Thursday, April 16, 2015

New column day

Here, on Brad Wall's appalling admission that the Saskatchewan Party's plan for a low-carbon economy is to move into Ontario's basement rather than pursuing sustainable development in Saskatchewan.

For further reading...
- Wall's comments and other provincial positions in the lead up to this week's premiers' meeting can be found here.
- Geoffrey Vendeville reported on the earlier cap-and-trade agreement between Ontario and Quebec. And Yasmine Hassan discussed the massive Quebec climate change rally.
- The Saskatchewan greenhouse gas bill which has been passed but never proclaimed in force can be found here (PDF).
- Joe Romm reports on the new cost-effectiveness of electric car batteries here. And Tom Randall and John Lippert both point out that storage costs are also plummeting for solar power generation.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:51 p.m.

    Until we rid the body politic of the fossil fuelled politicians (Wall, Harper, Prentice....), no real progress will be possible.

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  2. We're utterly mired in petro-statehood, at least across the west. Your man, Wall, put up every fossil fueler talking point possible. Canada only produces 2% of the world's emissions, blah, blah, blah. "Clean coal" blah, blah, blah. Sequestration, blah, blah, blah.

    I was dismayed at the premiers' meeting when there was no general commitment to leaving high-carbon fossil fuels in the ground, without which mankind doesn't have much hope of avoiding catastrophic consequences this century. If 80% of known reserves must be abandoned with just 20% usable to see us through the transition, coal and bitumen have to be quickly phased out. Brad Wall sounds like a West Virginia Republican, chapter and verse.

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    Replies
    1. All too true on all counts. And the truly sad part is that the premiers too (with Wall's interference playing a big part) felt the need to water down even modest and unenforceable statements of principle - making the kind of determined and collective action necessary to break the fossil fuel habit look all the more distant.

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