GreenDude

On October 1st the Canadian Council of Chief Executives released a paper entitled Clean Growth: Building a Canadian Environmental Superpower that bears a lot of similarity to Green Party policies specifically the Green Party Climate Plan:A New Energy Revolution to Avert Climate Catastrophe released on June 5, 2007. Green Party leader Elizabeth May has already praised the report saying, “We applaud the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) for pointing out the need for immediate action on global warming,” in an Oct 2nd press release.

My good friend Vanessa pointed out to me last night, “when something is in quotes you need to look up the source.” She is absolutely right and I invite you to read both. I would like to highlight one passage of note though. (more…)

Today’s Toronto Star reports:

President George W. Bush called on the world’s worst polluters today to come together to set a goal for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the climate to heat up. “By setting this goal, we acknowledge there is a problem, and by setting this goal, we commit ourselves to doing something about it.” …

Bush’s emphasis is on using green technologies and other voluntary efforts to tackle global warming. The president said the reduction goal should be finalized by next summer, along with ways to measure progress toward it.

The report goes on to say:

Environment Minister John Baird represented Canada at the Washington talks.

Baird insists Canada can act as a bridge between Europe, which is promoting deep emission cuts, and other countries like the United States, China and India that don’t want mandatory reductions.

But the Conservatives have moved away from supporting caps on total emissions. Harper is instead proposing a system of intensity targets that call for emissions to decline by a certain percentage for each unit, such as a barrel of oil.

Hmmm. Both Stephen Harper and John Baird have spent a lot of time beating their chests, maintaining that their Climate change policy absolutely includes hard caps. Yet here they are, on the one hand, supporting intensity based targets, even though that would actually allow emissions in Canada to rise because sales of oil and other fuels increase every year; and, on the other, supporting George Bush’s push for voluntary targets, something that they have repeatedly slammed the previous Liberal government for allowing.

I wonder how long Canadians will accept this kind of overt deceit by our minority government.

Also, a note to Mr. Bush: Goals and Targets have already been set for reducing climate change, and progress measurements towards tracking those goals are already in place. It’s called the Kyoto Protocol.

U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice spoke at a meeting of the 16 top polluting countries in the world at a two day conference hosted by U.S. President George W. Bush. BBC News reports the following:

Ms Rice challenged leaders to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels by shifting toward energy sources that would reduce global warming – without harming their economies.

She said climate change could not be dealt with entirely as an environmental question but “in a way that does not starve economies of the energy that they need to grow”.

“Though united by common goals and collective responsibility, all nations should tackle climate change in the ways that they deem best,” she said.

Translation: “You guys can go ahead and fight climate change all you want, and we’ll keep on doing nothing since we think that doing something will hurt our oil industry.”

Way to toe the party line Ms. Rice.