The Conservatives are turning their backs on the world. The Conservatives are betraying future generations. They have set up bogus homemade targets and are not even a quarter of the way toward meeting this lame attempt at saving face,” she ventured in her particular way. “When will the Prime Minister take climate change seriously?”

This question was almost entirely rhetorical and almost definitely futile, but it was almost surely the query the NDP wanted on the evening news—a furious condemnation wrapped in a plaintive cry.

The Prime Minister was quite happy for the opportunity to stand and speak seriously. Continue…

We don’t really want to fight climate change

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 2:49 PM - 0 Comments

Stephen Gordon invokes the law of revealed preference to explain Canada’s withdrawal from Kyoto.

Notwithstanding economically illiterate attempts to pretend otherwise, higher consumer prices for GHG-emitting goods and services are an essential component of any serious attempt to reduce emissions … It doesn’t matter what Canadians tell pollsters about how much they are concerned with climate change; what matters is the choices we make. And whenever we have been offered the choice of accepting personal inconvenience in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or of making sure that fossil fuels are cheap and plentiful, we have consistently and overwhelmingly chosen the latter.

‘An act of sabotage’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 11:37 AM - 0 Comments

Japan, India and Tuvalu add their concerns.

The tiny South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, one those most at risk from rising sea levels caused by climate change, was more blunt. ”For a vulnerable country like Tuvalu, its an act of sabotage on our future,” Ian Fry, its lead negotiator said. ”Withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol is a reckless and totally irresponsible act,” he said in an email to Reuters.

Critics in Australia are using the Harper government’s decision to scorn the Australian government.

Leading the world

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 10:14 AM - 0 Comments

France is unimpressed.

“Canada’s announcement that it is withdrawing from the Kyoto protocol is bad news for the fight against climate change,” ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told journalists. ”It is out of the question to relax our efforts or to break the dynamic of the Durban agreement,” he said.

China too. The Guardian, New York Times and CNN take note. John Ibbitson says we should all be ashamed. NDP MP Laurin Liu says the Environment Minister was sidelined at Durban.

Canada out of Kyoto

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 12, 2011 at 6:14 PM - 0 Comments

Freshly returned from Durban, Peter Kent announces a withdrawal from Kyoto.

“We are invoking Canada’s legal right to formally withdraw from Kyoto,” Kent said outside the House of Commons. ”This decision formalizes what we’ve said since 2006, that we will not implement the Kyoto Protocol.”

Canada signed Kyoto in the late 1990s, but neither the current Conservative government nor their Liberal predecessors met targets. Kent says the move saves Canada $14 billion in penalties for not achieving its Kyoto targets.

Andrew Leach has tried to sort out the idea that staying in Kyoto would actually mean, so far as penalties might be concerned. More from Andrew here and here.

Full statement from the Environment Minister after the jump. Continue…

Make the polluter pay

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 11:36 AM - 0 Comments

Thomas Mulcair tables a cap-and-trade proposal.

Mulcair’s plan goes further than the cap and trade proposal advanced by late NDP leader Jack Layton in the party’s election platform last spring. It would apply the “polluter-pay” principle not just to the 700 largest industrial emitters but to all major sources of greenhouse gases. Mulcair says Canada “can no longer afford to focus only on the worst of the worst.”

The plan and Mulcair’s candidacy have been endorsed by Weaver, lead author of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. ”Canada needs a prime minister who recognizes that a healthy economy does not have to come at the expense of a healthy environment,” Weaver said in a written statement Thursday. ”In my considered assessment, Thomas Mulcair is ideally suited for the task.”

The backgrounder distributed by the Mulcair campaign yesterday is here.

The Commons: The tiny, perfect Conservative

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 8:42 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. She is a pair of dimples in a room full of jowls.

Meet Michelle Rempel, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of the Environment. She is short and smiley and perfectly patronizing. She speaks without holding a script, gestures with confidence and seems even to listen to what her counterparts are saying (even if only in search of a turn of phrase she can turn back on her opponent). Only 31 and barely six months into her first term in Parliament, she is already feigning indignation like she was born here. And so the government side is surely thankful that Peter Kent has been out of town this last little while. Continue…

Peter Kent versus the world

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

The Environment Minister spreads the good word.

Environment Minister Peter Kent repeated his sharp criticism of Kyoto at a high-level session of the Durban talks. “Kyoto, for Canada, is in the past,” Mr. Kent told a large audience of delegates and climate negotiators on Wednesday. “For Canada, the Kyoto Protocol is not where the solution lies,” he said. “It is an agreement that covers fewer than 30 per cent of global emissions.”

As he spoke, six Canadian activists stood up and silently protested by turning their backs on him, wearing T-shirts that said: “Turn your back on Canada.” Security guards quickly rushed over and escorted them away, leading them through a narrow corridor at the back of the room and then evicting them from the conference. But the protesters won louder applause than Mr. Kent, whose speech was greeted by a smattering of polite applause from delegates.

Earlier this week, Mr. Kent promised the Harper government wouldn’t withdraw from Kyoto during the Durban conference, but wouldn’t comment on what might happen after the talks. Officials from Brazil, Germany, India and South Africa are unimpressed.

Frozen assets

By Hannah Hoag - Thursday, December 1, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Hakan Samuelsson

In a nondescript government office in the middle of Ottawa’s downtown core lie more than 10,000 years of the Arctic’s climate history. Ice cores drilled from Canada’s northernmost ice caps and ice fields are packed into dog-eared, insulated cardboard boxes and loaded onto floor-to-ceiling shelves in a walk-in freezer in a government building on Booth Street. Notes duct-taped to the outside divulge the distant origins of their contents: Agassiz, Prince of Wales, Penny. There are more boxes stashed in freezers outside the walk-in at the offices of the Geological Survey of Canada, and still more in rented commercial space, stored between frozen fish and ice cream.

Each core contains the sea salt, dust and air caught in the snow as it fell on the glaciers over thousands of years. They contain the records of past environmental changes, a history of human impact on greenhouse gases, atmospheric pollutants and global temperatures. And they have been collected over four decades at great expense.

But the ice core library’s future is far from certain, as the Geological Survey of Canada’s research priorities have changed and the Booth Street building is slated to be sold.

Continue…

After Kyoto

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

Andrew Leach considers the past, present and future of Canada’s involvement in international climate negotiations.

So, while Canada is right to abandon Kyoto, and Canada is right that an effective treaty to address global carbon emissions needs to include most/all countries, I don’t think they’re on the right track in demanding an agreement with binding targets for all countries.  First, it’s unlikely you’ll see binding emissions targets imposed on developing countries. That makes it less likely that Canada will have a role in formulating whatever agreement does come around if they’ve disavowed interest based on that condition..  Second, an agreement with binding emissions targets for everyone is, in my view, the last thing Canada should be pushing for.  Canada should, and I will write more on this later, be pushing for an international standard by which a facility operated in the UK, in Alberta, or in India would face the same effective carbon price, or the same reward for reducing emissions. That doesn’t mean carbon tax – it means a system which measures effort, and doesn’t reward historic emissions.

In a follow-up, he explains what withdrawing from Kyoto means in practical terms.

The Commons: Convictions without courage

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 28, 2011 at 6:04 PM - 0 Comments

Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press

The Scene.“Kyoto is in the past,” Peter Kent intoned today at an announcement about something else. Not that he was confirming his government’s intention to withdraw from it. But not that he was denying it either. “This isn’t the day,” he explained.

Doing stuff is easy. It’s justifying the doing that’s hard. And so Mr. Kent is not yet ready to say for sure that the government is willing to do something about what it now only implies. The correct day for that is apparently scheduled to be a month from now, just before Christmas. But then someone who knew as much went and told the evening news. Only now Mr. Kent is insisting on pretending that didn’t happen. ”I wonʼt comment on a speculative report,” he said this morning.

He will say that the previous Liberal government’s decision to commit to the protocol was “one of the biggest blunders they made.” And the Prime Minister did once dismiss the whole thing as a “socialist scheme.” And the Conservative platform in 2006 didn’t even mention it. And successive governments have now spent more than a decade successfully ignoring it. And the current government has said it won’t extend past next year its commitment to it. But let it not be said that the government is prepared to actually withdraw from it. At least not yet. At least not that Mr. Kent is willing to say.

Not that the government’s unwillingness to announce a decision stops the opposition from lamenting that decision. Continue…

U.S. rejects key climate fund

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 25, 2011 at 11:29 AM - 0 Comments

The U.S. is refusing to sign off on a key climate fund that emerged from annual talks on global greenhouse gas emissions, just days before a UN climate conference is to be held in Durban, South Africa. Along with Saudi Arabia, the U.S. won’t sign the Green Climate Fund, the blueprint for channeling US $100 billion that wealthy countries have committed to put forward by 2020. As reported in the Financial Times, the Americans want more private sector involvement in the plan, while Saudi Arabia wants guaranteed compensation to oil producing countries for lost revenues incurred by measures to curb emissions. The Durban conference is seen as a vital meeting to set up a new global agreement on the reduction of carbon emissions, the driving force behind global warming. The existing Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012.

The Financial Times

Peter Kent dismisses himself

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

With a written statement of the minister in her possession, Liberal MP Kirsty Duncan again confronted Peter Kent yesterday about cuts to ozone monitoring.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of the Environment has twice denigrated reporters when his position is challenged. But clearly the real problem is the news reader across the way. I have the briefing note which says there is no duplication in Canada’s ozone monitoring networks, which means they cannot be optimized and streamlined, only cut. Answers to an order paper question signed by the minister also says there is no duplication. Will the government finally admit there will be cuts to the ozone program?

Mr. Kent stood here and dismissed Ms. Duncan’s premise entirely.

Mr. Speaker, I reject all of the assumptions of my honourable colleague yet once again. I would also again suggest that she use more reliable research than that to which she has made a practice of using.

Mike De Souza, who has been doggedly pursuing this story over the last few months (see here, here, here, here, here and here), explains the order paper response in context of recent revelations

The U.S. and Canada: we used to be friends

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, November 21, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

No one was more surprised than TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. itself by the Obama administration’s decision to impose a fresh year or more delay on a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline—TransCanada’s proposed 2,673-km project that could transport more than 700,000 barrels of crude oil from the oil sands in Alberta to refineries in Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast of Texas. It had been heavily promoted by the governments of Canada and Alberta. And after two years of studies and drafts, the U.S. State Department had issued a final environmental assessment on Aug. 26 that had turned out to be even friendlier to the pipeline than supporters had been hoping for.

Indeed, the State Department concluded that there are “no significant impacts” to the environment along the route of the pipeline. The department also concluded that the pipeline would fill a need: even under a “low demand” outlook for oil, and even if there was increased fuel efficiency and a greater use of alternative energy sources, the hunger for Canadian crude oil would continue to grow among Gulf Coast refineries because supplies from countries such as Mexico and Venezuela are declining. Alternative transportation methods, such as trucking or rail, would add more emissions and run a higher risk of accidents than a pipeline. The project would not increase greenhouse gas emissions, State reasoned, because the oil would be produced for somebody to use in any case. And State also looked at 14 alternative routes and decided that none of them was preferable to the one proposed by TransCanada.

Then, little more than two months later, on Nov. 10, the State Department abruptly balked and declared the need for an additional study—one that would take a year or more—to look at an alternative pipeline route within the state of Nebraska that would avoid the Sand Hills area. That is a region of grass-covered sand dunes that covers a quarter of the state—and also Nebraska’s Ogallala aquifer, one of America’s largest underground sources of fresh water. The study is expected to delay a permit decision, which State had said would come by the end of December, until 2013. Had the project been approved on schedule, it could have started operating by then; the delay will push final approval for the project past the presidential election.

TransCanada was stunned. “We actually found out about it after others did,” company spokesperson Shawn Howard told Maclean’s. “It was a surprise. We thought the conclusions reached in the final environmental impact statement were pretty clear.” The company believed it had picked the best route. “The biggest issue was distance. This was the shortest route through that part of the state, and as a result it had the least amount of land disturbance and affected the fewest land-owners,” he said.

Continue…