Environment, resources & sustainability

Who’s really “skewing” the pipeline debate?

Jan 11, 2012
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Apparently the Harper government and its echo chamber in the blogosphere (e.g. Vivian Krause) think that philanthropic funding of environmental groups is “skewing” the debate on the northern pipeline project. Presumably they would like to return to a more “normal” debate.  You know, one disproportionately influenced by well-heeled corporate-funded market fundamentalist think tanks and pseudo-grassroots… 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

So Where is the Science?

Sep 8, 2011
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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… View Article

Decarbonizing BC homes and the price of gas

Jul 28, 2011
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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,… View Article