Running out of juice

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 8:35 AM - 0 Comments

Last month, Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson unveiled two new electric vehicle (EV) charging stations—part of a plan to prepare the green-friendly city for the era of battery-propelled cars. In the United States, meanwhile, AAA announced it will deploy fast-charging trucks to rescue electric car drivers whose batteries have run down. “We know electric vehicles are coming,” a spokeswoman told Bloomberg, “and we’ve got to be ready for them.”

Electric cars may be coming, but not quite as fast as expected, it turns out. Lower gas prices and fast progress on fuel efficiency are slowing down the pace of electric cars’ market penetration, according to Boston Consulting Group, which downgraded its estimates of electric car adoption by 2020 to three per cent from five per cent of the U.S. market. Another drag on EVs comes from a recent British study warning that electric cars aren’t as green as commonly perceived, once emissions from manufacturing are taken into account. An electric car owner would have to drive 129,000 km before making up for the CO2 released while producing the vehicle’s battery, noted the Times, reporting on the study. At least in the near term, petrol may still be a better option than plug-ins.

Peter Kent's brave stand

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 4:21 PM - 11 Comments

John Baird said the Liberal cap-and-trade plan was “unCanadian” and Stephen Harper said the NDP cap-and-trade plan would “wreak enormous havoc on the Canadian economy,” but Environment Minister Peter Kent apparently thinks cap-and-trade could still be pursued at some point.

“There’s no expectation of cap-and-trade continentally in the near or medium future and we don’t believe that it would be wise to go with a shallow market in a closely integrated continental economy,” Kent said. “It can always be something to consider in the future.”

'The most aggressive GHG reduction efforts undertaken by any economy in the world'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 1:24 PM - 9 Comments

Andrew Leach explains what Environment Minister Peter Kent has to sort out if we’re to meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets.

With these challenges in mind, Mr. Kent’s decisions will determine whether or not we are in a position to meet our Copenhagen commitments, and determine either the costs we incur to meet our targets or the costs we incur as a result of not meeting them. Meeting them will require the most aggressive GHG reduction efforts undertaken by any economy in the world, and the challenge gets tougher with every day we do not act. Not meeting them may limit access to markets for our exported products and access to capital for our investment projects. Inaction could also provide other nations with justification for the imposition of low carbon fuel standards or border adjustment tariffs on our products.

Save the planet: Stop eating meat

By Katie Engelhart and Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 88 Comments

Photograph by Mike Kemp/Getty Images

One drizzly Thursday last May, the townsfolk of Ghent, a Flemish burg of some 250,000 souls famous for its stoverij—a stew of beef braised in beer—gathered outside a centuries-old slaughterhouse in the town’s historic core to sample soy fritters, pick up a map of local vegetarian eateries, and to watch as a boy in a banana costume did valiant battle against another dressed as a beefsteak. This was Ghent’s inaugural Donderdag Veggiedag—Thursday Veggieday, literally—a weekly holiday from the evils of beef, fish, pork and poultry introduced last year by city council, which declared that the moratorium on animal protein would be “good for the climate, your health and your taste buds.” Said a representative of the Ethical Vegetarian Alternative, Belgium’s largest vegetarian organization and a partner in the city initiative: “If everyone in Flanders does not eat meat one day a week, we will save as much CO2 in a year as taking half a million cars off the road.”

Though meatlessness in Ghent each Thursday is encouraged rather than required, the policy has made vegetarianism pervasive: 95 per cent of the city’s children at 35 local schools, as well as the city’s elected councillors and civil servants, now submit to the Veggiedag menu each week. One poster promoting the policy depicts a polar bear adrift on a shrunken hunk of ice declaring with relief: “Oef! It’s Thursday.”

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Donderdag Veggiedag was a global first, putting medieval Ghent on the cutting edge of efforts to combat climate change by changing the way people eat. But elsewhere, too, the moderate meat movement is gaining ground. A Meatless Mondays organization founded in the U.S. has now opened branches in Holland, Finland, Canada, Taiwan and Australia. Following Ghent’s lead, cities like São Paulo and Tel Aviv have created city-wide schemes. Last year, Baltimore became the first city in North America to mandate Meatless Mondays in its school cafeterias, for environmental as well as health reasons. A similar proposal has just been made for New York City schools.

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The Commons: Back to the future

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 8:51 PM - 23 Comments

The Scene. Michael Ignatieff stood with a slight smile. His side cheered, government members jeered.

“Welcome back!” chirped one.

Then to the question, which was, lo and behold, something to do with the environment and the need for urgent action against potential ruin.

“Mr. Speaker, for four years, the government promised a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Mr. Ignatieff reported. “Today, the Environment Minister has once again postponed the announcement of any action until the end of 2010. We’re three weeks from Copenhagen. How can we protect the environment if the government takes no position?”

This was some riddle.

Up to answer was John Baird, an environment minister in a previous life.

“Mr. Speaker, this government is working constructively with our partners around the world to ensure that we tackle global warming and the challenge of climate change,” Mr. Baird declared. “What we will not do is make promises that we cannot keep.”

It is a testament to Mr. Baird’s abilities as a public performer that he did not here descend into giggles. Continue…

Bring it on

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 10:35 AM - 115 Comments

National Post, November 5. Mild-mannered, absolutely. But Environment Minister Jim Prentice wants the world to know he’ll be no boy scout when crucial climate change talks convene in Copenhagen a month from today … In the end, it’s almost a guarantee that no matter what happens, Canada will be vilified on the world stage as an energy superpower that abandoned the Kyoto Accord and isn’t shouldering its share of carbon reductions. ”Well, if the price of having strong, capable, tough negotiators at the table is being singled out and given ‘fossil of the year’ awards, then so be it. Bring it on,”  Mr. Prentice told me, doing his best impression of not being a boy scout.

National Post, November 12. As the most middle-of-the-road federal cabinet minister, Jim Prentice was never apprehensive about appearing on CBC. But the environment minister turned down an invitation to appear Friday morning on CBC radio’s flagship show The Current for a very good reason: a hostile host. That would be David Suzuki, the wildly successful environmental crusader and perennial alarm-ringer, who has seen the end of the world coming under a variety of climate change scenarios … What bothers Minister Prentice’s people is how they’re being asked to appear on a national current affairs show where the host would be an obvious antagonist.

Well, that's inconvenient (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 6:44 PM - 4 Comments

Various jurisdictions have their doubts about the Harper’s government’s environmental agenda.

The numbers won’t add up in the Harper government’s proposed climate-change plan unless it fixes flaws that jeopardize the plan’s credibility, say some of North America’s largest provincial and state governments.

The Western Climate Initiative — a coalition of governments that includes Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Manitoba and California — says a draft version of a federal “offsets” system for rewarding green practices must be revised to prevent businesses from profiting from actions that don’t actually reduce the amount of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere…

The Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based environmental research group, said the proposed system would result in fictional emissions reductions in the same way that lax financial-accounting rules have created fictional profits. ”If the loopholes aren’t closed, actual emissions are likely to be millions of tonnes higher than the nominal level of a future regulated emissions cap,” said Matthew Bramley, director of Pembina’s climate-change policy.

Great hopes and aspirations

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 9, 2009 at 12:58 PM - 35 Comments

Jim Prentice seems not terribly concerned by the G8 agreement on climate change.

Asked which year would be used as a yardstick for emission cuts, Environment Minister Jim Prentice suggested on CBC this morning the G8 targets are merely “aspirational goals” and will not affect Canada’s climate change plans overall.

“We don’t need to change our policies,” said Prentice. “This is an aspirational goal of developed countries collectively to try to reduce emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. But it is an aspirational goal and a collective goal. Really, when you’re speaking of 2050 by that time, some of the significant technological changes that are necessary will have been made.”

Obama reconsidered

By The Editors - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 11 Comments

Barack Obama’s presidential victory was an exciting moment for Canadians as well as Americans; we too thrilled in the prospect of a new era in American politics. Half a year on, that excitement is wearing off. The recent evidence from Washington appears contrary to our best interests. Should we be changing our minds on Obama?

The decentralized nature of American politics means Obama can’t be blamed for everything the U.S. government does, but he bears responsibility for broad directions and wields significant powers of persuasion. How he uses these powers (or doesn’t) is significant. Take trade relations.

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Twirling, twirling around the corner

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 4:26 PM - 6 Comments

John Baird, April 26, 2007. “Canada needs to do a U-Turn, because we are going in the wrong direction. Since the Liberals promised to reduce greenhouse gases in 1997, they have only gone up. Canadians want action, they want it now and our government is delivering. We are serving notice that beginning today, industry will need to make real reductions. In as little as three years, greenhouse gases could be going down, instead of up. After years of inaction, Canada now has one of the most aggressive plans to tackle greenhouse gases and air pollution in the world.”

Environment Commissioner, today. “For the Regulatory Framework for Industrial Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Environment Canada could not provide evidence that the information in the annual climate change plans was based on adequate rationale. The expected emission reductions claimed in the plans are overstated, and the uncertainties related to these reductions are not disclosed … in the plans prepared to date, the Department has not explained why expected emission reductions can be estimated in advance but actual reductions cannot be measured after the fact.”

Jim Prentice, today. “To the extent that they have criticism or comments about the way in which the calculations are made, we’re pleased to have a look at that and we will improve the method by which we do the calculations. But the real issue here is that we are working together on a continental basis and an international basis in this year which is a critical year in terms of arriving at an overall approach to greenhouse gases. I’ve said that by the time we get to Copenhagen we will have domestic policies laid out for each source of emissions in Canada. That’s the same commitment that the United States has given. It’s the same commitment that the Australians have given and other countries.”