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Canada to stop asbestos mining and stop defending it.

Byoliveridley

Canada’s long and sorry saga of exporting death (asbestos) and defending it loudly and proudly in international fora is over and I needed to mark this happy day on the blog. The newly elected provincial government in Quebec, the Parti Quebecois have followed through on their campaign promise to finally end this small “industry” employing a few workers. Canada will no longer produce asbestos, or fight the listing of asbestos as a toxic substance.

It is going to take $50 million in government funds, a fraction of the cost of one fighter jet, to transition the workers away (if they get the money, not the mine owners). That’s it, why were we exporting death to India and other countries for this, I don’t know.

Canada’s many conservative and liberal governments fought hard for years to preserve the industry, using techniques lifted from tobacco propaganda, or today’s climate change challenges. I leave you with the ruling Canadian government’s response: Finely tuned to appeal to everyone who likes mesothelioma, cancer and death.

“Mrs. Marois’s decision to prohibit chrysotile mining in Quebec will have a negative impact on the future prosperity of the area,” (Industry Minister) Mr. Paradis said in a statement.

That about sums it up. But, it is a good day for public health, nevertheless.

Citing PQ pressure, Canada to cease defending asbestos mining – The Globe and Mail.

Featured image courtesy wikipedia used under a Creative Commons license (a micrograph of asbestos fibres causing lesions in the lung).

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  • Hitler's fuel to get giant subsidy. What about solar?

    Byoliveridley

    Apparently, my political prognostication skills are good. Coal state shills senators want to give coal to liquid fuel a $10 billion dollar subsidy loan.

    Democrats Propose Loan Plan for Coal Plants – New York Times

    As the Senate began debate today on a sprawling bill to reduce oil consumption, top Democrats were circulating a proposal to provide $10 billion in loans for plants that make diesel fuel from coal.

    The proposal highlights the horse-trading involving powerful industry groups as Democratic leaders push for legislation that would require higher mileage in cars and a huge increase in the production of renewable fuels made from plants like switchgrass.

    Yes, one of the lesser known provisions of these bills would expand renewable energy subsidies to coal.

    As mentioned before, U.S lawmakers are losing their collective mind in exchange for lots of money. This is corruption too, you know, at a level that is unfathomable to your average two-bit third world dictator!

    Meanwhile, how much money is spent on solar related research? You know, that big ball of wholesome renewable energy. This post on the reality based community blog explains why silicon production for photovoltaic cells is stuck.

    The problem for the PV customers for silicon is that they are a fast grower sandwiched between two mature sectors growing roughly in line with the economy. Bulk silicon is used in old-economy alloys and sealants; and while demand for semiconductors grows rapidly in value, their extra capability is crammed onto roughly the same physical volume of raw material. Unfortunately there is no appropriate process for making PV-grade feedstock. Metallurgical-grade silicon, smelted by simple Victorian technology, largely in China, is cheap but too impure to work in solar cells. So you have to use semiconductor grade, which is absurdly over-specified for the purpose and priced to match.

    For a long time the PV companies could go to refiners’ back doors like hobos and buy at a discount the seconds, the ingots rated substandard for the real semiconductor customers, but now the demand has shot up so PV has to pay full whack. This is by far the biggest constraint on the future of PV. Making the panels is straightforward : the industry cry – just Google it – is “silicon feedstock”.

    People are of course working on finding a specific route to medium-grade silicon at $20 or so a kilo. Whoever gets there first will make a fortune and save the planet like Superman, so it’s an attractive opportunity. The problem was entirely predictable given the relative growth rates. So why didn’t it attract much effort until recently?

    I think there has been an institutional market failure. The challenge is out of the technological reach of the bulk silicon people; and the semiconductor refiners have I think been fixated on keeping Intel and company happy, customers who must be insensitive to price and fanatically demanding on quality. A $100 processor might be built on a gram or less of silicon wafer, or 5 cents’ worth – hardly worth worrying about compared to cutting rejection rates for the circuits.

    You would think that this geopolitically strategic problem would attract oodles of public research – a money cake like Alice’s with EAT ME “beautifully marked in currants”. Not so.

    The EU put €42m into PV research in the €17.5 bn 6th Framework Programme (2002-2006), with one €2.6m programme on silicon feedstock (search for FOXY): the 7th Framework programme hasn’t been approved quite yet, but funding for renewable energy will go up.

    The USA, heart of the world semiconductor industry, spends even less. The current DoE programme for PV technology offers $12.5 million over 2-3 years . Searching the DoE site with the keywords “silicon feedstock”, I found precisely one grant awarded – for a princely $99,928.

    This is the order of money the US government hands out as charity to cranks. The Pentagon used to support serious gravitational physics with the blue-sky hope of finding antigravity, and apparently funded some antigravity devices – well into the crackpot zone. NASA spent $1.6M between 1996 and 2002 on a similarly starry-eyed “Breakthrough Propulsion Physics” programme, in hopes of a real warp drive. (more)

    It’s market failure, and government policy’s job to predict and correct market failures by judicious injections of money and regulation. A fraction of this Hitler subsidy focused towards reducing the cost of high grade silicon production would, as the author of the above post put it, “save the world like Superman”

    Meanwhile, Barack (no longer senator of coal) Obama no longer supports Coal-to-Liquid technology. That removes the one black mark (can I say that?) against his advocacy positions. Here’s hoping it is a real back tracking, and not just a reaction to pressure that will be reversed once eyes are turned.

  • Trade Agreements Create Pollution Havens

    Byoliveridley

    Interesting paper out of the Berkeley Global Economy Journal
    Trade Agreements and the Environment: An Industry Level Study for NAFTA
    Raymond MacDermott. Global Economy Journal Volume 6, Issue 3 2006 Article 3

    We find strong evidence of both the pollution-haven hypothesis and the positive impact of the NAFTA on FDI.  In addition, we find the trade agreement exacerbates the pollution-haven effect.  That is, the incentive to invest in countries with weak environmental regulations is greater under a trade agreement such as the NAFTA.  Surprisingly, stronger evidence of this effect is found in lower polluting industries than in higher polluting industries.

  • EPA scales back rules on wetlands

    Byoliveridley

    Where for the n’th time, you get to use “EPA”, and “scales back rules” in one sentence.

    E.P.A. Scaled Back Rules on Wetlands – New York Times

    After a concerted lobbying effort by property developers, mine owners and farm groups, the Bush administration scaled back proposed guidelines for enforcing a key Supreme Court ruling governing protected wetlands and streams. The administration last fall prepared broad new rules for interpreting the decision, handed down by a divided Supreme Court in June 2006, that could have brought thousands of small streams and wetlands under the protection of the Clean Water Act of 1972. The draft guidelines, for example, would allow the government to protect marsh lands and temporary ponds that form during heavy rains if they could potentially affect water quality in a nearby navigable waterway. But just before the new guidelines were to be issued last September, they were pulled back in the face of objections from lobbyists and lawyers for groups concerned that the rules could lead to federal protection of isolated and insignificant swamps, potholes and ditches.

    This is the consequence of a tortured Supreme Court ruling from June of last year where Justice Kennedy could not make up his mind on what was a wetland and what was not, so he helped hand down a very confusing verdict open to all kinds of interpretation. At that time, here’s what I said…

    This will make things confusing for a while, and you all know who confusion favors!

    Well, I told ya!

  • |

    China takes most of UN clean energy funds

    Byoliveridley

    Clean Power That Reaps a Whirlwind – New York Times

    That program, the Clean Development Mechanism, has become a kind of Robin Hood, raising billions of dollars from rich countries and transferring them to poor countries to curb the emission of global warming gases. The biggest beneficiary is no longer so poor: China, with $1.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, received three-fifths of the money last year. And as a result, some of the poorest countries are being left out.

    Scientists increasingly worry about the emissions from developing countries, which may contribute to global environmental problems even sooner than previously expected. China is expected to pass the United States this year or next to become the world’s largest emitter of global warming gases.

    The controversy is that China, India and Brazil together are gobbling up close to 80% of the UN Clean Development Mechanism Funds. What is the CDM?

    The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is an arrangement under the Kyoto Protocol allowing industrialized countries with a greenhouse gas reduction commitment (so-called Annex 1 countries) to invest in emission reducing projects in developing countries as an alternative to what is generally considered more costly emission reductions in their own countries.

    In theory, the CDM allows for a drastic reduction of costs for the industrialised countries, while achieving the same amount of emission reductions as without the CDM. However, critics have long argued that emission reductions under the CDM may be fictive, and in early 2007 the CDM came under fire for paying €4.6 billion for destruction of HFC gases while according to a study this would cost only €100 million if funded by development agencies.

    Source wikipedia.
    The Kyoto protocol was supposed to be a starting point for further negotiations. Unfortunately, the U.S pulled out and put negotiations towards a better worldwide mechanism on the backburner.

    Back to the issue at hand? This program is supposed to help countries that are expanding their energy use fast to develop clean sources of energy. India and China are both developing at breakneck pace, and every bit of wind energy that goes in there is one less Megawatt from coal. Yes, the money is not going to Africa, but Africa is not developing infrastructure at that pace (the reasons for that have filled many books!). This program is not meant to foster development, it is meant to facilitate clean development wherever development occurs. So, if China is developing the fastest, it has equal rights to access these funds to put in a wind energy infrastructure.

    If you want China and India to stop using these funds and use some of their own money to develop clean energy, you have to redesign the program to include a rider that takes into account the affluence of the country. The more money a country has, the less it gets from the CDM, or it has to atleast pony up a bigger share. You also have to put in the infrastructure in poorer countries that can take advantage of these funds. Without a power distribution infrastructure, or a functioning government or bureaucracy, how do you expect a poor country in Africa to take advantage of a complicated credits based funding program?

    Development is complicated stuff, and distortions like these happen all the time. When the Kyoto protocol was negotiated, China was not rich, now it has a little more money. Development situations are fluid and demand flexibility in action, and constant monitoring. If the world’s richest country does not participate, and actively trashes the UN continuously, old and imperfect agreements stay in power even longer. U.S disavowal of the Kyoto protocol has the effect of making the protocol’s distortions even stronger and delaying action to fix them.

  • Open Data: Let’s talk about more than just government

    Byoliveridley

    Victoria is hosting its open data day and Hackathon Saturday the 23rd (Facebook Link). I plan on being there because I support openness and transparency, I’d like to learn more about available data sets, and hangout with like-minded people. The City of Victoria has taken steps since 2011 through Councillor Marianne Alto‘s initiatives and more to facilitate more open governance. Like any other government entity, there is valid criticism and issues to navigate, but stated goals exist and progress can be tracked and critiqued.

    Enough people talk about open government data, and there’s consensus that governments should be more collaborative, open and participatory. But most of us spend more time and money interacting with non-government entities than we do with government entities. Look at your monthly budget. You will spend 30-40 percent on your mortgage or rent, goes to a non-government entity. The next biggest line items, probably groceries, car payments are all to private entities. Should we as consumers not expect the same open data sharing standards from our private entities as we do from government? The book Open Government, released for free by Safari books after Aaron Swartz’s death (does not appear to be free any more) has one chapter by Archon Fung and David Weil titled Open government and Open Society, which outlined my concerns very well:

    Enthusiasts of transparency, which most readers of this book are, should be aware of two major pitfalls that may mar this achievement. The first is that government transparency, though driven by progressive impulses, may draw excessive attention to government’s mistakes and so have the consequence of reinforcing a conservative image of government as incompetent and corrupt. The second is that all this energy devoted to making open government comes at the expense of leaving the operations of large private sector organizations—banks, manufacturers, health providers, food producers, drug companies, and the like—opaque and secret. In the major industrialized democracies (but not in many developing countries or in authoritarian regimes), these private sector organizations threaten the health and well-being of citizens at least as much as government.

    Open Government – Chapter 8 – Open Government and Open Society – Fung and Weil

    I wrote briefly about one aspect of open data in our private interactions, shopping receipts. We spend a lot of time, effort and money shopping, yet we’re very unlikely to leverage the power of data to help us shop better because our individual decisions are captured in paper receipts. But there are many more examples.

    1. Mortgages – Do you have to go to every bank/lender’s website to do a comparison? Ratehub is a start, is there an API or download capabilities?
    2. Real Estate Data – Realtors control real estate data in Canada, I would call this a major conflict of interest. There are efforts to open this data up a la the US, but slow going. This is the biggest market transaction any of us will undertake in our lives, but information is controlled by the agency that benefits most from our lack of knowledge.
    3. Rentals – Craigslist is notorious for hoarding data and going after people who want to present data in more useful formats. Community posted information is created by the community, but captured by private entities due to network effects (everyone’s on craiglist, so I need to be there too, regardless of their data policies).
    4. Insurance markets – Government provided insurance information (ICBC – Car, MSP – health) is transparent. Try getting insurance in the open market for condos, homes and more, you’ll find the same pdf/paper quote formats that make it difficult to compare and choose wisely.
    5. Corporate governance – There is so much information missing on actual corporate structures, ownership, directorship, brand ownership and lobbying
    6. Pollution and resource use. Do we have a good idea what companies pay for water or power? Do we have a way of understanding who pollutes what and where?

    My goal on open data is to advocate for openness in all of society, not just in government. Also, just because data is available does not mean it is open. APIs and download capabilities are key.

    So, when you think open data, do try and shift your gaze away from government occasionally. Remember that your housing decision is much more critical than the salary information for the assistant city manager, so openness is vital everywhere.

    cart

     

    Update: as Kevin pointed out on twitter, the federal tax bill is pretty big. I was talking more in terms of the municipal parts like property taxes. The point nevertheless stands, we pay private entities large sums of money under poor data transparency conditions.

  • Tar Sands Don't Fit in the Clean Energy Economy

    Byoliveridley

    On February 19 President Obama will visit Canada. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has asked to discuss a North American agreement on global warming and energy, and it has been widely reported that under such a deal he will seek to shelter the tar sands in Alberta from the same greenhouse gas cuts that other polluters must make.

    We can not be on be on the path to fight global warming and build a clean energy future by ignoring the facts. The tar sands are one of the most destructive projects on earth. They produce oil that has three times the carbon impact per barrel in the production process as regular oil while leaving a long term legacy of toxic tailings lakes and Boreal forest destruction.

    There is a better way. Both the U.S. and Canada have tremendous economic potential in new energy industries and energy efficiency. The tar sands industry must do its fair share in reducing emissions as we make the transition to a new energy economy in North America.

    Tell President Obama that he needs to stay on course to a clean energy future.

    via Obama2Canada

    This is a new cross-border effort by a whole host of Canadian and US environmental big guns including Greenpeace, Environment Defence, the Dogwood Initiative, etc. aimed at lobbying Obama on the Oil (Tar) sands of Alberta.

    A few years ago, only 4% of all Americans knew that Canada was the their largest supplier of oil. So, any efforts aimed at educating Americans on where their oil comes from and the dirtiness of the process involved is welcome.

    Once again, I will say that the future of the Oil Sands is not in Canadian hands, but in American hands. No Canadian government will turn off the tap, not now in this recession, not 3 years from now when we are on our next boom. It is going to take American pressure and the institution of a robust climate change mitigation program in the US. We shall see what happens in 2-3 years time.

    I do not believe this campaign will make any difference whatsoever, Obama is in Canada for something like 3 hours, and presumably will have other things to talk about.

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