Canada’s environmental protections lagging resource development, audit finds

By Heather Scoffield - Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 3:05 PM - 0 Comments

OTTAWA – Canada’s aggressive pursuit of resource development is exposing the country to heightened environmental and financial risks that are not being properly handled by federal regulators, a new audit says.

In his final report to Parliament after five years on the job, Scott Vaughan — Canada’s commissioner of the environment and sustainable development — said government is not keeping sufficient tabs on mining in the North, offshore drilling in the Atlantic and hydraulic fracturing in hundreds of thousands of shale gas wells sprouting up across the country.

Nor are regulators adequately equipped to deal with major oil spills or an expected 300 per cent increase in tanker traffic off the West Coast, the report states.

Continue…

Canada’s environmental protections lagging resource development, audit finds

By The Canadian Press - Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 10:54 AM - 0 Comments

OTTAWA – Federal environmental protections are struggling to keep up with the fast pace of development in the energy industry, leaving Canada exposed to the risks of oil spills, pollution, and damage to fragile habitat, a new audit says.

Scott Vaughan, Canada’s commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, issued his parting words Tuesday after five years in the job, taking a close look at how well Ottawa is managing the significant environmental risks associated with its goal of aggressively promoting resource development.

“Considering the central role of natural resources in today’s Canadian economy, it is critical that environmental protections keep pace with economic development,” Vaughan writes.

Instead, he found that regulators were reeling under changing legislation, confusing lines of responsibility and outdated financial requirements to cover off costs in case of disaster or damage to the environment.

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Environment commissioner to report on financial preparedness for disaster

By The Canadian Press - Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 5:24 AM - 0 Comments

OTTAWA – Canada’s environment commissioner will release a report today on whether the federal government has enough financial safeguards in place to deal with a major disaster, such as an oil spill.

For its latest report to Parliament, the commissioner’s office looked at a number of environmental financial assurances the government seeks from industry.

They include letters of credit and insurance to help shield taxpayers from the costs of cleaning up from an environmental disaster.

Auditors also scrutinized government systems for obtaining and managing environmental financial assurances from mining, nuclear and marine transportation companies.

In December 2010 the commissioner warned that the government’s national emergency response plan was out of date.

Scott Vaughan noted at that time that there’s at least one oil spill reported to the Coast Guard every day — most of them small.

And he relayed concerns that the government was not ready to respond to a major spill.

Why do the Conservatives oppose oil sands development?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 1, 2013 at 12:56 PM - 0 Comments

Bloomberg looks at support within the oil industry for a carbon tax.

The contradiction of an industry seeking a new tax on itself has emerged in energy-rich Canada because producers are concerned the crude they process from tar-like sands will be barred from foreign markets for releasing more carbon in its production than competing fossil fuels.

Oil companies operating in Canada such as Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), Total SA (FP) of France and Canada’s Cenovus Energy Inc. (CVE) plan to convert billions of barrels of the sticky bitumen into diesel and gasoline. Under foreign and domestic pressure, they now see a greenhouse-gas levy helping to provide access to markets and more predictable costs for Canada’s biggest export industry, which shipped C$68 billion ($68 billion) of oil in 2011.

‘A predictable price on carbon’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 25, 2013 at 4:06 PM - 0 Comments

Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, calls for a price on carbon as part of an agenda to deal with climate change.

The world’s top priority must be to get finance flowing and get prices right on all aspects of energy costs to support low-carbon growth. Achieving a predictable price on carbon that accurately reflects real environmental costs is key to delivering emission reductions at scale. Correct energy pricing can also provide incentives for investments in energy efficiency and cleaner energy technologies.

A second immediate step is to end harmful fuel subsidies globally, which could lead to a 5 percent fall in emissions by 2020. Countries spend more than $500 billion annually in fossil-fuel subsidies and an additional $500 billion in other subsidies, often related to agriculture and water, that are, ultimately, environmentally harmful. That trillion dollars could be put to better use for the jobs of the future, social safety nets or vaccines.

With the legislative path seemingly blocked, Barack Obama is believed to be preparing to use the EPA’s regulatory authority to enact new restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions.

Oilsands midway down pack of top climate villains: Greenpeace study

By The Canadian Press - Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 4:27 PM - 0 Comments

Canada’s oilsands are midway down the pack of the world’s climate change villains, according to a new Greenpeace report ranking potential carbon emissions from the globe’s top energy developments.

Climate enemies numbers 1 and 2 — by far — are expanding coal projects in Australia and China, the report says. The oilsands don’t appear until fifth spot, which is shared with projects in Iraq and the United States.

“Coal is the biggest threat globally,” said Keith Stewart, one of the report’s authors.

“Sometimes, we get a little parochial in Canada — we think that the whole world is entirely focused on tarsands as the biggest problem. What we’re saying here is that it’s one of the biggest problems.”

Continue…

The Peter Kent school of journalism

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

The Environment Minister pointedly objects to a story by Mike De Souza* by suggesting that De Souza is an “environmental activist” who favours a carbon tax. Here is the full letter, as printed by the Windsor Star on January 4.

I am writing to clarify a few points from Mike De Souza’s Dec 24 article regarding the federal government’s proposed regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from light-duty vehicles. Our government is committed to protecting the environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions while minimizing the economic impact on Canadians. We are working with the United States to develop GHG regulations that reflect the highly integrated North American auto sector, which includes thousands of Canadian manufacturing jobs.

Mr. De Souza, like most environmental activists, believes that a carbon tax is the only answer to combat climate change. Our government is fundamentally opposed to broad-based carbon tax schemes like the NDP’s $21-billion plan to tax everything without links to environmental benefits.

Canada has undertaken a sector-by-sector regulatory approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Under our plan, industrial sectors are forced to reduce carbon emissions at the smokestack or tail pipe by developing and deploying innovative technology.

Ours is the first Canadian government to reduce greenhouse gases and we will continue act in Canada’s environmental and economic interests.

PETER KENT, federal Environment Minister, Ottawa

Mr. Kent writes that he’d like to “clarify a few points” about the story, but he doesn’t actually identify any particular parts of the story that he objects to. De Souza’s story is a reporting of the costs associated with the government’s new fuel economy standards as those costs are identified and explained by the Harper government in the Canada Gazette. I linked to that cost-benefit analysis here on December 8. And some of those costs were noted when Mr. Kent announced the regulations in November.

The minister’s letter refers to the NDP proposal as a carbon tax. More specifically, the NDP has proposed a cap-and-trade system. This is a bit of a thing. Mr. Kent, for instance, was first elected as a Conservative in 2008, when the party’s platform included a promise to pursue a cap-and-trade system—a measure the minister now equates with a carbon tax.

Joe Oliver tried to use a letter to the editor to make the government’s case in November. Ironically, in that letter Mr. Oliver deferred to the judgement of “eminent economist” Jack Mintz. Mr. Mintz supports a carbon tax as the best policy option to reduce greenhouse gases.

*Full disclosure: I’ve met Mike and I think we’ve chatted briefly a couple times, so I guess we’d qualify as passing acquaintances.

Federal report suggests Canada unprepared for new mercury light bulbs

By The Canadian Press - Sunday, January 20, 2013 at 1:14 PM - 0 Comments

OTTAWA – Canada’s mercury-waste facilities are either patchwork or non-existent as millions of light bulbs containing the highly toxic chemical are set to flood the marketplace.

That’s a key finding of a report commissioned by Environment Canada in the run-up to a major change in the way Canadians light their homes.

Beginning next January, a new regulation will effectively ban the sale of standard incandescent bulbs in favour of energy-efficient versions, most of which contain mercury.

So-called compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs, will also enter the waste stream as they break or burn out, many destined for landfills where their harmful mercury can get into the water.

Continue…

‘Let my carbon go’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 18, 2013 at 5:32 PM - 0 Comments

This Hour Has 22 Minutes takes on the cap-and-trade debate (such as it is).

How bout that weather?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 15, 2013 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Tim Harper wonders whether extreme weather and U.S. policy could put pressure on the Harper government to change its approach to environmental policy. The Washington Post’s editorial board notes that 2012 was the warmest on record in the United States and makes a suggestion.

Scientists can’t yet know to what extent man-made emissions influenced the heat and calamitous drought. But the result is nevertheless ominous, “a huge exclamation point on the end of several decades of fairly consistent warming,” as NOAA’s Deke Arndt put it. The year offers a vision of what will happen more often on a planet that is heating — slowly and fitfully, not every year warmer than the last, but inexorably.

There is still uncertainty. Though they have a range of estimates, scientists still do not know exactly how sensitive the global climate system is to human carbon emissions and exactly how steep the long-term temperature line will be. Predicting the consequences of a given temperature rise is also difficult. That’s an argument not for doing nothing but for managing the risks, spending now to avoid the likelihood of much greater costs later, as any good business would do in the face of certain threats of uncertain magnitude.

The smartest hedge would be a national carbon tax. It would marshal the market’s power to wring carbon out of the economy, putting decisions about the direction of energy and manufacturing in the hands of consumers and businesses that meet their demands, not Congress and interest groups that lobby lawmakers. When people must pay something for their pollution, they pollute less and invest in cleaner alternatives. A carbon tax would provide more certainty to industry and investors who currently can only guess at what climate policy will look like year to year.

Environment minister to axe renewable content requirement for home heating oil

By The Canadian Press - Monday, December 31, 2012 at 5:06 PM - 0 Comments

OTTAWA – The federal government is backing away from requiring that home-heating fuel contain at least two per cent renewable content.

Environment Minister Peter Kent said Monday he plans to amend the Renewable Fuels Regulations in the new year to make the current exemption for home-heating oil permanent nationwide.

That will likely be good news for consumers, since it costs more to produce home-heating fuel using renewable products such as biofuels.

Continue…

Obama’s top environmental watchdog, EPA chief Lisa Jackson, resigns

By The Associated Press - Thursday, December 27, 2012 at 4:52 PM - 0 Comments

WASHINGTON – EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the Obama administration’s chief environmental watchdog, is stepping down after a nearly four years marked by high-profile brawls over global warming pollution, the Keystone XL oil pipeline, new controls on coal-fired plants and several other hot-button issues that affect the nation’s economy and people’s health.

Jackson constantly found herself caught between administration pledges to solve thorny environmental problems and steady resistance from Republicans and industrial groups who complained that the agency’s rules destroyed jobs and made it harder for American companies to compete internationally.

The GOP chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, said last year that Jackson would need her own parking spot at the Capitol because he planned to bring her in so frequently for questioning. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney called for her firing, a stance that had little downside during the GOP primary.

Continue…

Newfoundland on carbon pricing

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 21, 2012 at 2:38 PM - 0 Comments

Continuing with our survey of provincial policies, a response from the government of Newfoundland.

In 2011, the government released Charting Our Course: Climate Change Action Plan 2011 setting out the government’s strategy for reducing GHG emissions and enhancing resilience to unavoidable climate impacts. The Plan contains 75 economy-wide commitments. In the Plan, government reiterated its commitment on a provincial basis to the regional targets adopted by the Forum of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers in 2001, namely, reducing provincial GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2010, by 10% below 1990 levels by 2020, and by 75-85% below 2001 levels by 2050.

In view of the share of GHG emissions coming from the large industrial sector (51% in 2010), government stated in its 2011 Climate Change Action Plan that it would require the large industrial sector to contribute to GHG reduction efforts going forward. The sector encompasses electricity generation, mining, oil refining, offshore oil and large-scale manufacturing. In Plan, government committed to develop, and publicly release in 2012, a detailed approach to reducing GHG emissions in the sector. Government recognized the importance of ensuring any approach was both environmentally progressive and economically prudent.

Government has established good working relations with the companies in the large industrial sector, leading three rounds of bilateral consultations, engaging companies in technical work to assess GHG abatement opportunities and competitiveness considerations, and maintaining an ad hoc dialogue with companies on key issues as they arise. Government has discussed three main approaches to reducing GHG emissions with the industrial companies: regulation with market based alternative compliance (conceptually similar to Alberta and Saskatchewan), emissions trading (Western Climate Initiative), and carbon taxes. In early 2013, government will finalize which of these three approaches it will pursue. This timeline is a few weeks behind the public commitment to release its approach in 2012, however the issue is quite complex and government wished to ensure that a comprehensive assessment was completed.

Cap-and-trade is coming to Quebec

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 at 4:35 PM - 0 Comments

The Quebec government announced last week that it is moving ahead with plans to link with California’s carbon market.

“The cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emission allowances (SPEDE) is a major advance in the fight against climate change,” explained Yves-François Blanchet. “Europe, China, Australia and Japan are working in this direction. Québec and California are now leaders in this endeavour.” … “Discussions with our counterparts in California are extremely positive. I am confident that we will see a full linkage of the Québec and California markets during spring 2013 in anticipation of the first joint auction planned for August, 2013. Québec and California have agreed to work together closely so that Canadian provinces and U.S. states join the market. As a result of this agreement, Québec will be in a position to achieve its emission targets, and businesses will have an innovative and flexible tool enabling them to participate in the effort,” concluded Minister Blanchet

#IdleNoMore and the fight for democracy

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 at 9:06 AM - 0 Comments

Wab Kinew explains the Idle No More protests.

2. #IdleNoMore is about the Environment

Idle No More started in part because of outrage that Bill C-45 reduced the number of federally protected waterways. The environment continues to be a regular topic at Idle No More protests. Dr. Pam Palmater, one of the leading voices in the Idle No More conversation, argues this is indigenous environmentalism is significant since the crown has a duty to consult with Aboriginal people before natural resource projects proceed. She says, “First Nations are Canadians’ last, best hope of protecting the land, water, sky and plants and animals for their future generations as well.”

1. #IdleNoMore is about Democracy

Democracy thrives when well-informed people are engaged and make their voices heard. Idle No More started with four young lawyers trying to inform the people in their communities about an issue they were passionate about. Now many people are engaged. Even more information is being shared, and even more voices are being heard. There is no one leader or “list of demands” attributable to Idle No More. While this may seem chaotic, this is what democracy is all about. Democracy is messy. Democracy is loud. Democracy is about hearing a wide ranges of voices and trying to build a path forward among them. It is not about shutting off debate or trying to rush things in through the back door.

Q&A with Thomas Mulcair

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 14, 2012 at 2:38 PM - 0 Comments

I sat down with NDP leader Thomas Mulcair in the leader of the opposition’s office yesterday. Here is a transcript of our conversation, slightly abridged and edited.

How do you see the last year for you and the NDP? Do you feel you’re winning? Do you feel you’re getting somewhere?

We’re doing well. And the Abacus poll was confirmation of that … I dare say that we’ve been through a rough 18-month cycle. I mean, we started off in 2011 with a huge high, May 2. We realized then … It was interesting. I don’t think I’ve told too many people this story. I sat down with Jack shortly after, like two, three days after the election and when we became official opposition, he was asking me to become opposition House leader, it was a great feather in my cap. And then he said something to me that was quite interesting, he said, you know, this is a huge challenge. And I was just expecting him to be so effusive with the breakthrough and everything and he said, no, no, this is going to be a huge challenge. So then the huge challenge became all the bigger with his loss. And then we had to really work hard through a long, seven-month leadership  where we were missing a lot of our frontbenchers who were in the campaign and then we had to rebuild.

When I held the little press conference up in Toronto after the leadership, the next day, I used an expression that came to spontaneously, I said, we’re going to have a cascading transition under the sign of continuity. So I was so lucky, like somebody like [chief of staff to Jack Layton] Anne [McGrath] stayed with me long enough to hand off to [current chief of staff] Raoul [Gebert], overlapped with Raoul … So a couple of the other changes that took place were like that. We brought in a few people, the core team you still recognize when you see them around us. And so it’s been a huge challenge in terms of the structure and the organization, but some of the good points for me after becoming leader: in August I was doing my parish visit in Quebec, I would be in places like Vercheres—Les Patriotes, where Sana Hassainia is our MP, and be in a community hall on a Sunday morning with several hundred people who had all paid as part of a fundraiser, but she had municipal officials there, you know the mayors and the councillors, she had community groups, she had the schools and stuff like that. They’re getting settled in, they’re putting down roots. The same day I was at a corn roast for Helene LeBlanc and she had about 600 people and a lot of the cultural communities, so they’re setting down roots, they’re doing their fundraising, they’re getting well known in their communities, they’re in their local papers, so that part’s coming together.

Come this spring, we’re pivoting, right? We’re going to be entering the third year. And so the consolidation phase has to be finished. We’ve got to start the preparatory phase for the next campaign. Continue…

The 10 most recent animal extinctions in Canada

By Blog of Lists - Wednesday, December 12, 2012 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

The greater prairie chicken is now extinct due to hunting and habitat loss. (Rebecca Jackrel/Getty)

These creatures have either died out entirely or are extirpated from Canada, meaning they no longer can be found in this country, but have survived elsewhere:

1. Hadley Lake stickleback (1999): A fish that was only found in Hadley Lake on Lasqueti Island in B.C.’s Strait of Georgia, the stickleback had only been discovered in the 1980s, but was completely wiped out by the introduction of catfish.

2. Karner blue (1991): A small blue butterfly that existed in the area between Toronto, London and Sarnia, the Karner blue no longer exists in Canada due to habitat change and loss of the larva’s only food source, the wild lupine.

3. Frosted elfin (1988): Another butterfly, the frosted elfin was only discovered in 1960 and the population may have only ever numbered 100. But they’re all gone from Canada now due to habitat loss. Continue…

The Conservative cap-and-trade plan: The same, but different, but still the same

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 11, 2012 at 12:32 PM - 0 Comments

The Prime Minister’s director of communications tries, in an exchange of tweets with Postmedia’s Michael Den Tandt, to explain the difference between the cap-and-trade system the NDP is proposing and the cap-and-trade system the Conservatives used to advocate for: specifically, why the Conservatives describe one as a “tax” when the other apparently wasn’t.

show me where we plan to raise 21.5 billion in revenue in our platform or Throne Speech

the NDP books 21.5 in gov’t revenue from plan. 2008 platform had no gov’t revenue associated with it. Not in 2011 platform or SFT

no revenue to gov’t. The NDP plan does – hence the tax

no, it’s a tax because the gov’t wld get the $. But, if you prefer, we’ll call it $ the NDP gov’t wld extract from Canadians.

At the risk of plagiarizing myself, I’ll again note that this argument about government revenue is irrelevant. At least so far as the Conservatives are concerned. As I have explained at various points, the reference to revenue is, by the government’s own logic, a red herring. The Conservatives have said that, in their present opinion, anything that establishes a price on carbon is a carbon tax. By this logic, it simply does not matter whether that price results in public revenue or private revenue.

If the Conservatives ever previously publicly and categorically renounced the idea of deriving government revenue from a cap-and-trade system, I’ve yet to see evidence of it. (For whatever it’s worth, the American cap-and-trade legislation that Canada would have conceivably partnered with would have resulted in government revenue from the auctioning of permits.) But when John Baird was championing his government intention’s to establish a price on carbon in 2008, he said that industries would pay into a “technology fund.” Here are the details of that proposed fund. Does that count as government revenue?

Regulations and carbon pricing can work together

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, December 8, 2012 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

On Friday, the Harper government’s new fuel efficiency regulations were published in the Canada Gazette, including the full cost-benefit analysis.

These costs are incremental to the baseline so, for example, technology costs add $195 million (present value) to the costs of the model year 2017 fleet, and add $2.4 billion (present value) to the costs of the model year 2025 fleet.

The incremental technology costs for model year 2017 are expected to be $127 for cars and $162 for light trucks, increasing to $1,856 for cars and $2,453 for light trucks in model year 2025 in order to meet the increasingly stringent standards of the proposed Regulations. In reality, relative changes in vehicle prices and performance may affect consumer choice; however, it is not within the capacity of the analysis to model consumer choice.

PJ Partington of the Pembina Institute defends the new standards and argues that a price on carbon would complement such regulations.

None of this is to say that carbon pricing doesn’t have an important role in tackling emissions from transportation. Carbon pricing would support these regulations by creating more demand for fuel-efficient vehicles and encouraging people to reduce their vehicle use. Carbon pricing would also provide revenues that governments could re-invest in clean transportation options like transit and electric vehicle infrastructure.

We don’t see it as a choice between carbon pricing and efficiency standards: they’re complementary, not alternatives. By ensuring that efficiency continues to improve across the board, standards like these help manage the impact of higher gas prices from carbon pricing, and ensures that they will have plenty of cleaner options to choose from. The Western Climate Initiative, which features a cap-and-trade system, also sees stringent vehicle standards as a key complementary policy to carbon pricing. An economic modeling assessment of climate policy options for Canada that we published in 2009 took the same approach. 

Jacques Gourde achieves government backbencher nirvana

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 6, 2012 at 1:09 PM - 0 Comments

The Conservative MP’s statement to the House yesterday afternoon.

Here again is a rough guide to the Conservatives’ carbon tax farce.

Reaching our GHG goals thanks to a price on carbon

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 at 1:32 PM - 0 Comments

Peter Kent addresses the UN convention on climate change in Doha.

Canada is halfway to achieving our national effort to meet our Copenhagen target. The combined efforts to date of federal, provincial and territorial governments, of consumers and of businesses will generate half the greenhouse gas reduction required to meet Canada’s greenhouse gas target by 2020.

This year’s report on emissions trends, surveyed the federal, provincial and territorial scenes thusly.

In this year’s report, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is projected to be slightly higher in 2020 than in the previous report (by 0.8%), while GHG emissions are lower (by 5.3%). The projected decline in GHG emissions is thus associated with a reduction in  intensity, implying greater de-coupling between GDP and GHGs. The improvements in  emission intensity are in part due to: i) increased contribution of the services sector,  which typically emits less emissions per dollar of GDP; and ii) actual emissions in 2010 were lower than projected, while actual GDP was higher. The decline in emissions intensity was also due to the fact that consumers and businesses are making more progress in reducing emissions. Government programs are contributing to this by helping to accelerate the adoption of energy efficient technologies and cleaner fuels.

Canada is moving forward to regulate GHGs on a sector-by-sector basis, aligning with the U.S where appropriate. The Government of Canada has started with the
transportation and electricity sectors – two of the largest sources of Canadian emissions – and plans to move forward with regulations in partnership with other key
economic sectors, including oil and gas. Last year’s report included emissions regulations for light-duty vehicles for the model years 2011-2016 as well as an
electricity performance standard to phase-out coal-fired electricity, Alberta’s Specified Gas Emitters Regulation, British Columbia’s carbon tax and Quebec’s carbon
levy. Provincial policies such as Ontario’s phase-out of coal-fired electricity also made important contributions. Projected emissions levels in the 2012 version of the report have further declined, in part through the inclusion of further federal actions on additional emissions regulations for light-duty vehicles for the 2017-2025 period as well as heavy duty vehicle regulations. Recent provincial actions (e.g., Quebec’s capand-trade, Nova Scotia’s emissions cap for electric utilities, increased stringency of building energy codes, equipment standards and requirements for capturing methane from landfill gas) are also included. Total emissions in 2020 are projected to decrease to 720 Mt.

Exchanging tweets with Rona Ambrose

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 at 10:31 AM - 0 Comments

Yesterday, via Twitter, I sought clarification on environmental policy in the province of Alberta.

Technical question: Does Alberta have a carbon tax, cap and trade or both?

Among the respondents was Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose.

Alberta’s policy prices carbon but funds are directed into a technology fund to reduce GHG’s not to general govnt revenue.

I followed-up with Ms. Ambrose.

Do you support that?

And Ms. Ambrose obliged with a response.

works for Alberta because money stays in Alberta and is managed by an investment board. Can’t comment on GHG reduction results.

This has been the second instalment of Exchanging tweets with Rona Ambrose.

After skipping bail in Germany, Sea Shepherd’s Paul Watson returns to the ocean

By Manuel Valdes, The Associated Press - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 at 5:25 AM - 0 Comments

SEATTLE – The Canadian founder of the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd is returning to Antarctic waters to track and confront Japanese whaling fleets, months after skipping bail in Germany and going on the run.

From aboard a Sea Shepherd ship, Paul Watson told The Associated Press on Tuesday that his job is to protect whales, and he can’t do that if he’s in custody.

He said the Sea Shepherd fleet is already in the Southern Ocean.

“I want to stay in the ocean,” the 62-year-old said. “I’m not going to be able to do that from some holding cell in Japan.”

In July, Watson fled from Germany after being arrested at the behest of the Costa Rican government, which is pursuing him on a warrant that claims he endangered a fishing vessel crew in 2002.

Watson contends the Costa Rican charges were filed because of pressure from the Japanese government and that he eventually would have been extradited to Japan if he had remained in custody.

Shortly after his arrest in May, Sea Shepherd issued a statement saying Watson was filming a documentary at the time of the alleged incident, which took place in Guatemalan waters in 2002.

The U.S.-based group said it encountered an illegal shark finning operation run by a Costa Rican ship, the Varadero, and told the crew to stop and head to port to be prosecuted. The crew accused Watson’s team of trying to kill them by ramming their ship.

Watson left Greenpeace in 1977 to set up the more action-oriented Sea Shepherd. The group has waged aggressive campaigns to protect whales, dolphins and other marine animals, prompting Japanese officials to label its members terrorists and seek Watson’s arrest for allegedly masterminding violent protests.

The environmental group, based in Friday Harbor, gained fame after being featured in the “Whale Wars” reality TV show.

Sea Shepherd activists use stink bombs and other nonlethal means to interfere with the whalers. The group argues its activities are supported by international law.

This year, the group is calling their campaign “Operation Zero Tolerance” and will feature four main ships, one helicopter and drones.

Watson said the drones will be used for surveillance, reconnaissance, and documentation. He said the drones are military-quality and can fly hundreds of miles head of his ships.

Watson also said it’s unlikely he’ll return to the U.S., saying American authorities would likely turn him over to Japan.

In February, a U.S. federal judge in Seattle declined to restraint the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s activities, turning down a request by the Institute for Cetacean Research, the Japanese whalers.

___

The case for pricing carbon

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 at 12:22 PM - 0 Comments

Ontario’s environment commissioner makes the case for carbon pricing.

Some jurisdictions are responding to this existential threat by pricing carbon pollution. Australia has implemented a carbon pricing program that charges companies the equivalent of $24 for every tonne of CO2 they emit and intends to link this program with the European Union Emissions Trading System. Japan implemented a carbon tax in April 2012, and China has created seven different pilot carbon pricing programs with a view to rolling out the best Annual Greenhouse Gas Progress Report 2012 model nationally by 2015. In North America, several provincial and state governments are taking steps to enact domestic carbon pricing policies. California and Quebec have put a legislated cap on carbon emissions and will require large emitters to comply through the purchase and trade of carbon allowances starting in 2013. 

British Columbia has re-afrmed its commitment to a carbon tax program that has earned international recognition as an effective model for climate action. As evidence that smart climate action does not hurt economic performance, in the four years since B.C.’s carbon tax took effect (2008–2011), the province’s economic growth (as measured in gross domestic product) has outpaced the rest of Canada, and personal and corporate income tax rates have been reduced to among the lowest in the country. At the same time, per capita fossil fuel consumption in B.C. has dropped substantially – declining 16.4 per cent more than the rest of Canada – and hybrid vehicle adoption has been twice the national average.

While it may be premature to make a direct correlation between the carbon price and these trends, they are nonetheless consistent with experiences in other jurisdictions that have had a carbon price in place for over a decade (e.g., United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden). These benets have also been recognized by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, which has argued that a “price signal is the most powerful incentive for both industry and consumers to conserve energy and enhance efciency. Coupled with the appropriate overall policy framework, carbon pricing can lead to innovation and new technologies that have positive outcomes for consumers and position Canadian rms to be suppliers of less carbon-intensive products and services.”

The commissioner formally recommends that the Ontario government ”conduct an analysis of the environmental, social and economic impacts of alternative carbon pricing mechanisms and release it to the public for discussion.” The ministry responds as follows.

Ontario has been clear that we are not developing a carbon tax. Emissions trading is an alternative carbon pricing approach. Ontario is developing a greenhouse gas reduction proposal which includes working with our Western Climate Initiative partners and stakeholders to develop a regional emissions trading program.