Media & Communications

Planning for Europe’s energy future: My submission to the Commission’s 2010 Consultation on Energy

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Europe is finally starting to think about its longer-term energy issues, and how they affect transportation plans. To try to deal with these issues, a new European Energy Consultation was set up, specifically to look into these issues. The European Energy Consultation asked for interested individuals to provide their input.

Vancouver’s Backyard Chickens II/Bucky Buckaw

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The second of a two-part feature on the City of Vancouver’s multi-year process to approve backyard chickens. Because of the many similar debates underway within city councils across the country, this focus on Vancouver’s efforts looks back over the past few years to track just how this process first began and how it evolved from there. Perhaps other hopeful or illegal backyard chickeners can glean some pointers from Vancouver’s efforts. Among the many voices heard on this part II of our coverage is some of the opposition to the proposed bylaw change voiced to the city from local animal welfare organizations.

New thinking on BP spill: Declare a holiday!

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The BP spill demands a far more significant response than ongoing cleanups, unsuccessful attempts to plug the gushing oil, and desperate efforts to mitigate the multitude of impacts from the biggest oil catastrophe in U.S. history. The BP spill demands a paradigm shift in how we run our economy and carry out our governance. Historians will one day look back on this spill as the nadir of governmental regulatory performance, in which oil companies commandeered and corrupted the Interior Department oil leasing program. So what’s the response we need to get the paradigm shift going? How about declaring a new holiday?

Optimism, harsh realism, and blind spots—10 years later

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Ten years ago, energy analyst Steve Andrews challenged widely respected energy guru Amory Lovins via email for what Andrews thought was an overly optimistic vision—about coal consumption trends, evolution in the auto industry, future world oil production, etc.—articulated in the Rocky Mountain Institute‘s Spring 2000 newsletter. …Ten years later, read it for the blind spots everyone had.

Dear Candidate – What will you do if growth is over…?

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To me, one of the most surreal phenomena one encounters these days is that no country, no established economic research institute (that I’m aware of), and no international organization (such as the IMF) publicly discusses scenarios that don’t plan for a return to stable economic (GDP) growth. Even Greece’s government, after 2012, expects growth, which would allow the country to slowly reduce its monster debt load. Similarly, the U.S. government forecasts annual average (real) growth rates of 4.4% for the years 2012-2014, and 2.4% thereafter until 2020. This theme is globally ubiquitous.

ODAC Newsletter – July 9

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Hopes rose this week that BP may be in a position to attempt to ‘kill’ the Macondo oil leak a couple of weeks ahead of its previously anticipated date. The first of two relief wells is now close to the target, and a top BP executive is reported to have told Wall Street Journal that, should weather conditions remain favourable, the well could be shut off by 27th July. With this optimistic, but by no means assured backdrop, Tony Hayward spent this week visiting Middle Eastern investors in an attempt to shore up BP against hostile takeover bids…