This Canadian news article about political opposition to carbon taxes does a good job of summarizing the barriers to stronger greenhouse gas mitigation policy that people like Doug McAdam and Stephen Gardiner have articulated: “Certainly there are abundant grounds to doubt the political wisdom of the Liberal plan. A tax, or anything that resembles it, […]
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As reported in The Guardian, no major countries actually have commitments compatible with the 1.5 – 2.0 ˚C maximum target in the Paris Agreement: “When taken as benchmark by other countries, the NDCs of India, the EU, the USA and China lead to 2.6 °C, 3.2 °C, 4 °C and over 5.1 °C warmings, respectively.” Canada is among the […]
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As reported in The Guardian, the International Energy Agency is warning the world that there is no place for new fossil fuel power stations, vehicles, and industrial facilities if the world is going to stay below the 2 ˚C upper limit in the Paris Agreement: In total, the IEA calculated that existing infrastructure would “lock […]
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This happened yesterday: 50,000 people march in Montreal to demand more climate action I hadn’t heard about it in advance and I don’t know the people behind it or what will result of it. Still, the level of media attention and my experience of the March for Jobs, Justice, and the Climate in Toronto make […]
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In an ideal world, politicians would rely on high quality sources of information to determine what they should consider to be true factually about the world. They could then apply their political philosophies and ideologies to the question of what public policy ought to exist. It’s not only conservatives who invert or pervert this process, […]
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Tanya Whyte, one of my classmates at U of T, has been integrally involved in setting up Lipad: a searchable online database of everything said in Canada’s Parliament since 1901. It’s sure to be valuable to everyone from elementary school students researching projects to academic researchers, journalists, and politicians. There was a segment about it […]
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Tzeporah Berman’s comments to the Alberta Teachers Association are well worth reading. She highlights how Canada keeps operating with an outdated notion of how usable and competitive the bitumen sands are, and that the case for new pipelines collapses when you consider what the world as a whole needs to do to address climate change. […]
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Canadians (and especially Canadian politicians) seem to often work from the assumption that so much has been spent on developing Alberta’s oil sands that Canada is now committed to continuing with the project. There are many problems with the argument. Particularly when it comes to new investments, it could be seen as a case of […]
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A carbon tax is a liberty-respecting, economically efficient mechanism to help address the threat of climate change and build a sustainable, prosperous society. It ought to be welcomed and supported by policy-savvy fair-minded conservatives who want to live up to their ideals while stewarding the integrity of the planet for future generations. Meanwhile in Canada: […]
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Steve Paikin’s show on TVO is a video equivalent to CBC’s The Current, in that they both tackle matters of going political importance, tend to get into the substantive matters involved, and feature hosts that press guests to go beyond sound bites. The recent segment with author Chris Hedges on American decline – “The Collapse […]
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