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 [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Energy'
Odious profits and the Enbridge pipeline
January 27th, 2012 · Marc Lee · 1 Comment · Climate change, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability
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Fossil fuel lobbyists: the real radicals
January 25th, 2012 · Robert Hackett · No Comments · Climate change, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability
Most of the fossil fuel lobby’s arguments against its opponents should be reversed. Consider: Who are the real ‘radicals’ – those working for a sustainable climate and environment – or those who promote carbon-bombing the atmosphere, making us all guinea pigs in one of history’s most reckless experiments? Who are the real hypocrites – those [...]
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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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Time to give shale gas industry a closer look before we’re totally fracked
November 9th, 2011 · Ben Parfitt · Comments Off · Climate change, Economy, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability, First Nations & Aboriginal, Uncategorized
Despite the recent release by Canada’s natural gas industry of a set of guiding principles governing the controversial gas well “stimulation” method known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”, and despite the almost immediate endorsement of those principles by BC Premier and industry cheerleader Christy Clark, more and more British Columbians are justifiably worried about what [...]
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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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A ‘Jobs for Jobs’ Strategy
September 23rd, 2011 · Marvin Shaffer · Comments Off · Economy, Employment & labour, Energy
It is ironic that within weeks of its much publicized report and stated concern about the upward pressures on BC Hydro rates, the government announces a job strategy that will drive up electricity rates more than anything else — more even than the self-sufficiency policy government has belatedly recognized must go. The plan for new [...]
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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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So Where is the Science?
September 8th, 2011 · Marvin Shaffer · 2 Comments · Climate change, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability
The headline in the Globe today was certainly ominous — “Clark’s Hydro policy threatens to collapse B.C.’s climate change progress, scientist says”. The purported policy change seemed scary — the government might roll back the requirement for BC Hydro to be able to meet domestic electricity requirements in drought conditions. And the scientist’s description of [...]
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BC Hydro Review
August 12th, 2011 · Marvin Shaffer · 2 Comments · Energy
If it were true that BC Hydro could effectively plan and operate its system with 20% fewer workers, as the government panel has recently suggested in its Review of BC Hydro, one would have to assume that the BC Hydro Executive and Board, as well as the BC Utilities Commission, have all grossly failed in their [...]
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