Scary Energy Consumption Trends

The battle for Quebec in the federal election campaign heated up on Thursday with Conservative Leader Stephen Harper telling a Montreal audience that Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion's carbon tax proposal threatens Canada's national unity.

"The carbon tax will do more than undermine the economy," Harper said to a crowd of business leaders. "By undermining the economy and by re-centralizing money and power in Ottawa, it can only undermine the progress we have been making on national unity."

CBC.ca – Canada Votes – Dion’s Green Shift threatens national unity: Harper.
Mr. Harper is calling for disaster if there’s any kind of serious carbon dioxide mitigation plan. His party’s plan, as I mentioned a few days back, is pretty toothless, and his attitude does not bode well for climate change mitigation policy in Canada.

I had a long rant brewing in my head all day about U.S intransigence at the Bali Climate talks, but hell, one massage and a Chimay later, I should just outsource to someone more qualified to lay down the law.

I am going to speak an inconvenient truth. My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that. We all know that,” he said.

VOA News – Al Gore Blames US for Climate Change Deadlock in Bali

Here’s what pissed me off this morning…

U.S. Strategy Succeeds in Bali
Climate Talks Turn to Efforts Other Than Emissions Targets

BALI, Indonesia, Dec. 13 — U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conceded Wednesday that the United States had succeeded in achieving one of its key objectives at the climate conference here, blocking a proposal that called on industrialized nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020.

Hmm, this is not even worth a rant. When the capital’s newspaper characterizes behavior that will no doubt result in untold human and material destruction as a “win”, what can be said?

Tags: climatechange, Gore

It is nice to get away into the mountains for a while and not think about work, or climate change, but, reality drags you back. This is a great primer on various CO2 mitigation strategies, explaining in plain language, carbon taxes, cap and trade systems and such. It does tilt heavily towards the carbon tax approach, but that’s fine, I like it better than cap and trade anyway!

Time to tax carbon – Los Angeles Times

The proposed fixes for climate change are as numerous as its causes. Most only tinker at the edges of the problem, such as a California bill to phase out energy-inefficient lightbulbs. To produce the cuts in greenhouse gases needed to slow or stop global warming, the world will have to phase out the fossil fuels on which it relies for most of its power supply and transportation — especially the coal-burning power plants that account for about 32% of the annual emissions of carbon dioxide in the U.S. and that generate about half of our electricity. There are three basic methods of doing that, which are the subject of debate and legislation at every level of government.

Through the most excellent Environmental Valuation & Cost-Benefit News blog comes notice of a book that answers a question that’s been on my mind off and on.

Environmental Valuation & Cost-Benefit News – Post details: Reality Check: The Nature and Performance of Voluntary Environmental Programs in the United States, Europe, and Japan

Despite a growing theoretical literature trying to explain how and why voluntary programs might be effective, there is limited empirical evidence on their success or the situations most conducive to the approaches. Even less is known about their cost-effectiveness.

The book’s called Reality Check (and long byline) and at $40 is too expensive for a look see! But here’s a teaser:

The central goals of Reality Check are understanding outcomes and the relationship between outcomes and design. Most of the programs it studies have positive results, but they are small compared with business-as-usual trends and the impact of other forces–such as higher energy prices. Importantly, potential gains may be quickly exhausted as the “low-hanging fruit” is picked up by voluntary programs. By including in-depth analyses by experts from the U.S., Europe, and Japan, the book advances scholarship and provides practical information for the future design of voluntary programs to stakeholders and policymakers on all sides of the Atlantic and Pacific.

So, the answer is no, I guess. Voluntary programs catch the bulk of changes that can be carried out easily anyway and may have been part of the company plans. They also make for good Company PR. The greater the threat of regulation and good enforcement, I guess, the more power you have to set up a good voluntary program. But if it is all carrot and no stick, who knows…

For an example of what a voluntary program looks like, here’s Climate Wise from the EPA.

In case you did not know already, the IPCC is very close to releasing its report on climate change impacts.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Climate change ‘to hit poor hard’

Dr Parry outlined the four areas of the world now thought to be the most vulnerable to climate change. “The arctic, where temperatures are rising fast and ice is melting; sub-Saharan Africa, where dry areas are forecast to get dryer; small islands, because of their inherent lack of capacity to adapt and Asian mega-deltas, where billions of people will be at increased risk of flooding,” he explained. As a result, the most severe impacts will be felt by the world’s poorest countries, the report says. “The poorest of the poor in the world… are going to be the worst hit and are the most vulnerable in terms of impact of climate change,” said IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri. Mr Pachauri said those people were also the least equipped to deal with the effects of such changes. Scientists and government officials from more than 100 countries met through the night, trying to agree on the wording of a summary for policy makers. Several delegations, including the US, Saudi Arabia, China and India, had asked for the final version to reflect less certainty than the draft.

The U.S objected to the contention that climate change would cause severe economic damage in the United States, China wanted to reduce the certainty applied to these changes, and I have no idea what India would object to, since it stands to lose a great deal. But as usual, the  people who have the most to lose are not the ones doing the negotiating, so I guess that is to be expected.