Outrageous! Unelected Senate Conservatives Kill Climate Bill And Democracy With One Vote

Unelected Conservative senators kill Bill C-311 without any debate in a surprise vote -- after the majority in the elected House of Commons had passed the Bill! Canada will be going to the next climate meeting in Cancun, Mexico with nothing but the current, completely ineffectual Conservative plan (putting it more briefly: Canada will come empty-handed).

The sordid details (example from Toronto Star, but almost any other Canadian media source will do):

http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/environment/article/892053

Read. Weep. Then work for change!

For example: Canada Must Show Climate Leadership - Facebook Group from Green Party of Canada:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sidney-BC/Canada-Must-Show-Climate-Leadership/128764513843374

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"Ontario: The new frontier for alternative energy"?

To balance out the sceptical view linked in my previous post, here's a more sunny view:

Ontario: The new frontier for alternative energy | News.com to go | CNET News.com

Optimism, the final frontier :-)

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Monbiot: Giving Up On Two Degrees

Are we abandoning our target of preventing "dangerous climate change"? George Monbiot's take on carbon stabilization targets of the IPCC, Britain, and the EU:

The rich nations seeking to cut climate change have this in common: they lie. You won’t find this statement in the draft of the new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was leaked to the Guardian last week. But as soon as you understand the numbers, the words form before your eyes. The governments making genuine efforts to tackle global warming are using figures they know to be false.

The British government, the European Union and the United Nations all claim to be trying to prevent “dangerous” climate change. Any level of climate change is dangerous for someone, but there is a broad consensus about what this word means: two degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels. It is dangerous because of its direct impacts on people and places (it could, for example, trigger the irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet(1)and the collapse of the Amazon rainforest(2)) and because it is likely to stimulate further warming, as it encourages the world’s natural systems to start releasing greenhouse gases.

The aim of preventing more than 2°C of warming has been adopted overtly by the UN(3) and the European Union(4) and implicitly by the British, German and Swedish governments. All of them say they are hoping to confine the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to a level which would prevent 2°C from being reached. And all of them know that they have set the wrong targets, based on outdated science. Fearful of the political implications, they have failed to adjust to the levels the new research demands.

Baird's claim to "most agressive plan" finally deflated

Every time Baird has been interviewed recently, he's claimed that his new plan is "one of the most aggressive plans to tackle greenhouse gases and air pollution in the world". (See here or here). At first (before the plan was leaked), I felt a tiny, tiny ray of hope from this statement. Now, it just makes me gag.

Last night, CP released story that finally deflates this claim:

Just as Environment Minister John Baird was bragging that Canada now has one of the "most aggressive" anti-climate change plans in the world, Denmark's energy minister was inadvertently helping to punch holes in the claim.

Flemming Hansen, on a two-day trip to Canada, was explaining to an audience at Carleton University on Thursday how renewable sources would account for 30 per cent of Danish energy consumption by 2025. (Canada's is currently 17 per cent).

The oil-exporting country has long made consumers and industry pay hefty carbon taxes on gasoline and cars. Its energy consumption has been reduced to 1975 levels even as its economy has continued to grow.

Because of drastic measures taken over the last decade, the country is struggling to find additional ways to cut emissions and meet its Kyoto commitment - but it still believes it'll come in somewhere around 3 per cent over the target.

That's considerably more aggressive than Baird's plan, under which Canada's greenhouse gas emissions are supposed to "stabilize" from last year's levels by 2010 - 38 per cent higher than the Kyoto commitment.

I've been wondering if he had any evidence to back up his assertion. The story says:

Baird's assertion that Canada is among the best in the pack was not backed up by any government paperwork and questions put to Environment Canada bureaucrats were not answered Friday. For example, are we being compared to all countries, or just those in the industrialized world?

A spokesman for Baird said that the claim was based on Canada's "actual carbon output" and the projected impact of the newly promised reductions on a "national basis . . . over the course of the next five years."

Yet, much of the reductions in Baird's plan don't occur in the first five years. For instance:

• Major industrial emitters will not have to start cutting their emissions until 2010.
• In 2010, polluters will be able to meet 80 per cent of their reduction obligations either by buying credits from a technology research fund or helping to fund green projects internationally, leaving only a fraction devoted to actual reductions. If a company's production booms, it could actually increase carbon output.
• Some polluters who just started operations won't have to make any reductions at all in the next five years.
• There are no taxes directed at Canadians to change consumption patterns.
• A promise to regulate better efficiencies in the automobile industry will kick in for model year 2011. But because the commitment hinges on the negotiation on a new North American standard, there is no guarantee any changes will actually occur.

In addition, some economists are questioning whether Baird's plan will even work at all.

Chris Green, an economist at McGill University, said he found it difficult to comment on the possible impact on consumer prices because he finds the plan confusing.

He said he does not understand how the targets in the plan can be achieved.

So basically, it's all lies (or "spin", if you prefer). As usual!

It's like Christmas!

Obviously, somebody just couldn't wait to hear about Baird's new targets:

The federal Liberals say a main section of the Conservatives' environmental plan was faxed to their offices Tuesday, a potentially significant breach of security.

Only two more sleeps....

Baird's moving targets

Well, so much for targets that will be "among the toughest in the world". According to a story in the Star, the Tories are still considering a 45-60% reduction by 2050 - but a reduction below 2006 levels! When Ambrose announced these same targets they were relative to 2003 levels.

"We need to constantly pay attention to the base year," said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May at a news conference Tuesday.

"They have actually weakened the target Madame Ambrose announced last fall with the Clean Air Act, which is actually a target for a shrinking Great Lakes, disappearing Arctic ice, storms on our coasts and a dust bowl on our prairies."

I guess the Tories really do think they can pull the wool over our eyes!