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Four provinces unite in emissions fight
Karen Howlett, Justine Hunter and Ian Bailey; Globe & Mail
Quebec and Ontario join Manitoba and B.C. in talks to set cap-and-trade system
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The premiers of four provinces that account for more than half of Canada’s greenhouse-gas emissions are pushing for an accord on an alternative national climate-change plan that would trump the Harper government’s blueprint.
British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec are forging ahead with talks aimed at establishing a market-based trading system to cut greenhouse- gas emissions. The premiers of Canada’s two largest provinces said they have grown impatient waiting for other provinces, notably Alberta, to overcome their sharp differences, and for the federal government to take a leadership role in developing a cap-and-trade emissions system.
“When it comes to embracing our responsibility as privileged global citizens in the face of a global challenge, [the federal government] suffers from a poverty of ambition,” Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said yesterday.
Quebec Premier Jean Charest said the four provinces are taking the initiative to build what could become the foundation for a national cap-and-trade system. It is only a matter of time, he said, before all industrialized nations adopt such systems.
(30 January 2008)
Climate Plans by New York, Florida Prod U.S. on Global Accord
Jim Efstathiou Jr. and Adam Satariano, Bloomberg
President George W. Bush is pressing allies in Europe for a global warming agreement based on voluntary targets for pollution reduction. State officials in the U.S. have already left him behind.
Twenty-two U.S. states with about 145 million people are exploring mandatory carbon-dioxide caps and emission-credit markets similar to one in the European Union. The proposals are pressuring Congress to pass legislation that would supersede the state and regional programs with a single national plan.
New York, California and Florida also threaten to undermine Bush’s efforts as the U.S. today begins hosting in Hawaii a Major Economies Meeting on climate change with the world’s biggest polluting nations. Those states agree with most industrialized countries that mandatory pollution caps are needed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming.
The actions by the individual states are “an enormous source of support to those of us in Europe and elsewhere in the world who believe that the climate-change issue is a direct and pressing responsibility for us all,” former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an interview in Miami on Jan. 18.
(30 January 2008)
Cap and Trade: THE Economic Fairness Issue
Alan Durning, Sightlline
Climate change is regressive. Its effects punish the least fortunate the most — those who’ve contributed little to and gained little from polluting economies. But the solutions to climate change can be progressive. Done right, they can share fairly the burdens and opportunities of preventing climate disruption.
I said “can.”
If poorly designed, climate policy can also be viciously regressive-a vacuum cleaner sucking up working families’ earning.
That’s why it’s so important to get climate policy right. It’s the single most important economic fairness issue facing Cascadia right now: more important than reforming payday lending, more important even than reforming health insurance. It’s what every advocate for economic opportunity should be losing sleep over — and jumping to action to help shape the solution.
The most needed measure for minimizing climate disruption is a firm cap on emissions of greenhouse gases and a mechanism for putting a price on those emissions. In short, climate pricing. We need to make prices tell the truth about the climate.
Truthful pricing of carbon emissions, of course, means higher prices for fossil fuels. Higher fuel prices are regressive. They hit working families the hardest. By a lot.
(30 January 2008)
China weather chaos a sign of things to come: experts
AFP
Don’t tell the thousands of Chinese stuck at railway stations or airports, but the chaos caused by a vicious cold spell afflicting much of China could be just a taste of things to come, experts say.
The inclement weather and ensuing problems merely highlight the country’s increasing vulnerability to the extreme weather swings characteristic of global climate change, experts say, and is likely to be repeated in future years.
Vast areas of central and southern China have experienced the most severe winter in half a century in the past few days, coming on the heels of one of the warmest winters on record last year.
With climate change gaining pace and the planet generally warming up, the social, economic and political impact on China will rise along with the mercury, experts said.
(29 January 2008)
