Climate change & energy policy

As tree-planting company representatives from across British Columbia gather in Kelowna for a conference this week, a lot of attention will focus on the question of just how significant a reforestation challenge we have on our hands in the province. Even those of us who know comparatively little about our forests understand that some astonishing… View Article

The Vancouver Sun’s Gordon Hamilton reports that the IPP lobby, BC Citizens for Green Energy, has released a Letterman-like top ten reasons for the development of more of their run-of-river and other ‘green’ power projects. Though not as funny as Letterman, the BCCGE’s top ten could bring out a laugh, except for the serious environmental and… View Article

Martin Khor, of the South Centre, has done an interesting analysis for the (doomed) Cancun negotiations on climate change. The talks have broken down on north-south lines, with southern countries wanting to keep the Kyoto framework that puts the onus on northern (advanced, industrialized) countries to reduce emissions and give carbon space to southern countries… View Article

Our latest Climate Justice Project report, Every Bite Counts: Climate Justice and BC’s Food System, has been unleashed on the province. I have to admit that this was one of the most challenging research projects I’ve ever been part of – the food system is complicated, and overlaying climate change and social justice issues added… View Article

A recent story on offsets reported in the Tyee caught my eye. In a nutshell, a residential subdivision development on Denman Island was prevented from going ahead in part because of the magic of carbon offsets. First of all, more conservation by preventing this type of development is a good thing. But in what way… View Article

Today CCPA released a new report by myself and Ken Carlaw, an economist at UBC-Okanagan, called Climate Justice, Green Jobs and Sustainable Production in BC. I doubt you’ll see any headlines about it in the major news dailies, but I think it will have a longer-lasting impact as a key economic framing piece for our… View Article