EnviroEconomics.ca

NRTEE released yesterday a good read on climate change and northern impacts (here).
TRUE NORTH: Adapting Infrastructure to Climate Change in Northern Canada
…First, make existing institutions work better now by mainstreaming adaptation into government policies, processes, and mechanisms and ensuring northern views are “at the table”, and second, build northern climate change adaptation capacity [...]

Jack Layton has a priceless quote here from question period today
“We are glad that the Prime Minister is finally taking this issue seriously and has taken his head out of the tar sands,” Mr. Layton said. “The question is: Is he going with any plan? So far, we have seen no plan even though it [...]

Word on the street is new Federal targets will be announced at Copenhagen. Most likely PM Harper is playing follow the leader, literally following Obama to Copenhagen, So, expect harmonized targets with the US, which is -17% below 2005.
But anything can happen, cause target trash talk is way easier than action.

The need to poke your finger in your neighbors eye runs deep in politics. How else does one explain another jurisdiction making target trash talk? Yesterday, Quebec stood up, and was counted — as another jurisdiction that has made a promises that it can’t keep.
Quebec breaks from Ottawa in plan to [...]

Carbon tariffs are trade distorting period. They help those that may need help due to relative product price differences attributable to carbon pricing. But all others are worse off, and the economic models show that welfare is always decreased.
So, when I see this I cringe.
We need another carbon tariff
…We don’t [...]

See here and here for an elaboration of this,
Ottawa will delay the release of climate regulations until there is a firm agreement on a global approach and clarity on how the United States intends to regulate emissions – which could take until late 2010,
and the Minister’s comments
“In the absence of an international understanding, and in [...]

Ah, it must be Spring in Copenhagen with all that talk of linking in the air. See Minister Prentice press release here for a good review of what he, or perhaps more precisely the PM is thinking.
I too have been all consumed lately with thinking on linking Canada-US permit trade. [...]

While looking at some wonky modeling results, I received an email from the author of said results simply entitled
Whacky Shit
Which of course immediately got me thinking of Monty Python, and I stumbled on these,
The Climate Policy Argument
and this
The Ministry of Climate Policy and CCS Subsidization
To be fair to the ENGO community, I should [...]

I had the pleasure of listening to Alberta’s Minister of Finance recently. She gave a good, but apologetic speech about how Alberta had to dip into the rainy day heritage (oil) fund to balance the books in the face of the global slowdown. While she is one of the luckiest finance ministers in [...]

A senior federal cabinet minister has added some long awaited clarity on where Canada is going with climate policy in advance of Copenhagen,
“I don’t think we’ve been ambiguous on this issue…”
(here)
This picture, and indeed the whole federal policy, is eerily paralleling the Bush administrations bold forays into climate policy … see post here
As [...]