Canada looking at Bush's Green Bloc

Because I really cannot resist: Glenn Reynolds posted this interesting bit about Canada considering walking from Kyoto and joining the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6). That would be this program, which the press ignored in 2005.

Yes, it's a Bush idea, which is why you have probably not heard anything about it. No one has, of course. You're not allowed to know that President Bush is green, because that ruins the narrative, doesn't it?

As I have said before - if the Global Warming situation were the undeniable and scientifically proven "crisis" some would have us believe, the town cryers would be applauding any and all initiatives. That they do not tells you all you need to know about whether something is real or simply a political wedging tool.

Source. (See original for links)





Kyoto study raises alarm in Canada

Tories' dire economic warnings about swift emissions cuts dismissed by opposition as `shock and awe' communications

Canada could face a deep recession, sky-high energy prices and about 275,000 fewer jobs if it slashes greenhouse gas emissions to meet its Kyoto targets, according to an economic analysis prepared by the Conservative government. Environment Minister John Baird presented the report yesterday to a Senate environment committee that is studying a Liberal bill that would force a massive cut in emissions - about 270 megatonnes by 2012 - when they are still increasing. Baird said the government would need to "manufacture a recession" in order to meet Kyoto as the legislation, Bill C-288, demands. "The government would need to introduce major punitive measures to get the deep cuts in emissions in the very short time frame required by (the bill)," he said.

But opposition parties jumped on the study, calling it a Tory "shock and awe communications" strategy. Even Quebec Environment Minister Line Beauchamp, whose government has been friendly to Ottawa, described the federal study as alarmist. "The assumptions of the scenario are extremely severe," she told a news conference.

In the Commons, NDP Leader Jack Layton said the report "deliberately deceives the Canadian people about the impact of Kyoto obligations." Liberal environment critic David McGuinty said the study is skewed because it artificially restricts the use of international emission trading and ignores the job creation that would come with a new focus on green technologies. "Of course it's hard to get the job done without tools," McGuinty said. "That's like saying it would take years to build a subway line with teaspoons."

The study comes as Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Baird prepare to roll out a revamped climate change plan, likely next week, with mandated emission reductions for industrial polluters like Ontario's coal-fired electricity plants and Alberta's oil sands. It is expected to include targets for reductions that will fall well short of those set out in the Kyoto treaty.

Harper gave a spirited defence of his government's much criticized performance on the environment in the House of Commons. "The reality is ... you do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one-third in less than four years and have a positive effect on the economy," he said. "This party has no intention of doing anything that's going to destroy Canadian jobs or damage the health of this economy."

The government received a major boost with the endorsement of five independent economists, who reviewed the analysis before its release and sent letters saying that they agreed with its general findings. Mark Jaccard, a professor of environmental management at Simon Fraser University, said the study backs up his own research that it is now impossible to meet Kyoto's 2012 targets without causing a recession.

The government's Kyoto impact study predicts that individual Canadians could see natural gas prices double and electricity prices rise by 50 per cent over five years, changing $90-a-month bills into $145-a-month bills. Gasoline prices would rise more than 60 per cent to $1.60 a litre before 2012. More than 275,000 Canadians could lose their jobs by 2009 and the unemployment rate would rise by 25 per cent, while the gross domestic product would decline by 6.5 per cent, the study estimates. The proposed bill would result in a carbon tax on industry of about $195 per tonne of carbon.

Green Leader Elizabeth May said a carbon tax, which is designed to make it more expensive for industries to pollute, should be set at between $30 and $50 a tonne. She said the study's elevated figure was intended to create a picture of "economic disaster." In addition to Jaccard, TD Bank's Don Drummond, the University of Calgary's David Keith, McGill's Christopher Green and Informetrica's Carl Sonnen signed off on the Kyoto study. Drummond, TD's senior economist, said the bill would ruin Canada's competitiveness.

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Britain: Using environmentalism to make a buck (or a pound!)

Not many revolutions start with cheese and onion crisps, but this week they led the charge into carbon footprint labelling as Walkers tried out the Next Big Thing in the battle to drive the green agenda. Retailers are clamouring to demonstrate their green credentials and answer demands for more information about the energy involved in producing the weekly shop. Research by the Carbon Trust has found that two thirds of consumers say that they want to know the carbon footprint of the products they buy.

However, carbon labelling could be in danger of descending into the same farcical situation as nutritional labelling, with competing schemes run by rival retailers making it difficult for consumers to know which one to trust. Ian Cheshire, chief executive of B&Q, told a forum on ethical business at the World Retail Congress in Barcelona: "This is an issue on which retailers need to agree an industry standard but at the moment companies are working on a variety of separate schemes."

Tesco, the UK's largest retailer, announced plans with great fanfare in January to develop a "commonly understood measure" of the amount of carbon emissions related to every product sold. The supermarket said that it wanted to develop a Sustainable Consumption Institute to lead the project and commissioned the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) at Oxford University to help to devise a measurement scheme. Tesco insisted that it wanted to "collaborate with others around the world" on the project and convened a meeting with rival retailers J Sainsbury and Marks & Spencer, as well as its suppliers Unilever and PepsiCo to help to discuss how things might progress. A further meeting of about 20 stakeholders including rival retailers and suppliers is set for early next month at the ECI. Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco's chief executive, said this week that he expected to have some products labelled by January. "We are getting a favourable reaction from other retailers and from around the world. It is probably the most remarkable communication we have ever made," he said.

However, Sainsbury's, M&S, Boots and a number of other companies have already been working with the Carbon Trust, a government-backed body dedicated to helping businesses to cut their carbon emissions, on a labelling scheme. Boots, Walkers and Innocent drinks have committed themselves to testing the Carbon Trust-backed scheme and its logo will become increasingly apparent in stores over the next few months. Marks & Spencer also has just completed a project with the Carbon Trust to map the emissions generated by its food products, although the retailer believes that it is some years away from being able confidently to label goods.

The Carbon Trust's scheme attempts to calculate and represent the amount of carbon emissions generated in the production of an item and examines the supply chain behind a product. It includes a commitment to reduce the carbon footprint of the product over time. If the producer cannot demonstrate it has reduced carbon emissions over a two-year period, it will no longer be allowed to use the label. Euan Murray, strategy manager for the Carbon Trust, said that the organisation was working with other groups of companies and aimed to announce further trials in the next few months. He said that, although Tesco was carrying out its own research, "they see the world very much as we do and we are trying to create a single way of measuring carbon footprints of products which we think is critical to the success of the venture".

Sir Terry said that Tesco was "keen to work with everybody" and insisted that retailers were not headed for a re-enactment of the traffic light nutrional labelling debacle. However, he pointed out that the scheme he envisaged was slightly different from the Carbon Trust's proposed concept because it aimed to take into account the carbon used during consumption. "We are not trying to gain competitive advantage on the thing," Sir Terry said. "You have got to start the process. There is a danger if you went for a single standard that it would never get off the ground. "The danger of trying to be too prescriptive is that you lock flaws in. It is better to be a little more flexible until things are on track and people have more experience of them."

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Australia: Now it's cool to be carbon neutral

It's fashionable to take highly visible action on greenhouse, says environment writer Matthew Warren

The public debate on climate change is fracturing. Abstract and global v tactile and personal. Kyoto v the Toyota Prius. Climate change is the motivation for international agreements and global frameworks, but in the gap between awareness and substantial action has blossomed a new retail and commercial fashion. Carbon is the new black.

If it weren't for television, many of us wouldn't know what a power station looked like. But we are now part of an alarming and earnest UN-scale debate on intergenerational changes in energy generation, on the morality of China building a new coal-fired power station every week while millions sit in the dark in India and Africa waiting for theirs.

The essence of climate change is a debate over how to deliver against colossal targets to cut invisible gases by staggering quantities over decades. It leads to talk of fantastic plans to capture and store billions of tonnes of liquid carbon dioxide kilometres under the ground, or of solar power plants kilometres wide and long, new global stock markets buying and selling carbon credits, whatever they are, and the lure of fortunes to be made by the clever, offset by the threat of broadacre misery for the seemingly inevitable losers.

Last year public awareness on climate change lit in Australia. Nearly a year on and the concern is turning into impatience. In this temporary hiatus between populism and policy, there is a boom in households and businesses that want to make statements about their concern. In a vacuum of real market and policy signals we are happy to invent our own urban myths. Fortunes are being made selling the fashion of climate change.

Hybrid petrol-electric cars are on the rise in Australian cities, with sales more than doubling in the past year driven mainly by fleet buyers, although they still represent less than 0.5 per cent of total new car sales. The Prius hybrid engine car has been a big hit for Toyota since its reintroduction in 2003. It outsells the rival Honda Civic hybrid by a ratio of about two to one, even though the Honda is $3000 cheaper.

But, then, the Honda looks just like a Civic. The Prius's unusual styling sets it apart from other cars on the market and tells the world that the owner has paid about $10,000 extra for the cachet of driving with environmental impunity. Honda Australia spokesman Mark Higgins says the Prius's sales strength is in business and government fleets, where brand recognition on the environment is on the rise. "One of the major reasons people buy the hybrid Civic is that people want to do their bit for the environment, they want low emissions, low fuel consumption, and they don't want it to stand out from the crowd," he says.

British supermarket chain Tesco has signalled it is thinking of introducing food miles labelling on all the products it sells as a response to climate change. The idea is that food that has been imported thousands of kilometres will have made a much greater contribution to greenhouse gas emissions than locally produced foods. The scientific basis for this claim is much less certain. The full life cycle of foods includes primary production, preparation, packaging, retailing and disposal. Preliminary research by Australia's food processing industry in 2003 suggests transport is among the lowest contributor to greenhouse.

Incorporating the full cost of greenhouse into energy prices would be the simplest way of demystifying this claim. But why wait? At an international conference of science journalists, Roger Short from the University of Melbourne called for an end to cremation to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Instead he suggested everyone be buried upright in a cardboard cylinder beside their favourite species of tree. During cremation the average male body produces more than 50kg of carbon dioxide as it is heated to 850C for 1 1/2 hours. It's about the same level of emissions as a dozen cars attending the funeral. Should they be banned, too?

Solar panels and hot water systems are the Prius of household energy systems: modern, energy saving, expensive and highly visible. Rooftop solar panels to augment domestic electricity consumption start at about $12,000 a house; solar hot-water systems cost about $3000 but have a much better payback period. Most state governments have introduced hefty rebates for their installation: the Greens think they should be mandatory and Labor leader Kevin Rudd has promised to increase the subsidy for household solar panels.

But a study by McKinsey&Co on the technology pathway to reduce greenhouse gases has identified the first, and cheapest, solution is neither of these pricey options. It is insulation. About 2.5 million homes in Australia are still not insulated, most of these rental dwellings. Insulation is a relatively cheap and simple change that could cut 27 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Insulation Council president Dennis D'Arcy says the problem with insulation is that it is too cheap and simple. "Insulation is very cheap compared (with) these other solutions and it has been around a long time. There's nothing new or bright and shiny about it," he tells Inquirer. "Gizmos are visible and are very obvious signs that you are doing something. That seems to excite people a little more and they seem to excite governments. If you insulate a suburb of houses, who knows you've done it?"

In the present market of high visibility on climate change action, companies, the AFL and even newspapers are declaring themselves carbon neutral, although energy experts and academics are concerned the market is moving too far ahead of the regulations needed to police it. And there are signs some buyers may not understand what they are buying.

Carbon markets consultant Cheryl Bowler from Energetics says the term carbon neutral should be based on a full life-cycle assessment of a company's or household's operation, but in some cases it is being interpreted selectively. "It's probably more a case that (the term) is being used naively because people aren't aware of what their carbon footprint is: they calculate just their energy-related emissions , but they can be leaving out a large proportion of what they are responsible for," she says.

The fast-moving retail greenhouse market has already experienced problems with claims about the definition of green and renewable power. Regulators had to tighten key rules and definitions in the national greenpower accreditation scheme after it was found some retailers were exploiting loopholes to sell zero-cost green energy to householders from sources such as the Snowy hydro scheme.

Since the start of this year retailers have been required to source a minimum of 10 per cent accredited greenpower from new generators to stimulate investment in low-emission energy sources. "The language becomes a little murky for a general consumer to determine the difference between renewable power or clean power or renewable energy," Deloitte energy expert Lorraine Stephenson says. "If you are getting offered something for nothing and it relates to new renewable energy, then you have to be a little suspicious."

Associate professor in energy systems at the University of NSW Hugh Outhred is concerned about the validity of credits generated by schemes such as NSW's greenhouse gas scheme GGAS, which continues to generate credits for demand management and efficiency gains in electricity generation as emissions continue to increase. "In NSW we have this implausible situation where each year we get a report on how well the scheme is going and yet in the fine print emissions continue to increase," he says.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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