Two obvious but generally unstated details about the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline are climate change and that oil and gas companies stand to make mega-profits. An honest appraisal of the project would be something like, “yes, putting in the pipeline will facilitate even more greenhouse gas emissions from the Alberta oil sands, but our buddies [...]
Marc Lee’s Blog Posts
Marc Lee is the Senior Economist at the CCPA’s BC Office. In addition to tracking federal and provincial budgets and economic trends, Marc has published on a range of topics from poverty and inequality to globalization and international trade to public services and regulation. Marc is Co-Director of the Climate Justice Project, a research partnership with UBC's School of Community and Regional Planning that examines the links between climate change policies and social justice. Marc chairs the Progressive Economics Forum and contributes regularly to Relentlessly Progressive Economics (progressive-economics.ca/relentless).
Odious profits and the Enbridge pipeline
January 27th, 2012 · Marc Lee · 1 Comment · Climate change, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability
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Inequality and Climate Injustice: A Durban Post-Mortem
December 13th, 2011 · Marc Lee · 5 Comments · Climate change, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability, First Nations & Aboriginal
The United Nations climate change talks in Durban, South Africa, ended 2011 with a whimper. After a year in which climate disasters rolled across the globe, major polluting nations like Canada chose to ignore them, seeking instead to disrupt the Durban negotiations, then blew the world a raspberry, by officially pulling out of the Kyoto [...]
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Occupation, democracy and coops
October 18th, 2011 · Marc Lee · 1 Comment · Economy
I hung out a while yesterday at the Vancouver Occupation, and was impressed with their efforts at radical democracy. Many in the mainstream press have been quick to pile on for how time-consuming decision-making can be under this model, but perhaps they have not spent enough time in legislatures and committee meetings and public consultations. [...]
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Are Smart Meters Worth the Cost?
October 12th, 2011 · Marc Lee · Comments Off · Climate change, Energy
A notice in my mailbox last week told me that smart meters are going to be installed in my neighbourhood. I’ll admit that the geek in me would like to see real-time information about my energy usage, but as an economist I’m interested in costs and benefits of the program. So far we have seen [...]
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Fighting energy poverty
September 28th, 2011 · Marc Lee · Comments Off · Climate change, Economy, Energy, Housing & homelessness, Poverty, inequality & welfare
Today we released a new Climate Justice Project report, Fighting Energy Poverty in the Transition to Zero-Emission Housing: A Framework for BC, by yours truly, Eugene Kung (a lawyer with the BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre and a steering committee member of the CJP) and Jason Owen (who worked on this project as a student at UBC, now with [...]
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“Climate change starts here: the BC dirty jobs plan”
September 19th, 2011 · Marc Lee · 4 Comments · Climate change, Economy, Energy
We are still on Day One of the Jobs Plan, and the afternoon news is all about proposed liquid natural gas plants in Kitimat, which will take pipelined gas and send it by tanker to Asia. Quoth the Premier: Creating a new industry with the capacity to export B.C.’s natural gas to overseas markets for [...]
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Jobs and BC’s Resource Extraction Mindset
September 19th, 2011 · Marc Lee · Comments Off · Climate change, Economy
Day One of the week-long BC’s Jobs Plan: the Premier was in Prince Rupert to announce a commitment to making the port a “gateway” to Asia. Quoth Premier Clark: I am in Prince Rupert today because if you are looking at Canada from Asia, with an eye to investing in our country, Canada truly starts [...]
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Remembering Gideon Rosenbluth
August 18th, 2011 · Marc Lee · Comments Off · Uncategorized
Below is the text of the obituary for Gideon Rosenbluth, a renowned progressive economist, and a past president of the Canadian Economics Association. Gideon was a long-time Research Associate of the CCPA, and served many years on our Research Advisory Committee. **** Gideon Rosenbluth January 23, 1921 August 8, 2011 Gideon Rosenbluth died suddenly [...]
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Decarbonizing BC homes and the price of gas
July 28th, 2011 · Marc Lee · 2 Comments · Climate change, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability
Our climate justice framework for BC is to eliminate fossil fuels by 2040. In the household sector, this poses a significant challenge, not so much in terms of technology and knowledge, but because natural gas is much cheaper than electricity per unit of energy. Even though BC has among the lowest prices in North America, [...]
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Deconstructing BC’s carbon neutral government
July 13th, 2011 · Marc Lee · Comments Off · Climate change, Privatization, P3s & public services, Provincial budget & finance
Besides the carbon tax, one of the most important BC government climate action initiatives has been the adoption of Carbon Neutral Government. That is, count emissions from public buildings and travel, reduce them as much as possible and pay for carbon offsets to negate the rest. As of the 2010 calendar year, the BC government [...]
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