emissions

Stephen Maher: Environmentalists want to know why Canada dragged its feet for years, and why the PMO met with the company

Why putting a price on carbon emissions is a more effective way to tackle climate change than setting emissions targets.

Economist Paul Boothe on the five-step approach Canada and the provinces can take to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions

It takes a huge amount of hot water to make the ice in hockey rinks. How technology is helping rinks go green.

How Obama’s new environmental rules are reshaping the debate

Barack Obama promised to tackle climate change, but so far Washington has produced only hot air

The UN says so, and so do a growing list of school boards. Meet the new eco enemy.

Auto sales have picked up, the big winners are‹you guessed it—pickups

Environment Minister Jim Prentice says the oil sands are hurting Canada’s efforts to be seen as a “clean energy superpower”

National Post, November 5. Mild-mannered, absolutely. But Environment Minister Jim Prentice wants the world to know he’ll be no boy scout when crucial climate change talks convene in Copenhagen a month from today … In the end, it’s almost a guarantee that no matter what happens, Canada will be vilified on the world stage as an energy superpower that abandoned the Kyoto Accord and isn’t shouldering its share of carbon reductions. “Well, if the price of having strong, capable, tough negotiators at the table is being singled out and given ‘fossil of the year’ awards, then so be it. Bring it on,”  Mr. Prentice told me, doing his best impression of not being a boy scout.

Ford Motor Co. has asked the Canadian government to provide a $3,500 incentive to consumers who buy a new car in 2009. The initiative is supposed to stimulate the flagging auto-industry, and get older vehicles off the road. Ford CEO David Mondragon said they would be replaced by cleaner and safer vehicles.

No one argues that the cost of tackling climate change is going to come cheap, but a number of recent reports have put an exact price tag on it. And this global problem is about as expensive as they come. If you want to keep the planet cool, and stabilize the amount of carbon dioxide at 450 parts per million (ppm), which was the target set by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that will cost $542 billion US per year, every year till 2030, according to the World Energy Outlook (WEO). The EU estimates that it about half that cost, or about $224 billion US per year. A research group called New Energy Finance sides with the WEO, putting the price tag at $515 billion US dollars a year.