Category: Canada

Anything related to Canada or Canadians

Responding to Kenneth Green on renewable energy

On CBC’s The Current this morning, Kenneth Green – the Senior Director for the Centre for Natural Resources at the Fraser Institute – made quite a string of erroneous claims about climate science, renewable energy, and the climate change activist movement.

His most serious error, I think, was arguing that states like Ontario and Germany are going to regret their decision to invest in climate-safe and renewable forms of energy. Like a lot of mistaken analysis about energy politics, Mr. Green’s ignores the necessity of decarbonizing the global economy if we are not going to cause so much climate change that we completely wreck human prosperity, while simultaneously endangering huge numbers of lives and critically important natural systems.

In the decades ahead, it’s going to be states like Canada that seriously regret the energy choices they made at this time. While others will have begun the necessary transition to energy sources that we can rely on indefinitely, Canada will eventually need to make the same transition more rapidly and at greater expense. We will need to scrap inappropriate high-carbon infrastructure including oil sands projects, pipelines, and tight oil and gas hydraulic fracturing projects – and do so well before the end of what their economically viable lifetimes would be in the absence of climate change. Then, we will need to build appropriate infrastructure at a greater pace and a higher cost, while suffering worse impacts from climate change. These impacts will be worsened both by Canada’s direct contribution to the severity of climate change and by the indirect way through which Canadian inaction has encouraged continued fossil fuel dependence in the rest of the world.

It’s disappointing that quality current events programs like The Current still feel the need to bring on fossil-fuel-enthusiast dinosaurs whenever they discuss climate change. As organizations from the United Nations to the World Bank to the Pentagon have long recognized, the question now is how to succeed in the transition to a climate-safe global economy, not whether there is any viable case for remaining tied to coal, oil, and gas.

Hopefully, this weekend’s People’s Climate March will help instill a sense of urgency and determination in political leaders and the general public. As the major economic assessments of climate change like the Stern Report have concluded unequivocally, the intelligent choice in purely economic terms is to do what states like Germany have begun: to stop investing in high-carbon infrastructure projects that are no longer appropriate for the world in which we live, to phase out fossil-fuel energy beginning with the most harmful forms like coal plants, and to commit to the deployment of a new energy system which is climate-safe and which can be relied upon indefinitely.

Tour of Ottawa sights

My Saturday in Ottawa involved a rather comprehensive trek.

Beginning at the home of my friends Andrea and Mehrzad, I walked up Booth Street – past the first apartment I rented in town and the War Museum – and across the Chaudiere Bridge to the Terrasses de la Chaudière complex which includes Environment Canada headquarters.

On the Quebec side, I then walked to the Museum of Civilization, which has been rebranded by the Harper government as the Canadian Museum of History. I then crossed the Alexandra bridge back into Ontario, putting me near the National Gallery. I walked through Major’s Hill Park and crossed the Rideau Canal near the Chateau Laurier. I then entered Parliament Hill, walking the scenic northern edge, looking out over all the major government buildings of the National Capital Region.

I carried on west, walking around the Supreme Court, before heading east again to buy a ticket for the guided tour of Centre Block. While near Parliament Hill, I had a peek at the building where I used to work for the Privy Council Office, along with the Blackburn Building (home of the PCO library) and the Langevin Block (home of the Prime Minister’s Office).

I then walked through the downtown core, mostly along Bank Street, getting a peek at the new Venus Envy location before diverting west down Somerset. I also had a quick peek at the headquarters of the Department of Finance and Treasury Board Secretariat. I also talked to some not-especially-interested salespeople at Henry’s cameras about the relative merits of the 6D and 5D Mk III.

All through the walk, I was struck by how small a place Ottawa is. Having spent five years working there, every neighbourhood is peppered with memories and (at least on a pleasant summer’s day) they can all be walked to quite easily.

I walked down Somerset all the way back to the Booth neighbourhood and said hello to Andrea’s hilarious dogs before following the river back to Parliament Hill for my tour. The guided tour included the elegant corridors and atriums of Centre Block, committee rooms, the senate, and the extremely beautiful Library of Parliament.

After the tour, I walked up Elgin Street, passing the pub where I used to do trivia on a team of tax economists on Tuesday nights. I headed south to the Museum of Nature before having a look at the much-developed Beaver Barracks complex where I used to live. I then walked back to Bank Street and south through The Glebe to the redeveloped Landsdowne Park.

From there, I visited the Bank Street canal bridge and wandered along the canal and through neighbourhoods as far as Dow’s Lake, before making my way back to Andrea’s via the Natural Resources Canada complex on Booth Street.

Thoughts on the Trinity-Spadina by-election

I am deviating from this flowchart for the current Trinity-Spadina by-election.

My riding is clearly contested between the Liberals and the NDP, and I do generally have a preference between candidates from those parties. If the real race is between the Liberal and NDP candidates, and you prefer one to the other, it probably makes sense to vote for the plausible candidate who you prefer.

But for this election, I think both the federal Green platform and the local candidate in Trinity-Spadina are very appealing. I have been volunteering a bit for the campaign. It’s not plausible to think that the Green will win, despite her considerable merits as a potential parliamentarian, but it would be nice to beat the Conservative candidate.

One thing the flowchart in my 2008 post fails to capture is the possibility that only one party has a credible platform on the issue I consider most important. Continuing to expand the oil sands is a really bad investment, and the federal Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP generally support it. Generally speaking, federally, the Liberals are probably better than the NDP on climate. Locally, the NDP candidate seems more concerned than the Liberal.

Greens are great parliamentarians, with Elizabeth May deservedly-acknowledged as the star of the whole place.

Preparing for a comp, working (photography and hotel management), and remaining engaged with Toronto350.org there is only so much I can do for the campaign. At the same time, being peripherally involved so far has been the most engaging encounter with Canadian politics I’ve had in a while, and with voter turnout so lamentable, I think the power of the Greens to inspire those cynical about first-past-the-post Westminster-style electoral politics is a further good reason to support them.

Greens seeking election

Last night I went to a Green Party town hall, with MP and federal party leader Elizabeth May, provincial party leader Mike Schreiner, provincial election candidate Tim Grant, and federal by-election candidate Camille Labchuk.

The event was excellent, with a strong sense of enthusiasm in the large crowd.

The coal phase-out and Green Energy Act make me want to reward the provincial Liberals, but voting Green probably sends the same message (with little risk of accidentally contributing to a Conservative victory, in this riding). As for the federal by-election, anything with a chance of enlarging the Green caucus is encouraging.

CPSA 2014, day 2

I am glad Peter Russell encouraged me to attend this morning’s “Roundtable: Constitutional Conventions, Minority Parliaments and Government Formation“. It has certainly been the most interesting session I have attended at the conference so far. I need to add Peter Aucoin, Mark Jarvis, and Lori Turnbull’s Democratizing the Constitution: Reforming Responsible Government to my reading list.

Next, I have a session on “Voting Determinants“.

Later, I am going to Catherine Dauvergne’s talk on “The end of settler societies and the new politics of immigration“.

Today’s last academic event will be the CPSA presidential address: “What is it a Case Of? Studying Your Own Country“.