Climate change & energy policy

Comparing two carbon bombs: LNG plants vs Enbridge pipeline

Feb 8, 2012
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With the spotlight on the federal government’s aggressive push to export tar sands bitumen via the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline to Kitimat, and from there by tanker on to China, the BC government reclaimed some attention on the energy file when it released its Natural Gas Strategy last week. With lots of glossy pages, but little detailed… View Article

Odious profits and the Enbridge pipeline

Jan 27, 2012
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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… View Article

Fossil fuel lobbyists: the real radicals

Jan 25, 2012
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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… View Article

Inequality and Climate Injustice: A Durban Post-Mortem

Dec 13, 2011
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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… View Article

Time to give shale gas industry a closer look before we’re totally fracked

Nov 9, 2011
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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… View Article

Are Smart Meters Worth the Cost?

Oct 12, 2011
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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… View Article

Fighting energy poverty

Sep 28, 2011
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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… View Article

A ‘Jobs for Jobs’ Strategy

Sep 23, 2011
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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… View Article